A Long December

We had a busy December, but also had the opportunity to relax the last week. We went to a beach down south in Nicaragua called San Juan del Sur. We spent time reading, swimming, body surfing, searching tide pools and hiking. We had some friends from MCC join us for part of the time, we really enjoyed ourselves. We spent New Year's eve in a town up north called Matagalpa with the other MCC volunteers. There is an MCC family that lives there and we spent time playing games and eating great deserts until we felt sick (a true North American holiday tradition). Another US tradition we did not miss out on was seeing the ball drop on TV.

You may be asking yourself, what does a traditional Nicaraguan Christmas and New Year's look like? I am glad you asked. In Nicaragua it is more common to celebrate Christmas the night of the 24th and although we did not get to celebrate with a nican family, we have been told what is normal. Normally family's get together and eat a lot of food, specifically a food called relleno (chicken, butter, oil, raisins, vegetables, bread, salt). This may not sound good, but we have been told be a North American that it is good. Often gifts are exchanged as in the states, but it depends on the family situation. For New Years it is very common for people to make an effigy of the past year and then burn it New Year's Eve. They take old clothes and stuff it with newspaper and it ends up looking like a person. Unfortunately, we did not actually get to take part in this New Year's tradition, but there is always next year. However, we did get to take part in the another New Year's Eve tradition staying up until midnight and watching all the fireworks being lit. Everyone buys fireworks and waits until midnight to light them and then they go off for 15-30 min, it is impossible to sleep until they are done.

We started back at Viva Spanish School on the 2nd and we will be taking classes the month of January. We will be living with other MCC volunteers in Managua for this month. We will start looking for a house of our own this month in the area we are going to live.