Thursday, January 7, 2010

Happy 2010!

A lot has happened since my last blog post. December here is full of holiday prep. A couple weeks before Christmas, there is an annual festival called festival de la luz in San Jose… it’s kind of like light-up-night. The whole city is decorated in lights and at night, theres a huge parade with tons of floats made out of lights. I will post some pictures next time I get to internet. The 24th at night is the big holiday event with a family dinner full of pork and lots of people. This year I got to share that with my family who came from the snow to the sunshine. Together we made a lot of tamales – the traditional Christmas food wrapped in banana leaves. Christmas here means lots of lights decorating people’s homes, portales (which are the baby jesus scenes that everyone puts in their homes), presents for those who can afford them, a day off from work, and good meals.
A week later comes similar celebrations for New Years. Again, this is mostly celebrated within family settings… parents, grandparents, children, etc have parties in their homes with a big meal as well. I went with some friends in my town to my big city (Ciudad Quesada) where there was a huge concert in the central park with fireworks. There were tons of people dancing to the variety of cumbia, salsa, merengue and reggeaton music. We had a really great time there and got to do the 10-9-8-… countdown.
In December we also had graduation from 6th grade and Kindergarten. We have it in our indoor salon that we decorated with balloons and posters. The kids each year dedicate their graduation to one person and this year they decided to dedicate it to me. So I walked in with them and sat with them during the ceremony. It was a really nice afternoon and I will post some pictures of this too next time I can.
Well, I hope this year is a great one for all. 2010 will be an interesting one for me as I finish my service here in May of this year and then at some point well end up back in the states hopefully working somewhere… OK, hope you all had a great holiday season and are staying warm :) Stay in touch!