Navidad en Argentina

 Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas!

Our small little Christmas tree all lit up!

Having Christmas in Argentina was a very different experience. Here Christmas isn't as commercialized, meaning there isn't decorations in every shop, many special sales for Christmas or anything on tv about it. This started off the feeling that it wasn't really Christmas. Not hearing Christmas Carols on the radio, seeing any Christmas lights or having anyone counting down the days until Christmas, left me feeling a bit weird. Here Christmas is more about the family coming over and sharing the day with them, of course this is a similarity in Christmas's all over the world but here it just stood out more because there wasn't the "normal things", that I associate with Christmas.

Christmas Eve
In Argentina Christmas starts on Christmas Eve and is celebrated with a dinner. We all got dressed up nicely and dressed the tables nicely, so this felt like a really special occasion. After our invited guests turned up 1 hour late (normal here apparently) we quickly started the dinner. We had a 'Cena Frio' (Cold Dinner) where there was salads, cold meats and other interesting foods. Its Typical for my family to have this then Asado the following day and night, but many just eat Asado for 2 days straight! After eating dessert, we had champagne with lemon ice cream! It was a very surprising taste but pretty yummy. After that we had about 5 minutes until 12am and when our clock chimed we all cheered and did a toast for 'Feliz Navidad'. At that point the fireworks started. We quickly went upstairs to the balcony and we were able to see the fireworks all over Roca going off. We set off a few of our own fireworks but they were a bit of a let down to be honest haha. They didn't go too high and were a lot different than ones I've seen and used for Guy Fawks in New Zealand. Anyway that didn't matter to much as it was quite funny seeing them and sharing the laughs with everyone else. After more talking and hanging out with my host sister I went to bed about 2am while mostly everyone else stayed up until 3.30am.

Fireworks in our backyard

Champagne and Lemon Ice Cream!

Brenda (host sister) and I on Christmas Eve

Christmas day

Asado, Christmas Lunch

We got up at about 10am on Christmas Morning, the latest I've ever gotten up for Christmas! We got together and exchanged gifts. It was a very simple gift giving, 1 or 2 presents per person. I gave everyone a framed photo and something special to remember New Zealand from me. It got pretty emotional as we realised the love that had gone into exchanging the gifts and what it meant that I was there celebrating with them. We had a Christmas breakfast of Pan dulce (a loaf with dried fruits), bread with homemade jam or cheese and ham, nougat and other sweet treats. This of course was accompanied by drinking mate and went on for a long time until everyone arrived. By 3pm all the lunch was ready, asado, empanadas, salads and other yummy things. There was my family and two other families there so it wasn't the biggest lunch I've had here. We got really nice weather (not too hot, 35 degrees) so all the younger people had a water fight with water ballons and buckets of water. The rest of the day was very chilled out, just chatting, watching movies and listening to music. For dinner we went to a Friend of the family's birthday dinner and were there until about 1.30 before we returned home

The Empanadas for Christmas Lunch

This is a screenshot of when I skyped home for Christmas. New Zealand got Christmas 16 hours earlier than Argentina so it was about 4pm on Christmas Eve when I was skyping my family opening their presents at 8am Christmas Morning. I admit it was quite hard to not be home for Christmas especially when my Christmas was pretty relaxed and we didn't do too much here. It passed just like another day, and I'm that much closer to have another Christmas BBQ when I get back to NZ.

Traditional Argentinan Barbeque Asado

This is the Asado that I have been telling everyone at home about since I got here. Finally I have a good photo, so here it is. Basically they make a fire one side then on the other they put the hot ashes and coals to cook the meat. They put really big pieces on first then once its all cooked they cut it up. The flavour of the meat its a smoked taste and the meat itself has a lot of fat before it's cooked so when it is cooking that seeps into the meat resulting in the meat being moist and tender.

   

My Host Dad preparing the Asado

Basically Christmas here was different to NZ in the fact that the "Christmas feel" wasn't really there, without the carols, lots of presents, Christmas crackers and traditional decorations. It was the same that is was mostly relaxed and spent with family. I liked it here, and it was great to experience a different countries way of celebrating Christmas.