Hey guys. Another LONG overdue update. Sorry. It’s just that I don’t really like taking the time to write, but I know I should. It just sucks to sit there writing for an hour and having to pay for it. So I’m trying a new technique that I should’ve started using a while back: I’m writing at home on my laptop and then I’m saving it to my jump drive and uploading it at the internet place. I know, I’m kind of a rock head for not thinking of that before…
On the plus side, this is going to be a really long update so you can just sit back, crack open a beer, and read for a while. Or not. If you want you could space out the joy of reading my blog over the next few days. Maybe while you’re at work. Seems like a good idea to me. What I’m trying to say here is that you can read my blog however and whenever works best for you! I’ll get on with it now…
Christmas
As most of you know, I spent the holidays here in Ecuador, and although I missed seeing everyone over break, I had an AMAZING time here! Christmas is an entire season here. Or, the holiday of Christmas is a whole week of get togethers here. It starts 9 days before Christmas day with the Novena, which is a 9 day prayer cycle in which we celebrate the 9 months Mary carried Jesus in her womb. EVERYONE here does it. There’s a little booklet they have with all the things you do and say each day, but it’s really confusing cuz you jump all around the book each day because some parts are used daily and some aren’t and it doesn’t seem to be very well organized. I know that it’s not very organized cuz my host aunts and uncles would get in mini-arguments about what part came next. Hahaha. I thought it was funny that no one really knew the order. And there’s not an index or a guide to what you’re supposed to do anywhere in the book. I thought that they should just spring an extra dollar to make them with each day printed out even though some parts would be repeated. Maybe that’s just me. It was actually a really nice tradition. We did it at my house with just my family some nights, and we went to my host uncles really nice pent house one night and all the extended family was there and we had a big dinner party and then did the Novena as a group. They also did it as a neighborhood in the little park next to my house, and they did it big. Mini-fireworks display at the end each night! They also have mini-fire places that you burn holy wood in during the Novena. It’s blessed. It’s also scented. Fancy. I actually bought some.
Anyway, backing up a bit, our house was GORGEOUS for Christmas! They know how to decorate here. The whole house! There was even a Snoopy stocking hung on my door! My first stocking ever, very exciting! We also had a fake tree in the living room. You can get real trees here, but they’re expensive and dry out fast causing a fire hazard. Actually I don’t think they care about the fire hazard portion as you’ll see during the x-mas eve section of the blog, when they blatantly flout fire codes in their homes… But the tree was great. We decorated it as a family. Well, sort of. Me and my host brother put up the tree, and I put on the lights cuz they just struggled with the light placing section. My host brother Esteban even said, “see, Adam knows how to put on the lights!” To which I said, “I’ve had a lot of practice, if I don’t my dad puts them up.” And we all know how that turns out… LOL!!! j/k dad, I think you’re very good at putting random lights on the bushes in the front lawn. Hahahaha! It’s funny cuz I can make fun of you and you can’t really do anything about it! Anyway, that’s really all I did with the tree. Then my host mom mostly just made me and Esteban put up things around the house that she and my sister couldn’t reach while they did the rest of the tree. Overall the house looked amazing! They even have a train that goes around the x-mas tree. It belongs to my host brother Esteban and he’s had it for about 9 years. He got it as a present back in the day when they were rich. Back then this toy train cost the same as 3 CARS! Ahhhhhhh!!
Right, onto Christmas Eve. Christmas eve was really fun. My oldest host brother’s (Adrian’s) half brother came over with his wife and mother in law. They were really nice. He’s a micro biologist just like Joe S! He works for the largest milk company in Ecuador doing some sciency thing. I didn’t really understand, too many complicated Spanish words in the same sentence to catch the context. But he was nice and agreed with me that the chocolate milk is the best. We had a deep convo about chocolate milk. It was sweet. (get it? Sweet? Chocolate milk? Haha) right, so I haven’t lost my ability to tell bad jokes since being here. Then it turned midnight. To celebrate we all did hugs and I thought that was it, yay it’s officially Christmas. Oh no, my host mom then broke out the sparkelers. Now I thought we were going to use them up on the patio or something, but oooooh no. We just lit em up right then and there in the formal living room! Then we ran around the living room with sparkelers! While they were all laughing and having a ball I was doing a nervous laugh and running around trying to avoid flammable objects. Didn’t seem like the safest way to celebrate and I thought that maybe I just had a crazy host family, but I told someone about it and I guess everyone does that at midnight. Then we had a giant formal turkey dinner. It was AMAZING!! Maybe the best turkey I’ve ever had. My host mom and been cooking it all day in wine. Delicious. Then for desert we had postre de las tres leches that my little sister made and fudge that I made! Mmmmmmmmmm. Jk, the fudge DID NOT TURN OUT. I couldn’t exactly find semi-sweet chocolate chips, or normal milk chocolate. Also, the recipe my mom gave me was all in ounces and everything here is marked in grams. So I kinda had to guess how many grams were in an ounce… right. Then it was too soft and I realized later that cuz of the altitude I should have boiled it for longer than exactly 8 min. It was really sweet and tasted too much like condensed milk. But they thought it was great. Said it tasted like a snickers or milky way. So they ate it. I thought it was gross.
Christmas day we got up and did presents at my house. I gave my host family a new printer cuz theirs has been broken ever since I got here and they can’t really afford a new one. So I got them that, and they gave me a scarf, a sweater (I’ll never wear it…) and a book from the museum my host mom works at. So that was really nice. Then we went to my other host uncle’s house and had Christmas with the extended family and another turkey dinner. Really fun. My extended host family is really funny and welcoming, so I had a good time.
