I have a blog?!?!

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all my wonderful friends and family! I miss you guys! It has been ages since I have written (as my lovely Laura has kindly reminded me several times) and so now I’m going to fill you guys in (finally) on everything that has been going on here in Peru these past few months.
First the holidays....

Thanksgiving
It’s kind of sad but I even realize that it was Thanksgiving until I got a Happy Tday email from one of my friends. Jaja the funny thing is that it was from a Peruvian friend and as I’m sure you all know we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here so I really enjoyed that. Instead of being in the states on vacation, spending time family, eating delicious mashed potatoes, turkey, the carrot casserole thing that my Dad and I both love so much, Uncle Ron’s amazing pies and my all time favorite MIT cookies loaded with tons of different goodies and even more calories, watching football, playing cards, eating some more- I had classes during the day like normal and then in the night I went out dancing. It was a little weird hearing Salsa music when it’s normally one of my family members sitting across from me at the pinochle table saying 'pass me some good cards or we’re going down'. A very different but fun day nonetheless.

Christmas
For the Christmas holidays I had no idea what to expect. Do they use Christmas trees or stockings? And are all the houses adorned with lights, moving reigndeer and fat Santas on rooftops? One thing was certain though, I wasn’t expecting snow. And I was right. Pre-Christmas was pretty similar to the US but a lot more low key. We had a Christmas tree-- it was neat getting to explain that a lot of people go and cut down their tree in the snow as we pulled our plastic one out of the box during a cool summer night to decorate. I explained the tradition of stockings and how in my fam we always open up one present on Christmas Eve and how it’s normally always a pair of comfy pjs from "Santa", aka my mom, which we wear to bed that night. I learned it kind of depends on the household for the level of Christmas celebration. In my house we put up our tree kind of late with a couple other decorations but some of my friend's families went all out with their stuff. And to my suprise I did see a few stockings up on walls (as no one really has fireplaces here) but I think they were more for decoration than actual use. Christmas lights were to be found on houses and business but they were not in the normal abundance. I think my favorites was a house in my neighborhood that had icicle lights and each strand did something different-one was solid, one was flashing rapidly, another blinking every few seconds and I think one didn´t even work. I think I’ll bring that idea home because I know how much my mom will love it ;) jeje just kidding Mom! One new thing though was the singing strands of lights-I have never seen lights that play music but it seems like everyone has them here. It’s cute to begin with but after the first ten minutes it gets kind of annoying. I was at a friends house for dinner and by the end of the night I swear I was about to go unplug the ones around the nativity scene. Speaking of nativity scenes they are very popular here. They are found in nearly every household and the businesses have them too. All are of different shapes, sizes and materials-and some are a lot more elaborate from the ones we have at home with extra characters and buildings. I went with one of my friends to his dad’s work´s Christmas party and they had a competition between offices for best nativity scene. His dad’s office took second place with one made entirely of sweets. It was awesome-the figures were made of chocolate, the sheep covered in coco, the buildings made of cookies, the ground was covered in different types of sugar and it was complete with a gelatine river, wafer mill and gummy fish. One of my best friend’s had one with about a million sheep and one in my dad’s clinic took up over half of a room, contained practically the whole city of Bethlehem, had different scenes from the bible, a running river and water dripping from the ceiling, a working sunrise, sunset and the coming of the stars, moon, angel and a guy explaining what was going on. It was incredible to say the least and I can’t imagine how long it took to set up because they have a different one every year. What else? I went to a bunch of Christmas parties, had dinner with the exchangers complete with decorated sugar cookies and mistle toe, played foosball and raced go-carts with the kids from Interact and ate dinner and had a gift exchange with the Rotarians. All were really fun. Here Christmas is celebrated on the 24th at midnight. In my house we were all in the kitchen with our cameras taking pictures and getting the food ready around eleven and then at twelve we had a toast with champagne where everyone said a few words which followed by dinner. Traditional dinner here includes turkey that we cooked in an outside in this sweet oven and the best stuffing I have ever had (really different from the kind we have in the states-we did have good ol' Stovetop however with the exchangers), apple sauce and different kinds of salads. Midnight was a little like New Years in the US with fireworks but we stayed inside. After dinner we exchange presents and its common in some households to go sing carols around the nativity scene. The next morning on the 25th when all of your guys we’re probably up early opening presents the majority of us were sleeping in from the late night before. Christmas day itself it pretty chill, or at least it was in my family, we had lunch together and then watched a movie later on in the day and then just relaxed.
Christmas was fun but it was a bit depressing too. My mom explained to me how the holiday is not that exciting for the whole country because of the poverty, how some have money and others have nothing, how little kids aren’t excited because they know there will be no gifts for them let alone Christmas dinner. I went to Rotaract Christmas party and after we went into the Plaza de Armas and gave chocolate milk and little gifts to the kids on the streets, it was fun but sad at the same time. Perú is so divided, some parts are modern and I feel like I´m in the US but then on the other hand a big number of the population are without electricity and clean water to drink. Sad but true.

New Years
New Years was a blast. I wanted to go spend it on the beach along with a million other people from my city but I ended up staying and spending with the two exchangers, Anika from Holland and Ariel from the states. Anika came over as I was on the phone with my dad back in the states who was on the other phone with Stueckle as I was getting the last of my college applications ready to send off. Yay! you all have no idea how good it feels to be done with those things. After that we took of to go shopping. We went to a market to pick up a few things for dinner and the streets were packed with people shooping and vendors selling loads of yellow stuff (for luck). Yellow 2007 glasses, crazy hats, masks, noise makers and the most popular and abundant-yellow item-underwear- in every size and shape, which of course we had to buy because it’s supposed to bring a prosperous new year to the wearer. :) :) They were also selling red ones for love, but we stuck with the yellow. We also a bought some Paneton which is kind of like our fruitcake only really really good. People give it in large numbers for Christmas gifts and it is delicious and on sale since it’s after the holiday so we had to get some of that too. The rest of the night included dinner in which I made tacos, guac and salsa- we wanted to make enchiladas but Mexican food is nearly impossible to come by, I had to go to every supermarket (we only have three jeje) to find tortilla chips. Ariel made the Betty C box cake that I brought from the US complete with the everyones favorite delicious confetti frosting. Jaja my family loved it and my friend from Holland was amazed because she had never seen cake from a box, she has the front of the box now to put in her scrapbook. Hehe it expired awhile back but we thought we’d make it anyways and luckily no one got sick. Anika also made these really good things typical for New Years in Holland which were kind of like bread with raisins but cooked in oil and the sprinkled with sugar. I have the recipe too now if anyone wants to try them :) After dinner we hung out for awhile and then put on our yellow feathered masks, took some pictures and hopped in a tico to the discos to welcome the New Year with everyone else. The first disco was packed which made dancing nearly impossible and so we switched to a less crowded one after midnight and danced the night away. It was an really fun night-exchangers are some of my favorite people, got home really late, chatted with my one of my sisters as we ate some tacos and cake and then laughed really hard when parents arrived from their fiesta almost two hours later--Hehe party animals :)

Alrighty, well I have to be going but those were my holidays! Hope everyone had great ones too! I have some pictures that I will post later of all the excitement and I still have lots to catch up on-the beach, vacations, more beach, my sister arriving from Sweden etc. Miss you guys tons and I’m wishing you the best for the New Year!! Besos!