christmas abroad was strange. it´s weird to see the holiday not blown wayyy out of proportion. we all gripe that america goes sooooo overboard with christmas, but when it´s not there you miss it. at least we did. we saw a few trees set up here and there, in malls or tiny ones in stores, but there wasn’t much christmas music, only two santas seen the whole month, little to no christmas lights, and just a lot less hoopla.
on christmas day about 1/2 of el calafates town shops were open and we walked around much of the day. it was weird that it didn’t seem much different than any other day. out of the numerous, numerous stores we went into we only got 2 “feliz navidades”! weird, right?
…although here it is all about christmas eve and christmas day is really secondary anyways.
on christmas eve we had adinner that our hostel offered for $30. there were about 20 of us in a cozy room with music. we had grilled vegetables, salad, roasted potatoes, steak, a brownie with ice cream, pannetone, candied nuts, chocolates, a bottle of wine, and a glass of champagne. it was festive and nice.
we were seated at a table with three other girls from california, who happened to be the only other americans in the room (actually they are some of the VERY few americans we´ve met), and after enjoying the whole meal seated together, at the end of the night, our champagne was poured and in a toast michael said, “merry christmas” and we all repeated back “merry christmas” … and then 30 seconds later we all realized that every person at the table, except for me, was jewish!
merry christmakah!
(largo argentina in el calafate, argentina)
