Monday, December 29, 2008

BBQ, Paper Fight, and Family: It Must Be Christmas

Christmas with my family is always a mess and I'm still recovering. Quite literally....  

Noche Buena began at about 10pm with a selection of grilled family favorites: churrasco, pork, chicken, and sausage accompanied by rice, refried beans, shredded cabbage salad, Nicaraguan tortillas, chile, avocado, Mexican Punch, homemade cranberry juice, and flan.  Then came presents.  

By presents I mean we put our otherwise recycled newspaper, junk mail, and assortment of collected boxes to good use. And then we dump it over each other and bury each other in it as if it were sand.  Its our tradition:

When we were kids my father wanted to make sure that we throughly enjoyed Christmas, regardless of presents given or expected.  So we cheered each and every present, opening them one by one on Christmas Eve after a late dinner.  Some years we had scavenger hunts, having to search for our presents but mostly we had a tradition of packing a present inside a box, inside another box, inside another box.  Prodded on by cheers we ripped off wrapping paper, throwing it in pieces to the floor, creating a colorful carpet that I'm sure made my mom and aunt flinch. Years later our tradition has evolved, becoming messier, louder, and increasingly creative in an attempt to not be predictable. For weeks my brother stores boxes in his room and then on the 24th they make their way out, unmarked.  This year was no different except for the tons of shredded newspaper dumped all over the floor.  I'm still finding evidence of the festivities.  

I guess I'll be celebrating a little differently next year.

Here are some pictures from our celebration:


the quilt I made for my sister (my mom has stolen the other one)

me buried under the newspaper, thankfully my cousin 
missed my face when he sat on me a few seconds later

my four year old cousin posing with a borrowed hat- he is so cute!!

Monday, December 22, 2008

a few pics

It's good to be home for the holidays but here are some of my fav pics from the past nine weeks

nice view, especially when it wasn't cold or raining

having fun with photo booth (I'm not allowed to post some of our other pics)

beautiful feet? I'm not sure about that but I do know that they are in dire need of some sun  (Romans 10:15)

I think therefore I am. Rodin or Descartes anyone?

nothing like some roomie love in a random French bistro in Georgetown

(contemplative sigh)

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Jewelry I Wear

When I was working with an autistic boy back home he had a CD that he liked to hear over and over again. I almost always danced with him and it was a bit of a workout to sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. The last song on that CD was a bit odd in comparison to the Alphabet Song and The Wheels on the Bus and I hadn't heard it as a song before, only as a saying:

"Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold."

Hearing it (and dancing to it) so much made me think about friendships and relationships and it comes to mind now as I prepare to say goodbye to a new group of people. Everywhere I go I meet people that make me smile, whose presence and personality fill me with joy, each in their own unique manner. I meet people who I can pray with, go on adventures with, dance with, sing with (or make noise with depending on how deaf you are), be completely random with, laugh and cry with, creating memories that will not fade. With so many people in my life I asked a friend how I was supposed to say goodbye as I prepare to move to Spain. How can I balance all the relationships in my life so that I can indeed make new friends and keep the old, walking around with both silver and gold? Her response made me smile as I remembered all our conversations in college and all the tidbits of wisdom that I have not forgotten. She wrote back that every place I have lived in and all the people from each of those places come together to form something greater than I could imagine.

I'm ready to get out of here, to return to the real world outside this bubble but I don't want to say goodbye tomorrow as I leave this place, knowing that we literally will be around the world in the coming weeks. I don't want to say goodbye especially because it reminds me that soon I will say goodbye again. I never have been one to wear a lot of jewelry so I am still learning how to fully appreciate all the silver and gold I have but I rejoice in the shalom that comes with my friends, both new and old.

Monday, December 8, 2008

not my mom's kind of needle

I have always wanted to learn to use a sewing machine.

My mom always said that she only learned how to use one type of needle- the kind that you stick people with. The desire to stick people was never something that rubbed off on me. If it had I'd probably be in med school somewhere buried in books and ultra stressed. All of her sisters- about 6 or 7 of them as well as some cousins seem to be experts on the machine and seem to have daughters that never desired to incorporates sewing into thier skill set. My mom kept saying she was going to send me to Nicaragua to learn all these things but that never seemed to work out.

So when I heard that there was a quilting quad on campus that would provide everything we needed to make a quilt inclusive of instructions I showed up excited to make one.

The wonderful ladies who live in and run the quilting quad are here as volunteers and keep us supplied with a steady stream of candy and support. They are extremely patient and thanks to them I now know how to change a bobbin and I get to take this home with me:


Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Olives and Mexican Tortillas

Let me begin by saying that I hate olives.
This past week was the first holiday that I was separated from my family, which meant no rice or beans or tacos for Thanksgiving. The past few years Thanksgiving has meant tacos- we did away with the turkey and I'm not sure we've ever had stuffing or green bean casserole. But apparently the rest of the country still insists on eating turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, and ham on this day. It was really the first time I ate a typical American meal on this holiday. The cooks did a great job with it but I couldn't help missing my type of meal and all the things that come with it.
When I told my mom what my meal was- we had finished dinner 2 hours before they even got to my cousin's house- she laughed and told me what her first holiday outside of Nicaragua was like and how strange the food was to her. She must have thought: tacos, who eats tacos, and why are these tortillas so thin and then proceeded to miss what she was used to. I grew up with a mix of Nicaraguan and Mexican food and cannot even imagine my mom not loving Mexican tortillas or chile.
It really made me think. I've always heard my mom's stories- how she grew up and left a country that was home to her two times. I've heard all kinds of stories but this was the first time I really stopped to think of some of the emotions attached to it....It also made me think that maybe, just maybe, there is hope for the possibility of actually enjoying olives. But then again, olives are nothing like Mexican tortillas.