Feliz Navidad

For most people the holidays are spent with your closest friends and family. It's a wonderful time to be together and personally one of my favourite times of the year. I love staying inside under a warm blanket in the cold Canadian winter nights and going skiing on Christmas day. I have to say though that this year was a little different.

Christmas here is absolutely crazy. Mexicans like to celebrate everything to the extreme and Christmas is no difference at all. Everywhere you look there are lights, Christmas trees, decorations and soo much more. It's funny for the complete lack of snow how many blow up snowmen there are. Decorating for Christmas began months ago and well, my Christmas tree is still up as I am writing this so I will keep you posted. The schools also do an incredible amount of stuff for Christmas. My school presented this play sort of thing that shared the story of Jesus, and had a huge Posada for all of us. Posadas are Christmas parties that happen throughout the month of December. They are formal and actually a lot of fun, with singing and sometimes games and always delicious food. These happen on the weeks leading up to Christmas and are with friends, family and sometimes if you are part of a club they will put one on as well. Actual Christmas is normally just for your close family, eating close to same stuff as in Canada and it's all pretty similar. Except for the Tamales, which are a traditional holiday food. It's a filling of cheese, potatoes, meat and things like that wrapped in this corn dough and then that is wrapped in a really big leaf and steamed to perfection.

After talking to many exchange students we all had the same feeling that it never felt that much like Christmas. Even though I did way more Christmas stuff than I normally do, I think not being with your “real” family and the lack of snow for us from the northern part of the world really made this an interesting one, but one we will surely not forget.