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.