Happy New Year´s!

I have never been a big one for New Year´s Eve. Too much pressure and hype for my taste. But I do take time to think about how things were for me at this time last year. This time last year was not a good time for me. When I was home for Christmas last year I decided to take action on two things that would help me change my life: getting certified to teach English and yoga.

 

Here I am a year later living in a foreign country and doing both. And I am happy. I am proud of myself.

 

I celebrated last night at a friend of a friend´s house. There were six Cubans, three Chileans, and me. I love Cuban food, especially yucca.

After eating we danced to Cuban YouTube videos. They wanted me to choose a song, so I put on Clean Bandit - Rather Be with subtitles. We sang along and danced.

 

I have two goals for this year. One is to cause myself less suffering by accepting things as they are. The other is to live the present.

Oh, The Weather Outside wasn´t Frightful

Two of my coworkers came over to my apartment for Christmas Eve dinner. They are both Americans and expat travelers, like me. We cheese and champagne with peach juice for appetizers.

Over dinner we told each other our stories. We have all lived in Spain for a time. Anna actually lived in Barcelona for two years. Vanessa has lived in England and Austrailia too.

We had chicken fajitas for dinner, which isn´t Chilean at all, nor it is like anything I normally eat for Christmas Eve.  This was the first time time in my life I didn´t go to my grandpa Shea´s house for Christmas Eve. I called before my friends came over and my family passed the phone around. It was good to hear everyone´s voices.

After dinner we watched Home Alone. It´s just so American. I love that movie. So classic.

On Christmas Day, I slept late and then taught an early afternoon yoga class. I was really happy to see my students on Christmas. Though here Christmas Eve is the bigger celebration, which involves a family dinner and kids opening their presents. It was strange to see people doing normal things on Christmas, like going skate-boarding and bringing kids to the park. To me, Christmas day has always been such a departure from the normal routine, the normal things.

One of my English students gave me a box of gourmet chocolates. There are some unique flavors mixed in, like papaya. It is too hard to choose, so I close my eyes to pick one to eat.

Merry Christmas

My friend Leti and I made Christmas cookies! It was a marathon, as always. We baked for hours and blared Christmas tunes.

Let is so creative so I stepped up my game with the decorating. Eventually we ran of Christmas-y ideas for decorations. And started using purple icing.

Leti made this Chilean flag cookie. Our first Chirstmas in Chile.



Friendsgiving

On Saturday my friend Magda and her boyfriend picked me up to go to a Friendsgiving. Our friends Matthew and Antone have a little house away from the city center. Magda´s boyfriend remarked a couple times that we were driving to the end of the world, but it really wasn´t that bad. The GPS told us we had ´´reached our destination´´ but we weren´t sure which in the row of little houses was our friends´. We weren´t sure, that is, until we saw this beautiful spread through the window.

We had an eclectic and international meal that lasted, literally the eating part, for hours. There were people from France, Poland, the UK, South Africa, the US, and Chile. I loved how people flowed freely from speaking English to Spanish. The food ranged from tabouleh to gazpacho to midwestern potato casserole with cornflakes on top. Antone, from France, made these open-face pies that were as delicious as they were beautiful. The crust was as close to my grandma Shea´s as I´ve had.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful I took a risk and changed my life dramatically. I am thankful for greater happiness and confidence. I am thankful for my family, especially Mom and Dad, for supporting me. I am thankful for the good friends I have met here, and for those I miss back home.

I am thankful for my friend Leti, who insisted we have a mini-Thanksgiving dinner. I waivered a bit wanting to celebrate--well, not so much in wanting to celebrate but in thinking that I had time. It truly was a busy day. I taught at 8 a.m. After that, I had my Spanish class and then a work training. During the afternoon I went on a Spanish student excursion to Barrio Italia, which was chic and lovely. There were students from Brazil, Germany, and the U.S. The German guy treated us to gourmet chocolate ice cream, which was swoon-worthy. (The ice cream, not the treating us part.)

I taught English from 6:30 to 8, and then hustle-walked back to my place where Leti was waiting, her bike loaded with a roast chicken, wine, and banana bread. She had really wanted to make a pumpkin pie but couldn´t find canned pumpkin.



We moved around my little kitchen with the ease of old friends to assemble this pretty little meal. We even found half-burnt tea lights and pulled out the plates with the gold trim.

I am thankful for such a day.

Happy Halloween

My friend Leti is a trooper; she tracked down pumpkins. They are hard to find here in Santiago, especially since it is springtime. After following rumors and pumpkin myths all over town, she found bin tucked away in a corner of a big grocery store, aptly named Jumbo.

We finally felt in the Halloween spirit as we carved our jack-o-lanterns.

We roasted the seeds. There were fewer seeds than I'm used to seeing in pumpkins, but they were bigger and tasted more strongly of pumpkin.

I wanted to make traditional jack-o-latern, to give the Chileans a taste of the true spirit of the holiday. Well, sort of. ; ) I accidentally cut off my guy's top teeth so he only has a bottom snaggler. Leti is much more artistic and literally carved a minion!