Early Site 3: Christmas, new years, parties!

My friends and I in Mexico City for new years.

Posadas - A posada is one of the parties leading up to Christmas. Every night people gather outside of one of the houses in the community to pray the rosary and they bring food to share. It’s a great community social event. Here are some pictures! One is while we were praying (why I took it descreatly), one of from a piñata that we had, and then another is from a marathon during one of the celebrations. We ran 8-9 miles together.

I hit a dog while doing the piñata😔

I didn’t know it could move side to side I thought it was just up and down 😂

Navidad - Christmas we had a huge feast together as a family. Typically they eat pozole and tamales, they drink ponche a sweet drink that’s like tea but mostly fruit. I made ginger cookie with fresh ginger! They weren’t ginger snap because I didn’t let them cook long enough. In the morning they open one gift, but they get more gifts on January 6th for Día de Reyes or Three Kings Day which is more widely celebrated. More on that below.

Left to right there’s Tadeo one host nephew, Nicolas another, and the little one is Luna, Nico’s sister and my niece. They challenged me to make a coke bottle so I decided Pepsi but it didn’t fit so we put Pep 😂

Despedida de Jacobo (Send off party for Jake)- Jake, the previous volunteer at my site, came back from his two month trip across Mexico into Guatemala and Beliz so my host family threw a pig party for his send off. He gave me a lot of tips and stories from his service! It was nice hearing from someone who went through a similar experience as me.

As a gift, they gave Jake a miniature of himself 😂

Visit Karina - I visited my friend Karina in Guanajuato for a day. It was short but it was really nice to see her, meet some of her family and friends, and in the evening, we went to a quinceañera party.

Jaripeo - I went to a rodeo. It was pretty intense! Afterward there was dancing.

México City New Years - it was a lot of fun! We stayed in a sort of hostel AirBnb, explored the markets, went to the Museum of Archaeology, and at 11:59 pm we all ate 12 grapes before midnight came! It was a lot of fun I can’t wait to go back!

Here you can see that we got dim sum, Turkish food, and played some Connect 4 in a cafe. It was great!!

Día de Reyes - This was what really felt like Christmas morning. The kids got a ton of gifts including bikes, games, and all sorts of stuff!

On Día de Reyes, the have a special bread called Rosca de Reyes. It’s a circular bread and inside of it is one, or multiple, figures of baby Jesus. If the little figure is in your slice, YOU have to make tamales for everyone in another celebration in February. There were around 5 or so in our Rosca so almost everyone or their spouse got one! I didn’t have any baby Jesus in mine but I’m sure I’ll still help with the tamales, and gladly so!

Pictures above: the figures of Jesus in our Rosca, a celebration with Los Reyes Magos and Sonic (seriously 😂) that was done a few days later by a kids group from Querétaro, and the Monopoly that was given to my nephew that I thought them to play.

Eso fue todo en este post. ¡Gracias por leer y hasta la próxima!