Christmas and New Years!
We have spent the last 4 christmases and New Year's in 4 different countries: USA, Mongolia, China and now Colombia. This year the holidays were pretty low-key for us. Christmas and New Year's here are holidays centered around the family and a few traditions.
So for Christmas Eve we went downstairs to visit with our landlord and her extended family. They all sat around having drinks and a few small snacks until almost midnight. Traditionally, here they don't eat christmas dinner until midnight, and then open gifts afterwards. Dinner was delicious, turkey, salad, and a few other side dishes, and then some dessert. After dinner presents were opened. It was certainly different from home. Only 2 or 3 gifts at the most for the kids, and some of the adults got gifts, others didn't. It was very low key, but everyone was happy and enjoying themselves.
After dinner, but before opening gifts, they pulled out this little book of - i don't know exactly - songs or prayers or chants, about the birth of jesus. They also pulled out some maracas, to shake while they took turns reading verses, singing, and chanting prayers. Even clayt and I got a chance to read aloud for the group (in spanish!).
For New Year's, we went to the house of a girl who works with clayton at the Defensoria del Pueblo. There was a very large group of her extended family there for the celebration, maybe over 50 people. Again it was a late night celebration, with dinner after the countdown at midnight. At about one minute to midnight, everyone gathered into a big circle, and counted down to midnight. At the strke of 12, everyone cheered and shouted "feliz ano nuevo!" Then, all 50+ people proceeded to circulate and hug and kiss each and every one of each other! It was a lot of love! After all the hugs and kisses (the most I have ever gotten in one day i think, besides our wedding day) everyone sat down to a big dinner, dessert, and more drinks. I think the biggest difference was that it was all family - here New Year's is all about family, not a night for going to the bars with your friends, like we tend to do back home.
A few days after New Year's a friend invited us to join her with her family for an annual tradition, called a Cabalgata. This is a horse riding trip that starts in the afternoon, lasts about 5 hours, and ends with a big dinner. Their extended family is fairly large, so there were about 40 of us altogether. Important detail - while on the horses, everyone drinks a lot of aguardiente, the local liquor of choice, made from sugar cane. So, by the end of the trip, lots of people are drunk on horses, riding through the forest in the pitch black. Luckily the horses knew the way well, because we couldn't see 2 feet in front of us at some points! We went across rivers, up and down steep embankments, and 3 people fell off horses. Clayton was one of those people, although he claims he jumped over the horse... He went to get on the horse, and sort of fell over the other side, into the mud. Everyone was very amused.
Unfortunately, uploading photos to this blog has been difficult from here, which is why it's taken so long to post this. So, we're going to try something new. Below is a link to the related photos on my facebook page. Just cut and paste the address into the address window, and you should be able to see all the pictures there:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=55136&id=587007983&l=28b0e
Then a few days afterwards, we were invited to go to a place called calima lake with our landlord and her family for a few days. We would call it a "misdventure" of sorts, which I think Clayton may write a specific post for in a few days. So, here are some photos of New Year's and Calima Lake as well:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56498&id=587007983&l=43cf9
please let us know if there is any trouble seeing the pictures.
