martes, 27 de diciembre de 2011

Christmas in Colombia

Hope you all are enjoying your holidays!  Just thought I'd share a little bit about my Christmas here in Colombia. 

In Colombia they celebrate Christmas on the 24th and we arrived at the Christmas dinner at...drumroll please...10pm!   At every Colombian party I have been to we set up a lot of plastic chairs and sit in a big circle drinking and talking...although after awhile the dancing ensues! (Although not by me the boyfriend points out...to which I reply that I have no idea how to dance!).  I have dubbed this the Colombian Circle.



At around 11:30 the presents were set under the tree and the sleeping children were woken to open them.  


The lovely host family I am living with were kind enough give me a few gifts as well...all accessories! They know me well :)  Check out the bling in my ears, on my ring finger and in my hair!


At midnight everyone stood and said a prayer and began to eat dinner.  We were the second people to leave the party and got home at 4am!  I'm not sure who has seen the Christmas Modern Family, but my sister-in-law told me that they made the whole show about people getting punk'd on Christmas in Colombia.  That tradition is actually about Dia de Los Inocentes on December 28th (April Fools Dayesque). HOWEVER, I will say that my host brother got me so good on Christmas Eve!!!  There's is another volunteer staying with a host family that is related to mine, so we see each other at family occasions.  He was at dinner with me and my host brother told us that it's tradition to sing the Colombian National Anthem at midnight.  Well, after a few drinks, I got quite excited about this because we all learned the Anthem to sing at our Swearing-In Ceremony.  So Mike and I start singing...and only Mike and I start singing!  No fair to punk the people who have no idea what's going on!!! But a good laugh was had by all...even us :)

On the 25th, after sleeping in quite a bit and talking with the family, most of the volunteers got together and had a Christmas potluck!  We all decided that it certainly didn't start feeling like Christmas till we were all together.  Everybody made amazing food and it was so nice to spend some time on Christmas with the gringos!  All of our host families couldn't figure out why we were all getting together on the 25th...Christmas for them was already over!


Hope you all are enjoying the holidays and I'll blog again soon :)

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