I'll be home for Christmas...

... if only in my dreams. 

So... I know that I talk a lot about being from Nebraska, about being away from home for the first time in my life, about finding new friends and new family half way across the world. I know. But the thing is, I just can't help it. And that's all I could really think about as Christmas came and went here in Chile. I could tell you that spending Christmas is a different country with new and generous friends was an experience that I'll never forget, that it will be blazed on my memory for the rest of my life. I could tell you that being away from the show that's made of Christmas in the United States gave me a chance to really focus on the what the season is about. I could tell you that it was kind of nice to hang out in the sun next to a pool on Christmas day.

I could tell you all of that, and it would true. However, the real truth is that it kind of feels like Christmas just came and went, and it never really felt quite right. The truth is, in many ways, I'll always have one Christmas missing. But just saying that doesn't really do it justice, because, while it didn't really feel like Christmas, it was a very special time, for different reasons.

About a week before Christmas I moved into the apartment where I'll be living during my time in Chile. I would have been the only one there, if it weren't for Iris. Who's Iris? Well, during our time in Quito, we met a girl from Iceland who was studying at the same language school as us. Her name is Iris, and she's pretty great. She was visiting Santiago for about a month, and I invited her to stay in our apartment for the last part of her time here. If you recall my mountain not-climbing debacle in Quito, Iris was there for that. She was an Icelandic child star. She's got killer taste in music. She backpacked solo through South America. She's pretty cool. She also spent the holidays with us.

Iris slaves over making the salad for our holiday feast.

Because most of our group would be spending Christmas with their host families, we all decided to have an early Christmas celebration at the apartment. The night included a mandatory dress code of red and green, dinner, and a gift exchange.

Ryan and Sophie adorned in red and green, with a comically
large wine bottle that we found in the apartment.

Adding the finishing touches to the chicken Parmesan and pasta.

The group with our tiny, tiny Christmas tree.

However, the highlight of my Christmas was being welcomed into the home of Ryan's host family for the holiday. I wasn't able to spend Christmas with my host family, and his made me feel so welcome. Christmas is meant to be spent with family, and sometimes that's your actual family, and sometimes it's your friends who feel like family, and sometimes it's a Chilean family that you've only met a handful of times, who doesn't know anything about this pasty-white gringa, who is pretty patient as she tries to speak to them in Spanish. Christmas Eve we went to a outdoors Mass and then to a dinner at the host grandparent's house, where we ate a typical Chilean dish called loco, which is basically a GIANT mollusk. Then the family exchanged gifts. They even got me something, which was incredibly sweet. I also spent Christmas day with them as they had an asado (basically a really great barbeque), swam in the pool, and played games in their backyard. I wish I had a picture of the family to post on here, but I sadly don't. Maybe I'll be able to get my hands on one some time. Basically, though, they're great, and that's the part you should remember.

And that was Christmas. I spent New Years camping near Valparaiso, where we went New Years Eve to watch fireworks over the ocean on a hill with Chilean families who sprayed confetti and silly string everywhere as the clock struck midnight. Definitely an experience I'll never forgot. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too nostalgic about Christmas in the United States. Nostalgia would probably be my greatest weakness if I were a superhero. It's just hard not to think about midnight Mass, the windows of the car fogging over as we creep along the streets looking at lights on Christmas Eve, the scent of peppermint and candle wax, the crunch that grass has to it after a frost, the sounds of your family's laughter from a room away, wool sweaters. Christmas in the United States is just special to me, but this Christmas was special, too.

"In order to understand the world...

... one has to turn away from it on occasion." - Albert Camus

In true Sarah style, I've started procrastinating quite a lot, specifically, with my blog posts; however, the other aspects of my life have also been affected, specifically, the tidiness of my bedroom. I have a whole lot to catch you up on... so I might be banging out a couple of these posts rapid fire in the next week. Why in the next week? Well, starting January 15, I'll be gallavanting around South America for a few weeks during my summer vacation. It's a rough life, folks, but I'm willing to bear this burden for all of us. Because of these travels, I'll be rather disconnected from the world until late February, at which point I'll spend time trying to update you again.

Where to begin? A few weeks after Thanksgiving, all of the members of ChACE here in Chile went on our annual retreat. The whole retreat was... well... unreal. We had the privilege of spending a weekend in some houses along the coast in Zapallar, Chile. Everything was just incredibly gorgeous. The houses were amazing. The sunsets were beautiful. And it was a great opportunity for all of us to spend one last weekend together before people started packing up and moving back to the United States.

The house where we spent most of our time was about a stone's throw away from the Pacific Ocean. The view of the house and the view from the house were breathtaking.

The house that where we spent most of our weekend.

View from said house.

The first day we took a walk along a stone path that skirted the coastline and led to a larger beach. Of course, we stopped along the way to take some photos and just kind of bathe in the overwhelming awe of the scenery.

Close up.

Far shot.

There are stray dogs EVERYWHERE in South America. Truth.

The rest of the weekend, we just spent time enjoying our surroundings and good company. Living in South America, I'm in an almost constant state of wondering how I ever got such good fortune to find myself drowning in all these blessings. One evening we all had a chance to go around in a circle and share anything we wanted to with the group. Almost everyone there was in the ACE Program through Notre Dame previous to participating in ChACE (an offshoot of ACE). On a basic level, at least, they all knew one another. They all had a previous life of community with one another in some fashion. Coming from the Magis Program at Creighton University. I was an outsider. Every person I've met since leaving Nebraska has been completely new to me. And it was something that I had a lot of anxiety about before coming to Chile. I was leaving years worth of communities in Nebraska, and I was leaving for the first time. Usually, when someone wants to move away from home for a while, they choose another city in their country. Not only did I choose a city in a different country, but I chose a city in a county half way around the world, and I chose to go there alone. But, as I've said before, I am not alone, not in the slightest. That day, I told the group that not only did I feel as though I had been welcomed into the ACE and the Notre Dame family, but also I feel as though I'm very much an integral part of that family. So, it's easy sometimes to feel a little displaced down here... because I painfully and ardently miss my life in the States, but it's also hard to feel sad when I'm surrounded by so much love. It's also hard to feel sad when I'm having the time of life. This type of thing doesn't happen to normal people.

Look at this ridiculous sunset.

This is me, watching said sunset.

So we went to Zapallar. It was pretty incredible. Everything is pretty incredible. In the next several days I plan to tell you a little bit about spending Christmas and New Years outside the United States. I'll also tell you about my six-day mission trip I went on with my school. Then I'll spend a month and half traipsing around Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. What is this life?

The whole group at Zapallar.