Well, that wraps up Christmas. We’ve got a little more than a month to catch you up on.
On the plus side, this is going to be a really long update so you can just sit back, crack open a beer, and read for a while. Or not. If you want you could space out the joy of reading my blog over the next few days. Maybe while you’re at work. Seems like a good idea to me. What I’m trying to say here is that you can read my blog however and whenever works best for you! I’ll get on with it now…
Christmas
As most of you know, I spent the holidays here in Ecuador, and although I missed seeing everyone over break, I had an AMAZING time here! Christmas is an entire season here. Or, the holiday of Christmas is a whole week of get togethers here. It starts 9 days before Christmas day with the Novena, which is a 9 day prayer cycle in which we celebrate the 9 months Mary carried Jesus in her womb. EVERYONE here does it. There’s a little booklet they have with all the things you do and say each day, but it’s really confusing cuz you jump all around the book each day because some parts are used daily and some aren’t and it doesn’t seem to be very well organized. I know that it’s not very organized cuz my host aunts and uncles would get in mini-arguments about what part came next. Hahaha. I thought it was funny that no one really knew the order. And there’s not an index or a guide to what you’re supposed to do anywhere in the book. I thought that they should just spring an extra dollar to make them with each day printed out even though some parts would be repeated. Maybe that’s just me. It was actually a really nice tradition. We did it at my house with just my family some nights, and we went to my host uncles really nice pent house one night and all the extended family was there and we had a big dinner party and then did the Novena as a group. They also did it as a neighborhood in the little park next to my house, and they did it big. Mini-fireworks display at the end each night! They also have mini-fire places that you burn holy wood in during the Novena. It’s blessed. It’s also scented. Fancy. I actually bought some.
Anyway, backing up a bit, our house was GORGEOUS for Christmas! They know how to decorate here. The whole house! There was even a Snoopy stocking hung on my door! My first stocking ever, very exciting! We also had a fake tree in the living room. You can get real trees here, but they’re expensive and dry out fast causing a fire hazard. Actually I don’t think they care about the fire hazard portion as you’ll see during the x-mas eve section of the blog, when they blatantly flout fire codes in their homes… But the tree was great. We decorated it as a family. Well, sort of. Me and my host brother put up the tree, and I put on the lights cuz they just struggled with the light placing section. My host brother Esteban even said, “see, Adam knows how to put on the lights!” To which I said, “I’ve had a lot of practice, if I don’t my dad puts them up.” And we all know how that turns out… LOL!!! j/k dad, I think you’re very good at putting random lights on the bushes in the front lawn. Hahahaha! It’s funny cuz I can make fun of you and you can’t really do anything about it! Anyway, that’s really all I did with the tree. Then my host mom mostly just made me and Esteban put up things around the house that she and my sister couldn’t reach while they did the rest of the tree. Overall the house looked amazing! They even have a train that goes around the x-mas tree. It belongs to my host brother Esteban and he’s had it for about 9 years. He got it as a present back in the day when they were rich. Back then this toy train cost the same as 3 CARS! Ahhhhhhh!!
Right, onto Christmas Eve. Christmas eve was really fun. My oldest host brother’s (Adrian’s) half brother came over with his wife and mother in law. They were really nice. He’s a micro biologist just like Joe S! He works for the largest milk company in Ecuador doing some sciency thing. I didn’t really understand, too many complicated Spanish words in the same sentence to catch the context. But he was nice and agreed with me that the chocolate milk is the best. We had a deep convo about chocolate milk. It was sweet. (get it? Sweet? Chocolate milk? Haha) right, so I haven’t lost my ability to tell bad jokes since being here. Then it turned midnight. To celebrate we all did hugs and I thought that was it, yay it’s officially Christmas. Oh no, my host mom then broke out the sparkelers. Now I thought we were going to use them up on the patio or something, but oooooh no. We just lit em up right then and there in the formal living room! Then we ran around the living room with sparkelers! While they were all laughing and having a ball I was doing a nervous laugh and running around trying to avoid flammable objects. Didn’t seem like the safest way to celebrate and I thought that maybe I just had a crazy host family, but I told someone about it and I guess everyone does that at midnight. Then we had a giant formal turkey dinner. It was AMAZING!! Maybe the best turkey I’ve ever had. My host mom and been cooking it all day in wine. Delicious. Then for desert we had postre de las tres leches that my little sister made and fudge that I made! Mmmmmmmmmm. Jk, the fudge DID NOT TURN OUT. I couldn’t exactly find semi-sweet chocolate chips, or normal milk chocolate. Also, the recipe my mom gave me was all in ounces and everything here is marked in grams. So I kinda had to guess how many grams were in an ounce… right. Then it was too soft and I realized later that cuz of the altitude I should have boiled it for longer than exactly 8 min. It was really sweet and tasted too much like condensed milk. But they thought it was great. Said it tasted like a snickers or milky way. So they ate it. I thought it was gross.
Christmas day we got up and did presents at my house. I gave my host family a new printer cuz theirs has been broken ever since I got here and they can’t really afford a new one. So I got them that, and they gave me a scarf, a sweater (I’ll never wear it…) and a book from the museum my host mom works at. So that was really nice. Then we went to my other host uncle’s house and had Christmas with the extended family and another turkey dinner. Really fun. My extended host family is really funny and welcoming, so I had a good time.
Well, that wraps up Christmas. We’ve got a little more than a month to catch you up on.
posted by Adam (ebby) at 5:25 PM
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