An Ecuadorian Christmas

If there is one thing that is true for all of Ecuador it's that they love love love their Christmas pagents. If you are an Ecuadorian under the age of 16 and in school then you are most likely a part of the Nativety play put on by your school, more than likely you are a member of the large chorus of angles because in reality there aren't enough main parts to go around, but at least you have a simple costume complete with paper mache wings and a halo made out of pipe cleaners. Even babies are apart of the nativety play, especially at the guarderia!

Christmas season in the states usually starts some time after Thanksgiving, well at the guarderia there is no Thanksgiving so Christmas preparations began on November 1st and we didn't stop decorating until December 22nd minutes before the parents came to the show. The children were cast into their roles, their costumes were made and then remade to fit them perfectly, they practiced their lines and reherced thier entrances and exists every day for over a month. The teachers were going crazy with the prepartion while all I had to do was sit with the angel chorus until it was their time to perform the "Gloria." I didn't think the kids would be able to pull it off since they seem to have attention spans shorter then fish, but when the day came they were so impressive! I was so proud of my kids who had lines and didn't mess them up and I was impressed by how serious most of them were. The parents loved it. a

After the nativety play came the popuri of christmas songs. We began with the Spanish songs which the kids shouted the words at the top of their lungs. And then we had the grand final of our two christmas songs in English. As I told you before we had been learning Rudolf and then we learnd Jingle Bells...sort of. The kids did well and I was happy to be done with singing these songs since we practiced for 30 minutes everyday for a month! The parents didn't seem to notice that their children where singing jiberish most of the time probably because it sounded like English to them. But then Pat, from Nuevo Mundo, came up to me after the show and said "Great job, you know it was the first time I ever heard Rudolf in Japonese!" Pat is an American by the way and quite sarcastic too.

It wasn't until after the guarderia Christmas show on the 22nd that I finally felt as if it were Christmas. And then it got crazy. John and Julia work at a shelter for street boys in the mornings. Several of the boys and the other Ecuadorian volunteers were not going to be going anywhere for Christmas so we decided to invite them over to spend Christmas eve with us. So what we realized is that we were throwing a Christmas party for what ended up being close to 20 people. And as many of you know throwing a party can be quite the production. Early on the 24th Julia and I woke up and headed to the market in the center of Duran to buy the 6 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of pasta, 11 pounds of flour and various other items for the dinner. We also had a neighbor, Alicia, cutting up the chicken for us because we had no idea how to take apart a whole chicken.

We spent the rest of the morning of the 24th with the other volunteers at a morning of reflection in Arbolito. It was nice to take some time out of the business of Christmas to sit and talk with each other about what it means for us to be hospitable here in Ecuador. But right after the reflection we ran home to AJS to begin the chopping, peeling and cooking for the party. We continued to prepare dinner until 8pm when Steve, Laura and I headed over to Omar and Elizabeth's house for a quick visit before mass. We stopped by said Merry Christmas and lucky for us their dinner wasn't ready yet, otherwise we would have gone to mass and fallen into a food coma! (Ecuadorians love to feed you...a lot even if you tell them you only want a little)

Mass was beautiful and even though we got there 30 minutes early we were still unable to find enough seats all together and so we were dotted throughout the church sitting with various neighbors and friends. For the homily a few of the local kids did the nativiety play including Fr. Manuel making the crying noise of the newly born baby Jesus, it was very strange but funny at the same time. While I missed my usual midnight mass at St. Mary's I loved the spirit of our mass here in Duran, the music, clapping and true happiness of the people to be there celebrating the birth of Christ. For our closing song we sang...Happy Birthday! How funny right? Mom, it was just like in Bells of St. Marys!

We came home from mass and Steve, Laura and I went over to Javier's house where the family had been waiting for us to start dinner, we felt bad since it was already close to 11pm and the kids were tired, but as always they told us it wasn't a problem and they felt blessed that they could share their food and family with us, beautiful. We left Javier's fuller than necessary and couldn't imagine eating anymore. After Javier's Steve came with me to Cira's house for a very very quick visit since it was almost curfew and we still had to eat dinner with the boys. And again we were greeted with open arms, a slew of Feliz Navidads and many besitos on the cheek.

