#### History You arrived on this planet with your mentors, [[D. Nisse (Yuppie)]] and [[O. Nausse (Yuppie)]], three weeks ago. It's your understanding that the spaceship is wrecked and repairs are ongoing, but to be honest, you don't know much about spacecraft and consider it a bit of a miracle that you've spent the last few weeks living in a decent sized house with your own bathroom rather than in galactic impound for crashing a ship without a license... you'll take it to your grave that you messed with the value parameters just to see what the output would be... The planet that you managed to land on has plenty of options for the research paper that you have due at the end of the quarter in order to claim credit for this little summer trip to the solar system anyway, and you can tell that [[O. Nausse (Yuppie)]] is thrilled to have any excuse to research the weird little traditions of this town. You've done your best to appear non-threatening and it must be working. You've done and seen so many new things in the last seven days that you are having a hard time even deciding what you're going to write about and which will ultimately determine how much credit you get for this internship. *Differing Opinions on the Style and Pattern of Christmas Lights*; OR *Gift Wrapping Traditions of Earth*; OR *Why You Should Hope a Mysterious Bearded Man Climbs Down Your Chimney this Winter* - every title you come up with is even better than the last, and that's made it so much harder to decide where to start. You've been told that blast-off is going to be Christmas Eve at midnight... all that's left before you leave is to take a few samples, attend a big party (you hear there's one at [[H. Fezziwig (Mayor)]]'s), and buy a souvenir from the Main Street gift shop before getting out of town. And in the nick of time, because if you stay here much longer, you're definitely going to have to cite more sources and maybe do a dissection in order to satisfy [[D. Nisse (Yuppie)]], or worse... your college professors. #### Questions Is Christmas just research, or is there fun to be had? How many primary sources can you manage to get an interview with before you leave? What are you actually going to write your research paper about? #### Opportunities Talk to someone about your research but don't let them know you're not from this planet. Get [[M. Drossel (Toymaker)]] to talk about how he started his business in the first place. A Pen Pal on Earth might be cool - see if you can make a friend and remember their address for the intergalactic postal service.