Feliz Navidad/ Feliz Ano! My holidays were a little different than normal this year, but really fun! Christmas is the same as back home, but we celebrate it on the 24th at night. at 8pm we opened up presents with just my siblings, aunt, mom, and grandparents. Between 9-10 about 25 or more relatives showed up at our house to celebrate christmas and eat a turkey diner at midnight. After diner and dessert, we talked more, until I went to bed around 3am, but most of the relatives and my grandparents stayed up till between 5 and 6. We don't do too much on the actually christmas day except for sleep in, than at night we went to church, which we had been doing all week. 9 days before christmas, right after dinner we would do something called Novena, where we sing songs or parts about christmas from the the bible and say what we are thankful for. It was a really nice time to take 15 minutes of your day to be with your family thinking about why we have christmas, and not just the presents.
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Market to buy paper
mache dolls and fireworks |
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After setting the paper
mache dolls on fire |
New Years here is celebrated with the family for the most part, which is very different from back home. During the day we went to a street market to buy big paper mache dolls of different movie or TV animated characters, and also almost $100 worth of fire works. Starting at around 10:30 we set of fireworks and sparklers, and all other families in the city set of their fireworks around the same time, so everywhere you look the entire night you will see fireworks in the sky. At midnight, we ate 12 grapes in a minute for good luck, a glass of champagne, than for the most important part of the night. At midnight, we put the 2 paper mache dolls, of Scratch (from Ice Age) and Yogi Bear, in the middle of the street, poured some gasoline and fire crackers on them, than set them on fire. The burning of these are to represent the burning of the old year, to make room for the new year. finally after not eating since lunch, we had another turkey diner after midnight. After that, I went to a small gathering with some friends, not returning home till around 7am, which is completely normal on this night.
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picture of me with the 2 year
old son of the maid who works
in our house |
Christmas and New Years were awesome, but my favorite part of the holidays were the 2 little extra trips we took. A few days after Christmas, my grandparents, brother, cousin, aunt, and I drove to our house in the mountains, a town called Pallatanga. Its a very small and quite town, and our house is a 5 minute drive from the center. This was only my second time coming here, but I absolutely love our mountain house. Its so calm and so beautiful. I also love how much colder it is there, I can actually wear pants and a sweatshirt and not sweat to death! There is no wifi, so we never use the internet, we just relax. I am never bored there because I can be entertained by just looking around at the mountains and how surreal it is.
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| walking on the beach at Montanita at 8am |
The other trip we did was to the coast, which is only 2 hours away, to pick up my host sister who had been visit a friend at her beach house. After picking her up, we stopped at a place called Montanita. Montanita is famous in Ecuador, and a very popular tourist site. Its only 6 blocks by 6 blocks large, and its right on the beach. There are a ton of little restaurants, bars, discotecas, markets, and surf shops. It's very popular in the night to visit for parties, but we went in the morning, around 8am, so we got to walk around the blocks and on the beach, which was very calming. Because it is very popular for partying at night, it was very dirty during the day, but that didn't really bother me. It reminded me of Ecuador's version of downtown Burlington, because everyone was so happy and friendly and the vibe there was very positive. Everyone there were either american tourists, hippies in their 20's or the locals working. I was sitting on the side curb waiting for an empanada with my family and a local guy came and sat next to me and started asking where I was from and about myself (seeing my blonde hair and white skin it was obvious I was foreign). This guy was in his mid 20's, obviously a beach bum without much money, but he was the coolest person i've ever met. In the past 3 months he has been visiting Peru, Uraguay, and Bolivia, and he show me pictures of all the countries. The entire time my family was looking at me like I was crazy for talking to a stranger like that, than made me leave as soon as I was ready, completely interrupting his story. I would have loved to stay and talk with him. This was one of the times I realized how different I am from my family. I know that Ecuador is more dangerous than Vermont, but I am very independent and wish I could spend the whole day talking to people there and hearing about their experience, and my family wishes that I would just keep my head down and walk forward to avoid danger. I can't experience anything if I never pick me head up to look at what Ecuador has to offer me.
New Years here is celebrated with the family for the most part, which is very different from back home. During the day we went to a street market to buy big paper mache dolls of different movie or TV animated characters, and also almost $100 worth of fire works. Starting at around 10:30 we set of fireworks and sparklers, and all other families in the city set of their fireworks around the same time, so everywhere you look the entire night you will see fireworks in the sky. At midnight, we ate 12 grapes in a minute for good luck, a glass of champagne, than for the most important part of the night. At midnight, we put the 2 paper mache dolls, of Scratch (from Ice Age) and Yogi Bear, in the middle of the street, poured some gasoline and fire crackers on them, than set them on fire. The burning of these are to represent the burning of the old year, to make room for the new year. finally after not eating since lunch, we had another turkey diner after midnight. After that, I went to a small gathering with some friends, not returning home till around 7am, which is completely normal on this night.
