merry navidad

Dear friends and lovers,

I write you today from the living room of the JVI house here in Nicaragua. Rocking back and forth in a rocking chair, Josh’s laptop on my lap, as Josh, Mary, and Margaret still sleep. Matt and Adriana are talking with Matt’s friends, Brooke and Ryan. They came in to visit last night for Christmas. Ryan has Dengue, but he’s getting better and last night he actually ate a significant amount of food. Speaking of food, we cooked an amazing Christmas dinner last night. Green beans, mashed potatoes, roasted chicken (that we bought in advance and just heated up) Mexican rice, more chicken (when we realized that with Brooke, Ryan, and Fr. Joe, our in country coordinator were coming over) that I basted with a little homemade dressing… oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, juice squeezed from an orange, a little sugar, a little vanilla, and it turned out delicious. We also baked some vegetables into that little mix that were fantastic. Fr. Joe brought over Ice Cream and we bought some boxed wine. All in all an amazing Christmas dinner. After dinner we were treated to a lively rendition of “the Night before Christmas,” albeit one day late, by Margaret since it is part of her family’s tradition. The rest of Christmas was also a treat, with the neighbors inviting us over for dinner on Christmas eve where it is a tradition to dine around 10pm and then drink and dance until 5am or so. Christmas day is when one sleeps off the hangover. We Americans wimped out and I was in bed by 2am. Christmas morning I was awake before several of the others, which is unusual since I normally sleep in on Christmas morning to the bane of my sibling’s existence. Christmas is really important in Margaret’s family, and when she came out into the living room she had a face lit up, hugged us all, and told us “he came!” Turns out Santa even visits Managua, and he left us chocolates in the fridge with notes that Margaret helped deliver. We did a gift exchange and were all quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of gifts we got. Everyone seemed thrilled with what they got. I myself both bought and received a candle, which is perfect, since I love candles. Mary and I both think that we got another Christmas gift in the form of a parasite! Yay. So we’ll have to go by the clinic and get our little tummy’s checked out. Parasites aren’t really big deals and are pretty regular when the water isn’t exactly potable. A week before returning to the States Mike had two different parasites at the same time. So even after two years in the country, it seems like a pretty normal occurrence. Yesterday we stumbled across a notebook/journal that had been kept by the first JVI’s in Nicaragua back in 1998… it seemed as if the intention was to keep funny stories, traditions, etc. to pass on to the future years… So while it fell off for a few years there, we think we might try to renew the journal and thus be able to keep memories alive. Although, we aren’t really sorry that we were unable to have the 3^rd –first two being in 98 and 99—throw sugar canes from the back yard to the basketball court competition. Sometimes there are traditions that are okay to let go of. I hope all of your times with your families has been blessed and that you thoroughly enjoy every moment. Peace within you.

james