More holidays, in Antigua

Again, a note to subscribers:  I'm not sure why my computer decides to pre-email things, but I apologize for the half-entries that I fill your inboxes with!  Clearly, I'm getting sloppy, but here is TAKE TWO:

Like many of you, my holiday-season has quickly come to an end.  Tomorrow, I head back up to Nebaj and get back to my projects, but over the last few weeks, I have been resting and relaxing in and around Antigua.

The holidays were very different for me, and although I hated being away from home, they were some of my best experiences in Guatemala.  On Christmas, I was suffering from a cold, but another volunteer and her host family invited me to spend the holiday with them.  Afraid that I would get everyone sick, I initially declined, but they insisted that I not spend the holiday sick and alone.  In no time at all, the graciousness with which they invited me into their home made me feel better!

I thought partaking in foreign traditions with strangers would be a very awkward experience, but somehow, it was very comforting to be with this family when I was missing mine.  Christmas Eve is a bigger holiday than Christmas Day, and around midnight, the family invited me to pray with them in front of the Christmas tree.  Again, I thought this would be awkward, but I quickly realized that in different languages to different Gods, we all said essentially the same thing.  At their core, people are more alike than different...  Then, at midnight, fireworks illuminated the sky in every direction and everyone ran into the streets to hug their neighbors and wish everyone a merry Christmas!  I have never hugged so many strangers in my life, but no one seemed to mind that they didn't know who I was.  Everyone was just happy because it was Christmas!

After Christmas, I spent a few days resting and recouping while staying in Antigua.  When I was here for training, I didn't get to fully explore all of the amazing restaurants in the city.  In the last few weeks, I've had decent sushi, Thai, Mediterranean, 'Californian' (that's apparently a cuisine), French and even fairly decent Indian.  I've also made it to the gym about every day (Nebaj doesn't have a gym), and have spent countless hours in various cafes with a large coffee or fruit smoothie and a book.  Tough life, right?

While most of the States are freezing, the temperature in Antigua is very nice: tank top in the sun, a light long sleeve in the shade and a sweatshirt at night.  So for New Year's Eve, the main square becomes pedestrian- / concert-friendly.  There were three stages with music and even some obscure entertainers on the street.  For example, a man danced around with a wooden contraption tied to him that shot fireworks off of it.  There seemed to be no way to control the direction of the rockets, and while Guatemalans ran toward it to get a closer look, I ran away!

After a few hours of enjoying the public entertainment, two of my colleagues and I went to a very nice restaurant in town.  We had an amazing, huge meal and at midnight, we had a champagne toast on the restaurant's terrace Again, every town around us had fireworks, and our restaurant even bought sparklers for all of us as well as actual fireworks to have right above our heads.  My eardrum may have suffered long term damage, but it was a great show!

Here are some pics from New Year's Eve:

The lagoon/patio area of the restaurant where we ate, all dressed up with fragrant rose petals:

Me with the fireworks that the restaurant gave me.

It looks really smoky, but really it just smelled like the 4th of July!

 The fireworks-in-a-box show that we were given.  After running from the man-in-an-explosive-box, being this close enough to take this picture was a comfortable distance away!!