In the past month, the U.S. has celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and transitioned into the beginning celebrations of Christmas. I LOVE celebrating these holidays with my family and friends, I love the energy and excitement in the atmosphere, the decorations, the music, and the discussion of plans and joys and even the worries that the holiday season brings. This year this season has been very different for me (naturally something about living in a foreign country with distinct culture and traditions will do that). Before coming to Peru, I hadn’t spent much time considering what it would be like to be away from my community and culture for the holiday season. As these holidays approached, I experienced some stress and sadness that I wouldn’t be able to celebrate the way I am accustomed to with the people I love in the states. But this stress and sadness wasn’t able to last for any significant amount of time, because my wonderful host family saw the opportunity to celebrate with me and the other volunteer living with us (an awesome girl from Hawaii who I have come to love dearly) as an exciting way to bring together our cultures and as a way to serve us lovingly.
For Halloween, the other volunteer and I decided to make costumes out of our very limited wardrobe options (both of us are practicing living simply, so we have budget restraints and neither of us allow ourselves to spend money on things superfluously). She decided to be a mime, as she had a black and white stripped shirt, and I decided to be a cat because I had a pair of cat ears that were given to my by a man in the “park of cats” in Lima. Halloween celebrations in Peru are very different than those in the U.S. because of the strong Catholic influence from the past hundreds of years. In my city of Andahuaylas, we had a huge parade to celebrate All Saints Day instead, and there were hundreds of children dressed in angel costumes. It was adorable, but we definitely stood out. Our host family thought it was hilarious that we dressed up, and to celebrate the day they took us out to dinner and made an event of it. Then, last week was Thanksgiving. The emotions leading up to this were even stronger, so I explained to my host family the holiday and traditions, and they decided that of course we should have a thanksgiving dinner and take the day to be intentionally appreciative of the blessings in our lives. Now, this was the strangest thanksgiving dinner of my life, in the most wonderful way. We each decided a dish to make, and we ended up with this list: sweet potato casserole, Indian curry vegetables, Italian cream sauce with chicken, and cheesecake. It was absolutely random, and each dish had a very distinctly different flavor, but it was wonderfully delicious (I had been craving Indian food and something that tasted familiar). Then we sat down to eat dinner (at 10:30pm, which is only a couple of hours later than we normally eat), and we took turns going around the table describing the blessings in our lives that we are thankful for- our families (for the other volunteer and I, the one we have been welcomed into here and ours back home), our ability to sit together as people from different parts of the world and walks of life and bring our cultures together, and a list of other beautiful things. It was a late night celebrated with friends and family, with a familiarly tangible excitement in the air, and with a bubbling and strong feeling of awe and gratitude in my heart. And now it is the Christmas season, which is the hardest to be away from home. But once again my host family has embraced this time as an opportunity to learn about my traditions and to teach me about theirs. They have been intentional about including me in the decorations (they even let me decorate the tree) and they love when we play Michael Buble Christmas music. I’ve learned that we are probably going to have 15 or more people at our house for Christmas dinner, and many of these guests are friends from different parts of Peru. I’ve also learned that the turkey will be cooked in an oven that we will rent out at another building, which is the custom (most families in the city will be renting out ovens). I also learned that we will be eating Christmas dinner at midnight on the hour, and that it’s normal for people to stay up until 5:00am celebrating, with fireworks included. out of all of the cross cultural expleriences I am having, these have been some of the most meaningful. I was stressed about not being able to celebrate with my family and friends back home, but I have a family and friends and a home here now, as well. Of course I still miss my community in the states deeply, but my community has grown to include the amazing people who have embraced me here.
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AuthorThese are the stories of my adventures of growing, learning and serving in Peru! Archives
October 2017
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