Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Christmas Away from Home: 5 Things That Suck and 5 Things that Rule

Christmas Away from Home (in South America)

5 Things That Suck:

  1. It's balls hot. Absolutely no hope for a white Christmas. No snow angels, no snowmen. Nothing.
  2. No traditional food. The heat makes traditional American Christmas food illogicalThat means no mouth watering hot rolls, no mashed potatoes and absolutely no pie of the pecan nor pumpkin variety.
  3. No Christmas music. Okay, there is Christmas music, but you truly have to search it out.
  4. No Christmas specials on TV. Where are all my childhood classics like Frosty and Rudolph? Where are the Grinch and Home Alone? Of course, The Christmas Story did make its way down here, too bad that movie is a piece of garbage.
  5.  No friends or family. Obviously, this is the worst one. Of course I have made friends here, but almost all of them are from out of town and they are all lucky enough to be hopping a plane home for the holidays. I'll just go ahead and lump No Cookie Day into this category since that's a bonding thing with my mom.

5 Things that Rule:

  1. Ice cream. Of course, anyone that knows me knows that I would consume ice cream in a blizzard, happily. However, I must admit it's nice to put some Christmas music on my ipod and stop for some refreshing helado.
  2. Beaches. What's that you say? You'd like to relax on a beach only days after Christmas without getting on a plane? No problem. I'll be in Colonia for a beach day trip days after Christmas.
  3. Artesian Markets. Thanks to the huge hand crafted markets that pop up every weekend all over the city, I know all my gifts will be unique and thoroughly cherished by all the people I send them to.
  4. Getting packages. Okay, I have mixed feelings about getting packages here due to the completely frustrating and illogical system (please see Correo Argentino, la puta que te pariĆ³) but it still cannot shake my love of receiving mail in any form. 
  5. New traditions. Of course I miss everything from home, but at the very least it is interesting to see how people celebrate here.

What kind of things suck and rule about your Christmas away from home?

6 comments:

  1. I'll be going home for xmas, but what sucks is that I have to go to the airport during the busiest travel season of the year... not looking forward to it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll have you know you just shat all over a Farah family favorite by calling "A Christmas Story" garbage. Jorge Farah & Son do NOT like this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have been forced to watch that movie about 20 times a year since birth. I even had to watch it in school when the teachers got lazy towards the end of the year. I despise it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am dreading flying tomorrow. I wonder if they'll show that piece of garbage on the plane. To be honest, I've never seen it all the way through! (this is Sara btw)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ah Sara I am so sad you are leaving me. Thank goodness you are coming back (and with my kindle in tow, yay!). Let's have a movie night when you get back that in no way involves A Christmas Story. I'll pray that you get something better on the flight home!

    @Jorge- hear that? Sara thinks it's a piece of garbage too!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have a hard time calling any movie garbage, let alone a sweet Christmas movie with so much heart. That's just me though.

    ReplyDelete