Breaks during college are a time for me to assess and repair any damage I’ve done to myself and take some deep breaths. I’ve been taking full advantage of time away from anything school related by working on my passion project, LPOL, sleeping in until 10:00 each morning, and not showing my face outside unless I have to take the dog out.

I started off the break by going to dinner with my parents and sister at our favorite spot, Jalisco’s. It’s a local Mexican restaurant with a family-style feel located in the heart of Buckhead. We’ve been going here together almost every Thursday night for about a year, but my dad has been a customer since he was a child. This is definitely one of the perks of going to college in the same town you grew up in and with your sister. After we finished, we went back to Georgia Tech to see Emma’s (my little sister) Industrial Design exhibit before going home for good.

A recent addition to Emma and I’s nighttime routine on break has been watching two episodes of Emily in Paris each night. We’re almost done with the second season now, and have gotten both our mom and dad hooked too! There’s so much I could say about the show, especially how frustrating it is to me how Emily can’t foresee when her actions will blow up in her face in the future.

A highlight of my break so far was getting together with some of my friends from high school for a holiday party, along with our parents. It was such a good time catching up with everyone. Beforehand, I pre-gamed with a classic Tom Collins with my parents.

A Christmas tradition my family has kept for nine years now is going to Bistro Niko for dinner on Christmas Eve. We’ve made many memories in their red booths through the years, one of my favorites always being the different hilarious stories my grandfather likes to recount from his life. He’s truly one of a kind. Although I usually order their white bean soup and some sort of salad, I switched it up and got their lemon sole special. It turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve ever had from the restaurant – I highly recommend it!

On Christmas Day my family went over to my grandparents’ house for brunch. My mom prepared some yummy Swedish porridge, ham and cheese biscuits, a smoked salmon smorgasbord, and a charcuterie board to bring over. I was tasked with making a pot roast my grandpa bought to contribute. Despite being my first time preparing a large cut of meat it didn’t turn out bad! Before eating we looked through some photo albums from 2005. It was so funny to see how much our personalities have stayed the same through the years but how much they were expressed through how we looked in photos.

Like this photo of my sister, brother, and I. We spent a good bit of time laughing at the dynamics of this photo. It’s the cuffed jeans for me.

This year our party poppers came with a whistle and songbook FOR the whistles. We all had so much fun partaking in our own little Christmas performance at the dinner table. My grandma’s attempts made all of us crack up from how cautiously she would blow into her whistle. Definitely a memory I’ll cherish for years to come.

I’ve also spent a lot of time of during this break finding and making content to build up my Instagram page @hannavictoriashaw. I decided to make a new page aside from the personal account I’ve used for years so that I wouldn’t feel restricted to post what I thought those followers might expect of me. Whoever wants to follow my new account can if they want, but I did it this way so it wouldn’t be an obligation to the people that already know me to stick around for the type of content I want to post. It’s been much more liberating so far, and so fun to experiment with!

My mom has been feeling under the weather so we ordered some ramen for dinner last night. It doesn’t look super appetizing here but boy was it delicious.

This is what my life has consisted of lately. Lots of writing, comfort food, lounging on the couch with a book for hours on end and taking the time to re-center myself. Tomorrow I’m going out with some friends to celebrate the New Year. I cannot believe that we’re a day away from 2022! Sending you all light and love, and hope that your holiday season has been spent finding joy in the little things as well.

💘 Hanna