Merry Christmas to All

Sweating in my room at 7:45 at night fighting the invasion of crickets, moths with rash-enduing dander, and the frogs determined to help remedy the situation it doesn’t feel much like Christmas time. The official countdown is 2 days on the American clock, 1 day on the Peruvian. Here we celebrate more the 24th. Well, to be more specific, we stay up until midnight, toast to Christmas with a “champagne” like substance, eat paneton (sweet bread with dried fruit inside, like a good fruitcake), drink hot chocolate, and devour a turkey. Yes, just as you are all thinking to yourself, no that’s not the most conducive to then going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep; so of course we then spend the next few hours drinking (for those who drink, I do not at site), talking, laughing, and all around remembering what a good year it had been.

While the signs of a Peruvian Christmas are starting to show up, here in the campo there’s none of that commercial crud to ruin Christmas. People have put up cardboard decorations on their doors. The most comical to me are the ones depicting a fir tree (we most defiantly don’t have anything even remotely resembling a fir growing near Nanchoc) and the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. When I asked the family with our red nosed friend on their door if they knew who it was, their response, “a rare breed of deer that live in New York City,” oh yes, I’m not in Kansas anymore…not that I ever was. My family’s one up-ed the neighbors thanks to having kids living in Lima, we have a fir tree that LIGHTS up. Yes, it’s red and green with lights that flicker in different patterns. I thought it was just a little to tacky when it first showed up…then my Peruvian campo side came through and now thinks it’s the coolest thing in the whole town. I’ll let ya’ll decide on your own if my Peruvian campo goggles have tainted the coolness:

PICTURE

This Christmas is going to go by a lot faster than last Christmas for a few reasons. The main one of which is that the rainy season has been slowly starting, rather than dumping on us like last year. So this means I’ll more than likely (now watch me go and jinx it) have electricity this year to celebrate the big day! Also, I’m counting down to more than Christmas, the 28th of December my parents and my brother, yes the rest of the Schwartz family, is flying to Peru to see me!!! So while I’ll be spending my second Christmas away from home, I’ll have the good fortune to celebrate the New Year with my family in Lima--A New Year in a new country for them. I’ve almost forgotten how much I hate Lima (especially after how much time I’ve spent their recently) because I’m so excited for their arrival.

Now I just have to decide if I trick my brother into eating food that he’d not normally eat…