Christmas in the Sun

Down here in South America, it seems that the most common way to celebrate Christmas is with dinner on Christmas Eve. While in Lima, Colleen and I met a lovely Peruvian family (the family of one of Colleen’s friends), who went on to invite me to spend Christmas Eve with them. So I arrived around 9pm, but we didn’t actually eat until midnight. Instead we were just chatting, the two sisters, their parents, and the Irish son-in-law as well as his father, who had arrived a few weeks earlier to spend the holidays. And the person it was hardest to understand? The Irish son-in-law’s father, who has a rather thick Irish accent, and speaks no Spanish. So there he was, rather excited to have someone to talk to other than his son, and all I could do was smile and nod and pretend like I understood most of what he was saying… The other father, Lucho, was also excited, but for a different reason – he’s a coach and wanted to recruit me to play basketball… Anyway, at the stroke of midnight, they grabbed a blanket, put baby Jesus in the middle, and started dancing around the living room, each person holding an edge of the blanket (Yes, they made me dance too). After baby Jesus finally made it to his crib, we went outside to the patio to watch all the fireworks – yes, fireworks, all over the city, and we had a good view because we were on the 13th floor. Actually, we set off some fireworks as well (though I stayed far away from them, lol). After all that, we finally sat down to eat.

So after getting back to my hostel around 2, 2:30am, I woke up at 7:00am to go to the airport – I’ve never seen one so empty. Needless to say I had a lot of time to kill before boarding the plane. When I finally made it to Santiago, the airport there was even more abandoned - no need to wait in long lines for customs or immigration.

So I had Christmas lunch with my friend Josefa and her family, outside in their backyard, as it was probably about 80 or 85 degrees outside. You see, right now, it’s summer in Santiago, and the sunset isn’t until around 9pm.

Since then I’ve been here in Santiago, not really doing anything exciting; just catching up with old friends and my host family, taking a mini-vacation from my backpacking trip.

Next time I’ll tell you about that backpacking adventure through Ecuador and Perú that I had with Colleen.

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!

Crime in Quito

Have any of you ever seen anyone get robbed at gunpoint? (on a side note, did anyone ever think that gunpoint was a place? Because I did, for longer than I'm willing to admit...)

But, let's get back to the seriousness of the topic at hand. Diana, Mauricio, and Jose Mateo just came home - they were out buying milk. On their walk back, a few blocks away from our apartment, they saw, across the street, a man robbed at gunpoint. Needless to say, Diana is a bit shaken up. What do you do when you see something like that? There were three men - one with the gun; the other patting down the victim, cleaning out his pockets; and the third passed by in a gray car to pick the other two up. Diana tried to catch the license plate, but it was completely white - no number.

I didn't see this happen, but it shakes me up a bit as well. It makes me think about the time I was robbed on the bus - I'm thankful I didn't realize it until after the fact; I'm grateful that I wasn't attacked. (Most of you probably know already, but about a week and half after I got here, my bag was slashed on the bus and someone took my phone and my camera).