"Winter" in Ecuador!

I guess there's no real winter break for me this year.  Which is fine.  Going to work (along with the almost 70-degree weather) make being away from home during the holidays a lot more bearable.  In fact, it hardly even seems like the Christmas season at all.  Atenas employees worked all week last week, and this week we're working until Thursday.  So I guess in total I have 2 days off, this Friday and next Monday.  Still, I think we should have had a bit more time off.  And our students only got this week off.  Oh well, Christmas has passed and the new year is right around the corner.

I spent Christmas Eve over at one of my coworker's houses.  It was really nice to spend the day with her and her wonderful family.  Our dinner was quite late, but tasty nonetheless.  While some families are accustomed to eat turkey and ham for dinner, we had chicken.  They also make some Ecuadorian tamales which are typical of this time of year, but I don't like them.  Individually, nothing is offensive, but once you mix it all together…tooootally offensive to me.  My roommates and I were talking about it, and it reminded us of that one Friends episode where Rachel makes the Thanksgiving desert and Joey says: "Custard, good!  Jam, good!  Meat, good!"  Right, Joey, maybe everything tastes good individually, but once it's all put together…eh, not so much.  No offense to anyone who does like these tamales I'm talking about, though!

Anyway, my roommates all work at another school, and since they actually did get vacation time, they all went on trips.  Becca and Mark went to Chile and Argentina, and Emily went back home to Michigan.  We're all meeting up in Quito this weekend to commence this new year!  I'm excited to see all of them again!  I'm also going to, hopefully, go visit my host family at some point.  Yayy!  It'll be a great start to this 2012 year.  Still can't believe that 2011 is almost over.  I never thought graduation would ever get here -- in fact, I remember getting my "Class of 2011" shirt freshman year of college and thinking to myself, "this day will never come," and now it's come and passed.  Oh boy, I'm getting old.

Also, this blog post is starting to drag on and not really have a purpose, so I'm going to stop it right there.  I probably won't be updating this thing until next year, so talk to y'all then!

Lot of love and hugs and kisses!
Stephanie