Cira is one of my closests friends here in Ecuador, she works at Nuevo Mundo in the kitchen and has such a warm and welcoming personality. She told me the other day, "Ha conocido muchos gringos pero tu eres mi primero gringita amiga" (I have known alot of white people (volunteers) but you are my first white friend). She and her family are just wonderful people and I'm so glad that I have met her. But of course being Ecuadorians her family woulnd't let Steve and I just sit there and talk we had to have food and lots of it! And so she served us to heaping plates full of rice, macaroni salad, pork and chicken. They do not mess around with Christmas dinner. Unfortunatly we could only stay for 20 minutes and we left with our full plates, because she wouldn't let us leave our food, and some candies for the road.

We came home just in time to help serve up the food for the boys and Steve and I shared our 3rd meal of the night together. It was 12am when we finally sat down exhausted and tired from all the running around of the day, but we were all together sharing in the meal we all helped to make. Everyone was happy and enjoying themselves, it was finally Christmas.

Christmas morning Laura and I woke up at what felt like the crack of dawn (5:50am) to travel to Padre Damien where Laura volunteered to give the doctor a day off an due her rounds of curasion, or wound care. So while Laura cleaned the wouds of patients and I fought the need to sleep on the hospital bed that was in the room. It was a fruitless battle as I couldn't resist anymore and ended up taking a nap. Every time I would open my eyes there would be a new patient staring at me probably thinking "what a useless person!" I was glad I went though so that Laura wasn't alone, and good thing I went because on our way home she fell asleep on the bus and was almost near impossible to wake up!

Christmas night all the volunteers went back to Damien house to carol for the patients who seemed to enjoy it, although most just watched us like we were crazy. We had fun if nothing else. And then we had a huge delicious Italian dinner with Sr. Annie, Pat and Sonya. I can't think of a better way to end Christmas then all together enjoying each other's company, laughing, talking and towards the end singing again. And although in the back of my mind I was thinking about my family and our Christmas traditions it didn't take away from my first and probably only Ecuadorian Christmas.

The past few weeks have been really difficult on all of us here in Duran. We've been missing home and loved ones, we've been challenged by things we never thought would happen and we've been shaken up, but at the end of the day, week, month and year what is going to matter the most is the time I have spent learning to love and support my community. Family and friends I will come back and be able to love you better because of this year, how great right?!

Quick updates that I don't need to write a lot about:

1. You may say "I told you so" but I have realized that I do indeed love the kids at the guarderia even though they make me crazy.
2. We threw this awesome party for the guards and their families. It was great. We had to put on a dance for them so we did it to this song "Mi Burrito" and John was the donkey, there should be a video on facebook for you to see it's hilarious.
3. We did secret santa in the house and it was the most bootlegged thing I have ever been apart of. People half assed their gifts last minute, Laura literally put plantains that we had on our counter in a bag for John. It was really funny.
4. New Years resolution for the house, to practice self control since we have none!
5. We have taken it upon ourselves to pick up some local ways of speaking, most recently we have noticed that Ecuas use the word "pues" (well) alot so now we do to, as a joke. "Ya pues" "No pues" "cayate pues" I could go on.
6. We had another mouse encounter, and I had video of it, but somehow it was erased. This one was huge and it took 3 people to catch it. Eventually Javier stepped on it's head....gross
7. On Christmas day I talked to Mike and Kelly and I heard Cecilia say her alphabet...of course I cried. My house mates just think I'm crazy sometimes!

We are entering our 6th month...jeez where does the time go? I'll be home before I know it and that scares me. As always thanks for reading. I hope it was at least a worthy blog to wait so long for. I miss everyone but I'll see you soon!

Oh and Jenny if you are reading this your card was delievered! They loved it!