Merry Christmas! We had quite the experience celebrating our first Christmas here in Peru! As I had mentioned previously, we were spending it with my translator Stefanny and her family. The tradition here is that everyone celebrates Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning. So at about 10:00 p.m. we arrived at her family's house, wine in hand, ready for the feast to come. The streets here were completely packed with people, even at that time of night. Everyone starts shooting fireworks off throughout the evening but the real ones start at midnight! We met and visited with her family for a while once we arrived. Her mom, dad, 2 sisters, their husbands, 1 brother, his wife, 1 nanny, and 3 grandchildren were all there, very excited about Jesus’ birth and Santa's arrival. Right before midnight we went outside and shot some huge fireworks off. They were going off all around us actually so it was really loud and crazy. As we were all outside, Santa decided it was the best time to come and deliver presents! When we went back inside, there were a bunch of presents under their tree...so sweet! Their Nativity scenes here are all huge and Stefanny's family's was no different. It took up most of the space in the dining room where we all were congregated and probably had over 250 pieces in it...down to a triceratops--see the pictures!--and hippo (who knew they were at Christ's birth!?!) So once we were all back inside, lots of hugs were given and then they proceeded to give everyone sparklers, lit them and we all took turns waving them over the Nativity scene! Then we sat to open presents. They were so generous and even presented Vince and I with a small gift of chocolates and a Peru figurine. They each took turns handing out their gifts to each person in the family. With each, they would chant "Abrir-lo! Abrir-lo!" or "open it!" Of course, Vince and I chimed in and by the end of it, we had them all chanting "Open it! Open it!" They loved it, especially Stefanny's mom who wouldn't start opening her gifts until we were all chanting it. Mixed with their Spanish accents, by the time we were done, it sounded like we were all shouting "Happiness! Happiness!" which was ironic considering how much happiness was in the room.
Then it was finally dinner time. We sat around the table at 2 a.m. for our feast and we were all very ready for food. We had a huge turkey, a meatloaf-type thing with turkey, chicken, beef, and duck mixed together, and lots of salads and bread. It was amazing! By the time we were done with dinner, Vince and I were almost sleeping at the table. We called a cab, and headed home for a good night sleep in our new apartment. The one thing we did notice on the way home was the streets. They were absent of all the thousands of people we had seen earlier but filled with paper and trash! It looked like a different town. It seemed like they had literally brought all their presents outside, unwrapped them on the streets, and left all the paper! It was quite a change from the usually spotless streets of Arequipa.
Christmas day we finally got to lounge around and relax together in our apartment...what a breath of fresh air!!! It has made such a difference in our sanity to be in our own space. We spent the afternoon talking with our new neighbors--one from the U.S. who is very interesting and has lots of life experiences to tell us about and two from England--a couple that is our age here teaching English. They are all really nice and fun. We actually spent Christmas night with the couple from England, Steve and Lucy, sharing some wine, stories, and celebrating Steve's birthday with cake! It was great and felt really good to be meeting people here that were so similar but different than Vince and I.
Well, 2010 Christmas is over and we really can't believe it. We have such wonderful families and friends worldwide and miss every one of them. Hope everyone's Christmas was as great as ours or better!!!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
5 Days Until Christmas!!!
Well, this past week has been pretty uneventful. We went through a number of emotions last week in dealing with my employer. Work is great as I am seeing very interesting cases and love my patients...but, we've come to the conclusion that we are going to search for our own apartment! That way, we don't have to be surrounded by the entire extended family that is now living in the same house as us: the doctor, his wife, their newborn, Mafe's 8 yr old son, his dad, Mafe's mother, her best friend, Mafe's father, and soon, the doctor's parents from the U.S.! I mean, Vince and I are both from big families, but this is just a little too much. Plus, Mafe's mom is what we call a major *****. We've been trying to keep our distance but at this point, we just want out of here! So this last week, we've been doing a lot of searches on the internet for places and think we've found one that is pretty nice and cheap :) We hope that by having our own space I can leave work at work and we can enjoy our time a little better getting to know a different area of town on our own! Other than that, we've explored a few more streets. We thought we'd gone down most of them around the area we are in but who knew? We found a place that has a bunch of markets, toys being the popular item with Christmas being around the corner. It's amazing how much stuff people can cram into a 3'x3' cubicle! This weekend I was determined to find a Peruvian Nativity scene that we could have for future Christmas's that would remind us of our time here. We went to a market that we'd never been to, hoping we'd find something that would work. Little did we know that out of the approx. 250 vendors there, Nativity scenes were being sold by about 249! If we didn't find one we liked there, we would never find one! Vince and I scoured the items for sale and found the cutest set that has a few animals, the 3 wise men, the angel, Mary and Joseph, and of course, a cute little baby Jesus. It’s perfect and exactly what we were looking for...and only about $10 so quite the steal! We didn't even barter with them because its Christmas and we loved it! After the long day at the market, we decided we needed food so we tried a new restaurant. We ordered this platter for 2 and didn't really know what we were getting (we didn't care either at that point...we were just starving!) Out came this giant platter of meat that was still cooking on the plate. It was quite a variety and we dug right in. The chicken was awesome along with the beef. There were a couple of things we didn't quite know where they came from but we tried them anyways. One thing we recognized right away was TONGUE! It looked so disgusting (you could still see the taste buds...ew!!!) but Vince insisted we both try it and I wanted to be a good sport despite my desire not to ever try eating another animals tongue. So we both dove right into trying to cut a small piece off and it just wouldn't cut! This tongue was tough. You literally had to saw through it with your teeth to get anywhere. To me, the piece had spent way too long in my mouth at that point and before I lost interest in the rest of my meal, I swallowed it whole to get rid of it. I can confidently say that I will never be eating that again! We finished the rest of the meat, took a picture of the menu so we could look up the rest of the meat on our dish, and left feeling satisfied. Later, we typed in the menu listing and found out that not only had we consume PIG's tongue but also its stomach...ahhhh!!!!! So gross to think about but the stomach didn't taste half bad. So that was the most exciting thing that has happened to us in the last week. Christmas Eve is Friday of course. My translator has invited us to her family's celebration and we are pretty excited to be included. They do most of their celebrating on Christmas Eve with a big meal, fireworks and hot chocolate. It’s pretty weird to be celebrating Christmas without any snow or our families and friends but I'm sure we'll figure it out. We'd like to share our Christmas card with everyone so here is the link:
Merry Christmas!!!
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