Happy Holidays!

I made it through my first Christmas away from my family alive and well, though a little nostalgic and jealous that they got 2 feet of snow in Maryland and now they´re all skiing!

For the 9 days before Christmas, there was mass at 6am, which I thought was unnecessarily early until I learned that it used to be at 4am. I only managed to get out of bed to go twice. My host mom brought noise makers and maracas and had no shame about making as much noise as possible, along with some neighborhood kids. Apparently these masses used to be more fun but since it got pushed back to 6am a lot of people chose not to attend in protest.

My two best friends here, Julie and Jocelyn, who were here with me during training, came back to visit for Christmas so we could all be together. We made hummus, ate a whole pack of oreos dunked in peanut butter and got pizza. We stayed up until midnight on Christmas eve because that´s what they do here. Christmas morning was a little anti-climactic, as Christmas always is. We didn´t go to 9am mass like we were going to because my host mom and sister slept in late. Everyone opened their presents and then we just sat around the house doing not much of anything all day. I got to talk to just about everyone in my family which was really nice. We went dancing at the local disco that night with my cousins - together we comprised about 45% of the people who were there.

In other news, I saw a scorpion on the sidewalk the other day, the big green bird my host mom just bought somehow disappeared, and I just got a haircut for 50 cents.
Tyler, my boyfriend (for those who don´t know), is coming tomorrow!