1)TEFL Group at Swearing In
2)Chicas de Rio Conejo
3)Christmas picture with my Rio Conejo host parents
4)Rio Conejo Christmas picture
12/27/2010
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I have to say it’s really weird spending the holidays somewhere where it’s always warm. The lights, santas, wreaths and reindeer definitely add Christmas cheer, but it’s not quite the same. We celebrated Christmas nonetheless and it was really nice. My family made me feel very at home and I got to Skype with my real family which made me feel almost like I was there.
Before I talk about Christmas though, I want to mention that I am now officially a volunteer. Then 10 weeks of training finished up on the 17th when we got sworn in as real volunteers. There was a formal ceremony in San Jose at the Ambassador's house and we all got dressed up and stuff. I put a couple pictures of it up here, one of my Rio Conejo training group and the other of my whole TEFL group.
The Sunday after swearing in I officially moved here to San Carlos where I'm gonna stay and have being spending some quality time with my family.
About Christmas...We had Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve it was composed of a roast, mashed potatoes, salad, Christmas cookies, Christmas cake and candied orange rind. If you didn’t notice half our meal was dessert. Mostly I think it’s because they considered the cookies I made a course of the meal. It was very sweet (no pun intended), but I could have lived with being combined with the cake in the dessert course. Either way, the meal was delicious and it felt quite a lot like being at home for a holiday dinner. We had the nice tablecloth out, candles and people were a little dressed up and a little festive.
I think the best part of Christmas Eve day was the making of the Christmas cookies. I think it took us about 4 hours to make them, but it was totally worth it. We ended up with about 5 dozen beautifully decorated sugar cookies (if I do say so myself). I made the dough then Camilla, my 8-year old host sister, and my 20 year-old host cousin Jose David helped cut the cookies. Jose lives next door and when he came into the house looking for a cell phone charger I helped him out and jokingly asked if he wanted to help us with the cookies thinking that he’d think it was a silly, girly thing and that he would rather hang out with his buddies like he usually does… but he really got into in. He stuck around for 3 more hours until the last cookie was frosted. I was really impressed with his willingness to help and even more impressed with his cookies, which were way better looking than mine. When we finally had them all baked, everyone participated in the frosting: Camilla, Jose David, my host brothers Daniel and Josue and I. It was a really fun thing for all of us to do together and the kids had fun seeing whose cookies were the best. It wasn’t really even a contest because Jose David is very artistic and won by a long shot. I came in second, and they were quick to point out that is only because I’ve been decorating Christmas cookies for give or take 15 years, and Daniel came in dead last…he’ll admit it, and so that no one saw his cookies he ate about 10 of the cookies or he told us :“About 10 of them broke,”. I was really lucky that Jose David dropped in when he did because as much help as Camilla was with the cookie baking (a.k.a- almost none, but great company) it definitely would have taken about 5 times as long with out Jose.
On Christmas day we all woke up late because our dinner the night before had begun at 10:30 and ended at about 1:30am. We hung around the house all day, eating Christmas cookies, watching Christmas movies and just relaxing. I may have been away from home, but luckily my family here made me feel very at home.
Before I talk about Christmas though, I want to mention that I am now officially a volunteer. Then 10 weeks of training finished up on the 17th when we got sworn in as real volunteers. There was a formal ceremony in San Jose at the Ambassador's house and we all got dressed up and stuff. I put a couple pictures of it up here, one of my Rio Conejo training group and the other of my whole TEFL group.
The Sunday after swearing in I officially moved here to San Carlos where I'm gonna stay and have being spending some quality time with my family.
About Christmas...We had Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve it was composed of a roast, mashed potatoes, salad, Christmas cookies, Christmas cake and candied orange rind. If you didn’t notice half our meal was dessert. Mostly I think it’s because they considered the cookies I made a course of the meal. It was very sweet (no pun intended), but I could have lived with being combined with the cake in the dessert course. Either way, the meal was delicious and it felt quite a lot like being at home for a holiday dinner. We had the nice tablecloth out, candles and people were a little dressed up and a little festive.
I think the best part of Christmas Eve day was the making of the Christmas cookies. I think it took us about 4 hours to make them, but it was totally worth it. We ended up with about 5 dozen beautifully decorated sugar cookies (if I do say so myself). I made the dough then Camilla, my 8-year old host sister, and my 20 year-old host cousin Jose David helped cut the cookies. Jose lives next door and when he came into the house looking for a cell phone charger I helped him out and jokingly asked if he wanted to help us with the cookies thinking that he’d think it was a silly, girly thing and that he would rather hang out with his buddies like he usually does… but he really got into in. He stuck around for 3 more hours until the last cookie was frosted. I was really impressed with his willingness to help and even more impressed with his cookies, which were way better looking than mine. When we finally had them all baked, everyone participated in the frosting: Camilla, Jose David, my host brothers Daniel and Josue and I. It was a really fun thing for all of us to do together and the kids had fun seeing whose cookies were the best. It wasn’t really even a contest because Jose David is very artistic and won by a long shot. I came in second, and they were quick to point out that is only because I’ve been decorating Christmas cookies for give or take 15 years, and Daniel came in dead last…he’ll admit it, and so that no one saw his cookies he ate about 10 of the cookies or he told us :“About 10 of them broke,”. I was really lucky that Jose David dropped in when he did because as much help as Camilla was with the cookie baking (a.k.a- almost none, but great company) it definitely would have taken about 5 times as long with out Jose.
On Christmas day we all woke up late because our dinner the night before had begun at 10:30 and ended at about 1:30am. We hung around the house all day, eating Christmas cookies, watching Christmas movies and just relaxing. I may have been away from home, but luckily my family here made me feel very at home.
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