Candybread Houses

December 17, 2007

One of my Christmas decorations with which I've been decorating my house is a newly made gingerbread house—or rather, a candybread house; it’s made out of graham crackers, for crying outloud. I made it myself yesterday at the KAPIC Center. The KAPIC Center is a sort of International Culture Center just outside Kanoya in the middle of the forest. Yesterday, Sunday, they had an event where we got to make our own candy houses.

Rachelle told me about the event and as she was going, I tagged along. After all, what is Christmas without decorating a little house with candy? Besides me and Rachelle, there were four other ALTs: Cara and Brett.

Sandy, the CIR, gave instructions in Japanese. The model house had a tall sloped roof, but as I knew from experience those things never stay standing, I disregarded the model and built my house my own way. I was inspired by a round Ritz cracker to make a hobbit house, with a round door—but it didn’t quite work out. I’ll send you a picture so you can see the final result.

Out of the 4 ALTs, however, I would like to point out that mine was the only one whose roof stood. Rachelle couldn’t get her roof to stay and, growing impatient, stacked two Graham crackers flat, like a cross. Cara’s roof splintered. She put the pieces inside her hollow house and raised a marshmallow as a white flag. Brett, who did such a meticulous job of picking out different colored sprinkles to decorate his house, found his roof sliding down. He yelled for me to take a picture. Three seconds after I snapped the shot, the roof came down, squashing walls and yard flat. Giving the project up for loss, Brett dumped the remains of his candy on the remains, and we made up an elaborate story about an earthquake reducing the house to rubble.

In short, we had a good time.