Habari Gani! (Swahili for "What's the news?")

As you may or may not know, today marks the very first day of my favorite Holiday: Kwanzaa. It's an African Holiday I celebrate every year without fail. Every day of Kwanzaa is marked by a virtue of the Nguzo Saba, or, "The Seven Principles".

Today, we celebrate Umoja, which means "Unity". Band together with your loved ones, strangers, or even perhaps, if you are by yourself, the unity within you, and appreciate doing thing as a whole, setting aside petty differences, and accepting everyone in unity.

Since I won't be around to post each of the seven principles, I'll go ahead and list them for you here for the rest of the week:

Tomorrow we celebrate: Kujichagulia--Self Determination. (To define ourself, name ourselves, speak for ourselves, and create ourselves.)

Afterwards on, are:

Ujima--Collective Work and Responsibility (To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our own, and to solve them together.)

Ujamaa--Cooperative Economics. To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and businesses, and to profit from them together.

Nia---Purpose. To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community to restore our people to their original greatness.

Kuumba (My favorite!)--Creativity. To always do as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited.

Imani (Another favorite) FAITH. To believe with all of our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, and our leaders, and the righteousness of our struggles.


I truly do love this holiday. And speaking of Holidays, I AM TOO DAMN HAPPY Christmas is over and done with. God, what a horrible Christmas it was this year. In between the absolute, FULL-BLOWN depression I was experiencing at being away from my family (and being by myself this year), and and my stupid two roommates (no good, no account, lousy drama-starters), and a NOT so appetizing meal...I am seriously glad to say good riddance to this Christmas. I KNOW next year will be better, though, an I'm seriously looking forward to it! But I DID get some nice goodies:





Baked a new recepie, which I named my: "Jean Claude Van Damme (I'm Good!)!" cake because it's seriously a kickass cake.




And lastly, my cousin sent me the greatest gift of all:



My family!!! My sister who's in the Marines, my beloved mum, and my big Papa Bear! I hated that I couldn't be there this year, but I went back to school today, so I wouldn't have been able to anyway. Oh well. Can't wait to see everyone this coming year!

Have a great week, everyone! <3