Not the Usual

We had a different, but nice Christmas Day. Family and long-time friends were replaced with meeting new friends at a Christmas Day Open House. We were invited by friends we hadn't met yet. To explain, we had made contact by way of blogging and once you start following somebody's blog you start to feel you know them. Upon meeting eye-to-eye, I felt we had known each other for quite some time. We met other people living here in Merida both full-time and part-time and it was a very fun and interesting time for us. We were grateful for the invitation. Everybody gathered in the open spaces of the brightly-painted patio...warm, sunny, very nice.

We came home, opened up a bottle of  "cooking wine" (and the cooking beer) and prepared a fairly traditional meal, replacing turkey/ham with a beautiful (and big!) pork roast served with all the trimmings. We ate sometime around 4pm. No gifts for us. We are planning a trip to ruins in the jungles and mountains of Mexico after New Year's in lieu of spending money on gifts.

We chatted online with family members, and made phone calls. Merida was eerily quiet yesterday...didn't know it could be that quiet. In La Ermita there were very few cars or buses passing through. Only occasionally did somebody walk down the street. I think there was a lot of siestas taking place after the Eve's festivities of midnight mass and staying up all night partying with family and shooting off fireworks. We saw one little boy riding around the park, followed by his mom and abuela, as he rode his shiny new battery-powered red jeep...he hit pay dirt!

When every day is like a holiday in your life, you kind of start wondering what you should do differently on a holiday. Yes, we missed family but still managed to have a nice Christmas Day.