Holiday, Celebrate

So this is about 2 months a little late but I'm going to update everyone on my Peruvian Christmas experience. Since I already wrote a bit about the holiday season about sharing my traditions and learning new ones, I'm just going to update you all a little bit on my actual Christmas Eve/Day celebrations and my vacation time with the other YAVs.

For most Peruvians the Christmas tradition to celebrate more Christmas Eve night and leave Christmas day as a day to sleep in and rest, that means no presents from Santa to wake up to. So the day of Christmas Eve I spent talking people back home on skype, hearing about and seeing via webcam all the crazy snow they were getting back home while I was sitting in a short sleeve shirt, a skirt, and my chacos. I think there was mutual jealously going on. I'm not a huge fan of the cold and snow, but I do miss it sometimes, epecially around Christmas when the hot weather was not helping me get in the "Christmas spirit."

That day I went to the mercado with my host mom and sister to buy stuff to make our dinner that night (more on that later). There were so many people out doing the traditional last minute Christmas shopping, except in this case I have a feeling the items being bought were more out of necessity because most of the shops would be closed for the next couple of days. That evening I went back out to the centro to run some more errands, mainly to get some cash for my upcoming travels, and when I rejoined my host dad and sister I saw that Pastor Abdon was just now buying his Christmas presents for the family. I hate to stereotype men, but all I can say is typical! We then grabbed a quick little bite to eat since our dinner wouldn't be served until about 10:30 that night, so we needed something to tide us over until then. That evening out in the centro, I was finally feeling the excited buzz of anticipation that comes with Christmas. Seeing everyone else out and about with family and friends, you could just see and feel the joy of that evening.

That night we had the traditional Peruvian Christmas dish of .... chinese food! Ok so it wasn't really a typical Peruvian dish, but the chinese fusion food here called Chifa is everywhere and really popular so it might as well be traditional food. So we had a delicious spread of Chicken and pinapple with rice and wantons. And of course to top things off Paneton and hot chocolate!

After we finished dinner it was close to midnight so we opened up our presents as per tradition here. The presents were simple and sweet, not the usual crazy spread as it is at my house, but it was nice to celebrate a little more simply. Then, right at midnight, we started hearing fireworks going off all around the neighborhood. So we went out to join them with our sparklers. Everywhere around me people were out in the streets celebrating the joyous arrival of our Savior! And in that moment of pure joy and excitement I forgot that I was thousands of miles away from home, in a foreign country, speaking (well trying to speak) a foreign tongue, and adjusting to foreign customs, I was celebrating with my fellow brothers and sisters and giving thanks to God for gifts of love and grace that was given on that night and every single moment since then.

Christmas day was quite the lazy affair. I parcipated in the great American tradition of watching A Christmas Story, except this year I watched it on my laptop instead of the the TV, and other than packing for my vacation, and skyping the family I didn't do anything! I was back to being a bit homesick and missing everyone, so needless to say I was so ready to get this vacation started!!

The next day I left on my bus to Lima to meet up with Sarah "Alta," Ginna, and Anna. We left the day after that with a friend of Joe's to spend some time in a beautiful city called Arequipa. There we met up with Joe and his girlfriend. Alissa, the remaining YAV, couldn't join us on this leg of the trip because she was traveling with her family. I don't have much to say about my vacation other than you should just look at the pictures, because they tell the stories so much better than I do.

I do have just a couple of short stories that I want to share from this vacation.

The first one involves traveling woes. No vacation would be complete with out a bit of complications involving transportation especially when we are talking about the Peruvian bussing system. As we learned some agencies (Cruz del Sur) are reliable and nice, others (*ahem* Ormeno) are not. We had planned on visiting a small coastal town called Paracas and seeing some rare wildlife, but our bus from Arequipa never arrived! After a few minutes of trying to figure out what to do we decided to go on a different bus that was going all the way to Lima. So we got like the last 4 seats on this bus, on the top floor, which if you don't know is where the smaller, less comfortable seats are. But we were finally on our way and settling in for a 15 hour bus ride. Well apparently our travel woes weren't over after that. While I was sleeping (I heard about all of this after the fact) our bus swerved to miss a semi-truck coming at us and ended up hitting the guard rail on the side of the road. I was told that we were stopped for quite a while and that most of the people where out of their seats looking out the window to see what was going on - and I slept through the whole thing! So my first and hopefully only Peruvian bus crash I slept through!

The second story I will end this blog with goes along with the theme of holidays and celebrating. We spent New Years Eve in Lima, and after a wonderful meal of sea food in Barranco (a very hip, kinda bohemian part of town) we headed back to our Hostel, Loki to bring in the New Year at the bar there. That night was about our 3rd night there so we had already made friends with some of the people who were staying there as well. We had met and made (at least temporarily) friends with people from Ireland, the U.S., Israel, Lima, Arequipa, England, and Denmark. At midnight we all toasted and gave hugs and cheek kisses and shouted and sang, celebrating a New Year, a new day to be alive. For me it was what I call a little "Kingdom moment," times when I experience what I think the Kingdom of Heaven will be like. And it might seem rediculous but I felt that in a bar in a hostel in Lima. Here we all were, a bunch of strangers really, from all different parts of the world, different religions, beliefs, cultures, etc., and yet for this one night we were all friends, together we were singularly celebrating an event that proclaims new beginnings and celebrates life!

So I end this blog hoping that you all experience a "Kingdom Moment" today in your life! More blogs to come, I'm really trying to play catch up here, so I hope that you enjoy them!!