I thought that I was going to be very homesick and maybe
even a little depressed this year over the holidays because it was my first
time being so far away from home. Surprisingly though, I did npt really miss
home too much because I was having so much fun. My chapter president arranged
for us, all four students in the Johor chapter and 6 from Kedah, to stay with a
Catholic host family for Christmas. From the 24th –28th I was placed with a lovely host family that attend the same church that I go
to. Another Italian exchange student named Selva was also placed in the same family which
made it more fun. Before I left my host family to go to the Christmas family, I
hung up Christmas stockings for each one and put their names on it. Inside were
small gifts and some sweets. It wasn’t much but it was the best I could do. I
hung them up in the middle of the night so that they could wake up and see that
“Santa” had come. They are Muslim so they do not celebrate Christmas, but I
still wanted to give them something because I love them and appreciate all that I have done for me.
From the minute that I met my Christmas host family they were so warm and kind to me and Selva. On the 24th of December we went to mass at 4 pm instead
of the traditional mass that ends at midnight because we have babies in the
family. One of them was only one year old and the other was two and they were
both equally as adorable. They would call us jie jie Jackie and jie jie Selva
(jie jie means older sister in Chinese). Afterwards we went to a resort that
they owned where we had a small party with turkey and spaghetti. We spent
practically the whole night singing Christmas carols because they had karaoke. The following day, on the 25th we stayed home but we had a lot of
visitors. We had two groups of visitors. Some came over for lunch and some for
dinner. All of the family and friends were very nice and kind to us. At the end
of the night we played games just like some that I would play in the US
involving Christmas presents.
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| Christmas tree at the mall |
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| The Stocking I made my Family |
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| The resort where we celebrated Christmas Eve |
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| The two youngest playing on stage |
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| Maxine, the youngest sister |
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| Selva and I at Legoland |
My Christmas celebration was pretty much a lot like how I
would have spent it in the U.S. All the family gets together and eat. Only the
food we eat back home is very special. We eat tamales on Christmas because I am
Salvadoran. We usually only eat these tamales on Christmas because they are
very difficult to make, they require an entire day to make and my mom and my
aunts will still be cooking through the night. Sometimes they won’t finish
until 2 or 3 in the morning. Also I am not going to really celebrate New Year’s
because school starts on the 1st of January. I guess the start of a new year is not that important here.
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| Visiting a Buddhist temple |
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| All my host sisters and Selva |
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