Happy Holidays!

1-06-2010!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Engagement to a certain favorite couple of mine as well!! This year has certainly been unlike any other holiday season of my life, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I’ve been slightly reflective the past few days, mostly thanks to the fact that I’ve been sick and spent much of that time laying in bed feeling sorry for myself but happily watching a great deal of Gossip Girl (thanks, Mimi and Matthew) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (thanks PC amigos). I went to the doctor yesterday after a few nights of rushing to the bathroom nearly hourly, fever, and general ache to find out I have a gastro-intestinal infection which can be cured by antibiotics. (About a month ago a PC friend of mine got sick and was given antibiotics. He looked in Where There is No Doctor, a book all PCVs are given that explains what you should do about just about any sickness or injury if you are stranded in the middle of nowhere. It is some of the best entertainment ever with extremely detailed drawings and descriptions, though I do NOT recommend looking through it when you’re sick or you’ll quickly turn into a hypochondriac. Regardless, in Where There is No Doctor, my friend saw that the prescribed antibiotic treats gonorrhea. I, obviously, ridiculed him to no end for receiving gonorrhea medication. Karma wins again—I was given the same. Please note: I generally don’t think STDs are comical.)

So, going back to my holiday season… I went with some friends to another PCV’s site for Christmas. He lives in basically the middle of Paraguay, in the middle of the campo (read: boonies). The first night (the 23rd) we visited some neighbors and then had some Paraguayans over for some boxed wine and cola. There was yet another Paraguayan woman who told me that you can peel the bellies of 7 frogs to make a stew that cures cancer. I convinced a bunch of teenagers that Barbara (my PCBFF) won American Idol and kisses frogs hoping to turn them into princes. Paraguayans are disgusted by this—they are disgusted by frogs and claim that their urine, if it somehow gets into your eye, will blind you. So, this may sound ridiculous but I really don’t know if this is true or not. Luckily it seems unlikely that I will ever figure this out since I find it difficult to imagine a time in which frog’s urine will be anywhere near my eyes. Once everyone left we made a midnight feast (Babs and I hadn’t eaten all day) that involved about a pound of ground beef, a pound of spaghetti, and random seasonings. Barbara cooked. It tasted exactly like Hamburger Helper. The stars this night were beyond anything I have ever seen in my life—I had no idea that there were that many stars in the sky to be seen.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve, the following day. Another PCV (Little Anne) and her brother from the states arrived. We spent most of the day, as well as the afternoon before in fact, playing BananaGrams, which is possibly the best game ever. Ever. Whoever you are, you should invest in this wonderful game—it is like Scrabble but quicker, more portable and involves less patience. In the evening we went to some neighbor’s houses despite the fact that the electricity had gone out. We arrived caroling in English. They were obviously extremely impressed with our perfectly harmonized angelic voices. We sat around drinking clerico, which is essentially the Paraguayan version of sangria and the typical holiday drink here. (Having trouble imagining yourself sitting by the fire on Christmas Eve sipping sangria? Please remember, it was a super humid 100°. Sitting still we were all glistening with sweat.) The strange thing about the clerico here is that everyone drinks it—including children. The youngest son is 6 and apparently has developed a habit of drinking by himself with some frequency. I honestly can’t begin to imagine the sort of damage that does to a 6 year old brain. Anyway, in sobriety the day before this 6 year old was happily showing off his firework skills for me while we chatted with his parents. He also visited us at our friend’s house, and began openly flirting with me. You know, the usual 6-year-old way…by spitting on and hitting me. Anyway, after apparently having a few glasses of liquid courage, he was getting more direct and his parents (and my friends) thought it hilarious that he was so enamored. The lights still hadn’t come on so we all sat in the moonlight chatting. Finally we went to another neighbor’s house (caroling again) to see their nativity scene, which is more like a bunch of branches with lights, candy, fruit, and miscellaneous objects woven throughout that shelter a small nativity scene blocked by watermelons. At this point the electricity hadn’t been on for hours, though we had been told that all of the state’s electricity is turned off briefly on Christmas Eve every year because Paraguayans use too much power during this time of year. (Originally they said only a half hour though, so…) The lights finally came back on and we headed back to the original house where we danced briefly then sat down for dinner. Unfortunately, once again the lights went out. The oldest son was put in charge of holding the flashlight over the picnic table. I was seated at the head of the table and for some reason the light didn’t stop spotlighting me throughout the meal. Unidentifiable meat, mandioca (Paraguay’s potato) sopa Paraguaya (cornbread-ish stuff), milanesa de pollo (country-fried chicken) were served alongside a fork and the dullest knife imaginable. As I sat in the spotlight attempting to cut the fat-meat from the bone, my new 6-year-old boyfriend sat down the table gnawing on his meat using only his hands while intently staring at me and making incredibly loud “num, num, num” noises. I’ve never had such trouble keeping a straight face at a meal before.

We left a bit before midnight, directly after our extremely late dinner. I assume that if you’re reading this, you know me, and so know of the Christmas Eve tradition that I have and am, admittedly, obsessed with. It is cheesy, I know, but I love it. The tradition is that on Christmas Eve a great deal of my mother’s side of the family (think 20-30 people) sit around, each with their own copy of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and read aloud, verse by verse, the entire book. The same jokes are made each year (i.e. “Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash” is followed by a great deal of vomiting noises) but there are always kids (and plenty of adults) to enjoy them. My parents had sent what was obviously a Twas the Night Before Christmas but I was instructed to open it on Christmas Eve. When we returned home, I did, and found a wonderful book in which various members of my family had recorded all the verses, except those on one page which my PC friends and I recorded. It was honestly the best gift I’ve ever received. And yes, I’ve admitted that this is super nerdy, but I loved it so thanks to everyone involved.

For Christmas itself we woke up to find that there was no running water (and thought this, too, may be a Paraguayan tradition). We lounged, talked about the menu for the day, talked to our respective families on Skype, BananaGrammed, and talked more about the day’s feast. The problem, we found, was that none of us were particularly motivated to cook, possibly because we ate cheese, crackers, pepperoni and brownies early on. In the end we had a Christmas dinner at about 8pm of pepper jelly, two baked chickens, salad, mashed potatoes, and wine-and-soda. And our dinner was actually a picnic, where we sat outside on a blanket under Christmas lights strung between two trees. After dinner more Paraguayans joined us as we dazzled them with our phenomenal Christmas carol skills.

The next day we said our goodbyes and went to wait for the bus on the main road. Our bus time estimates were poor, however, and we all burned severely as the midday sun beat down on our backs and the pavement. Also, the bus was too crowded for each of us to have a seat in the 4 hour stretch back to the capital. Luckily I was in a front seat with enough leg room for Little Anne to sit on the floor in front of me, my knees on her shoulders, bandanas making sure there was no skin-to-skin contact on that crowded, hot, air-conditionless bus. New Years was fun and the company grand but not especially notable otherwise. And there was my holiday season. I hope that yours was half as phenomenal and nowhere near as sweaty!