Feliz Navidad

Christmas was different to say the least. It was such a surreal experience. Everything was different: the people, the decorations, the church, the language, the food, and the house. Everything. In the days leading up to Christmas, I could anticipate the day, but it was just so surreal.
Friday I made Christmas sugar cookies with Miranda. It took about two hours to bake, cool, and decorate. It was worth it, they tasted excellent. Lieke had also been gone for the past week and she came home today, so I hung out with her at night and got to sleep in her ultra-comfortable bed.


Cookie making

Saturday night I actually went out to the disco and I got home very late and slept solidly until noon at which point I was awakened. I ate breakfast and at 4 we went out to eat at a taco place. We went to a 7 p.m. church service.
Then we went to Martin's sister's house and a lot of people were there (I should have counted, I didn't think of that at the time.) Martin has a HUGE family. He has 8 sisters and one brother. One sister was unable to come (she lives in Detroit) and the other brother didn't come. So 7 sisters, their husbands and kids and even one of them has grandkids. So, big family. Anyway, we all sat around and they were having a big group discussion. I wasn't completely paying attention because I was playing with Nicole, she's 5 and very cute, and her family lives in New Mexico. Then we ate at 10:30. The food was normal to me. We ate turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and spaghetti. Then after everyone was completely stuffed we played the game "Fruit basket upset" and a few other variations of that game. It was all in Spanish and very interesting. I enjoyed myself. My host parents decided it was time to go home at 1:30, I went with no problems, but there were 3 very unhappy children in the car on the way home because we always go home too early.


Christmas eve, before church


Playing Fruit Basket Upset

In the middle of the night I heard my cell phone go off with the alert of a text message. Now, I wish I could have just ignored the alert, however, it goes off every minute until you respond, so at 4:30 I rolled out of bed and saw that my friend Mariana wanted to wish me a Merry Christmas at that time. I went back to bed and was awakened at 7 by lots of wind and the banging of a door because of the wind. I ignored the door and slept until 7:30 and then it was time to open presents.
It was a little crazy. I'm used to a very calm morning, presents one at a time, etc. This was not the case, we were rip-roaring through presents and I wasn't quite sure what to think. When it came to my presents, the ones I gave, I made them open them one at a time because I wanted to get pictures. They weren't too thrilled with that idea. From my host parents I received a jacket (because I'm always cold) and the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 movie. From home I got socks, 2 t-shirts, a LONG sleeved shirt from Grand Valley, books and a picture of my dear Sandy.


A picture of my Sandy.

After our present event at our house, we went to Elena's parent's house to have breakfast. It was typical, barbacoa (a fatty type of roast beef), flour tortillas, tamales and menudo (a tomatoey broth with cow stomach for meat, it's also very fatty. I did not indulge in this dish). Afterwards we opened presents there.
I talked to my family in the afternoon and spent the other part of the afternoon at the same house I spent Christmas Eve. I was a little disappointed in the Christmas Dinner. The had Tortas. They are good, but not like the Prime Rib I'm used to. They had a piñata filled with candy and money. I only took pictures; I didn't dive in with the little kids.


This was right after all the excitement of the piñata. There were a lot of tears and a lot of victories. Little Nicole was happy with her findings of candy and a few pesos in the Snowman piñata. I was hoping to get a picture with the piñata, however, by the time I thought about it, it was already in the air and being beaten with a stick. I didn't want to interrupt.

Right now, I'm very cold. It gets down to 35º at night and then the houses are that cold and they never really warm up during the day. It's a very hard adjustment to make. Today I'm catching up on a few things, I need to return some movies that are late and go to the Papeleria. Tonight I'm going to the disco with some friends and tomorrow I'm going to Laredo for the day to pick up my remaining packages. :) Wednesday night I'm going to another disco, Thursday there's a Rotary meeting and I'm going to make rice krispie treats (yummy). Friday I'm hoping to go to Monterrey and then get ready for New Years. It should be a good week. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!


An 'S' cookie from Grandma! I almost passed out when I opened a box of these cookies, what a miracle! They were awesome and gone very quickly! Plus I was also sent Puppy Chow and Rich Man's shortbread. Just because I'm gone, I don't have to miss out on all the good holiay treats!