Christmas in Moro Moro

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas!
Well, it happened. Internet in Moro Moro is officially a thing of the past. The nearest working station is in Vallegrande (where we are now), a two-hour drive away. It´s amazing how strange it feels to not have the world at our fingertips just a short walk from the house. However, we´re not complaining, because this holiday season we´ve already received a half dozen calls from family to make sure we know that lots of people wish us a Merry Christmas. No doubt those calls were expensive, so we are extremely thankful to be in contact during the holidays.
Christmas in Moro Moro started Christmas Eve. Before that day, we had seen hardly any decorations, seen hardly any visitors in town, and heard hardly anyone talking about the holiday. There wasn´t even a tantalizing display of Christmas candy at the tienda! Due to this lack of external cues that we should be celebrating, we decided to get things started ourselves. We made a bunch of cookies, wrapped them in pretty paper and ribbon, and went to the homes of all the people we´ve met so far to deliver them. This process started the morning before Christmas Eve, and is still not completed. This is because every cookie delivery is accompanied by a 2-hour chat, which, if not adequate to boost our Christmas spirit, at least started to put us in a celebratory mood.
The first official festivity was a Christmas Eve mass at the Catholic church. The mass actually lasts from 9 to midnight, then most of the folks go home to a big family dinner after the service. We showed up at 9 (silly gringos), and the service started at about 9:30 with the singing of Christmas carols. Our favorite was Gloria en Excelsis Deo, which apparently has about 20 verses. It was our favorite because the chorus is the same everywhere, and we sang along all 20 times it came up as loudly as we could. I also noticed that most of the people didn´t know all the words to the songs and would kind of mumble the words they missed, so I started doing the same thing and was surprised to find myself not embarrased at all! We skipped out of the service early to attend a dinner in the house of a family that has been extra nice to us. That late at night, we were having trouble communicating in Spanish, so mostly what we enjoyed was the food and being around people who cared about us.
We woke up Christmas morning to booming and banging in the streets. Apparently all the kids spend their Christmas money on firecrackers, and the best place to shoot them off is in the ravine right by our house. We ate papaya for breakfast (a little too tropical to feel normal, but delicious nonetheless), then I opened my present from Andy. He got me a basketball so we can get some games going on the high school court. The only ball he could find with air in it has a giant picture of a nameless, angry-looking player dribbling on it. Kind of weird to put a basketball player on a basketball, but whatever. We had a big lunch, then hung out doing a puzzle with some of the neighborhood kids who kept wandering in our front door. More than twice I had to play the mean-lady and tell them to get out of my house with their lighters and bottle rockets, but it was fun anyway.
Christmas evening, one guy in town threw a huge party for about half the people in town (we haven´t figured out who gets invited and who doesn´t, but we were invited, so we went!). There was lots of loud music, food, dancing, and (too much) drinking. The host and a few friends kept coming around trying to pour us glasses, but we would just sip a little and offer the rest to the person next to us. I bet Andy said the word "poquito" ("just a little bit") about 30 times. He managed to drag me out onto the dance floor exactly one time, and I guess I can admit it was fun. We´re not sure what to do about drinking and dancing yet, so we didn´t want to overdo anything. It seems that about most of the people we meet think it´s great, and even culturally required, that we participate, but there are others that are against things of that sort, so we´re trying to balance that somehow.
All in all, it was a very festive day. However, I realized how tied to external factors (presence of family, favorite foods, certain decorations) that my feelings about Christmas are. I´m not sure what we´re learning from this experience yet, but it certainly has something to do with the realization that God --and the reasons that we celebrate things he´s done--should not be tied in our minds to places, people, customs, or culture (and certainly not to tiny Snickers bars with Christmas trees on them, which always put me in the Christmas spirit). We haven´t figured all these feelings out yet, but I guess you could say we´re thankful for the chance to do something different. Even so, I miss you all!! And I miss snow, and our family and friends, and everything!! Until next time - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!