arts & entertainment
Best of all though, was this past Christmas. I decided to make traditional Christmas cookies,
which I don’t normally make. So I scoured the web for a simple recipe, hopped all over town in
search of ingredients and cookie cutters, and got to work. And boy was it work. Chocolate chip
cookies ain’t got nothin’ on cookies that require dough rolling and careful shape cutting, not to
mention the sprinkling. But after a couple hours they were finished and... success! They were
delicious, and once again my family loved them.
The real triumph, however, was at school. The teachers at my school are friendly, and I’ll say
hi to most of them and have a short conversation every now and then, but I don’t really know
most of them and they don’t really know me. So I wanted to share Christmas with them, even if
just in the form of cookies. There were very few teachers in the office when I arrived that day,
so I set out the box cookies with a little sign that said “Merry Christmas!” and went off to class.
Throughout the day, as I’d return to the office, there would be fewer and fewer cookies and
more and more teachers coming up to me to say “Merry Christmas” and to tell me my cookies
were delicious. There was also the occasional shocked face when they discovered I made the
cookies, as well as requests for the recipe. It was a small success, but in Peace Corps you take
them where you can get them. And it helped me discover my new PC goal – to become the
Cookie Queen of Probistip.
Winter 2014 – 23