~ Nicci at dinner with her new family ~<br/><br/><br/>The quiet that fell on the group seemed like a long slow calming breath.  There was no feeling of awkwardness, rather an intimate communion of the special moment their first sharing of themselves had brought  As the next course was served Nicci drank in the faces round the table, already they were no longer strangers, and she felt a warm glow from the feeling of belonging already starting to grow inside her, as each and everyone of them seemed to embrace both the ideals of what they came for, and also more personally herself. She felt as thought they were going to accept her for who she was and she should try to free herself of the qualms which still fluttered at the periphery of her thoughts.<br/><br/>When Mila spoke about her own lack of cooking skills with such sweet honesty Nicci laughed, “I love cooking Mila, I really do, so you'll be pleased to know you won't go hungry while I'm around.  I hate to tell you though I am dreadful at a lot of other household tasks and anything I iron is more likely to get burned than pressed neatly.”<br/><br/>Nicci thought she should start the way she needed to carry on and added, “In fact I have been teaching some of the youngsters how to cook at the youth center in the estate I grew up in.  It was lovely to help them learn how to prepare real food for themselves and their families.”<em>Especially as so many of them had parents who would as often as much forget their very existence let alone cook them a good meal,</em>she thought.  Nicci smiled at Mila, thinking of how she grew up in such a large family “I expect we will learn a lot from each other in so many ways.”