We hope that you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I’m busy catching up with old posts that I’ve never finished, and here’s some pictures from our Christmas. 

 

It’s been a busy and fun time as Alejandro and Flora adjust to life with us. We also had the usual gang of Edwin, Benjamin, Elias and Jennifer join us to celebrate the holidays.

 

We also invited two guys from the home, Edwin and Juan Carlos, to join us for a few days of their break. We enjoyed spending extra time with them and loving them.

 

Christmas is celebrated very differently here. In the US most people go to candlelight services and sing “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve. Well, here we light lots of fireworks in order to bring joy to the world!

 

After the fireworks we make a fire and sit around talking and goofing off for as long as possible. Eventually everyone gets too tired and we go to sleep sometime after 3.

One thing that really impacted me when I first came to Guatemala was the way that they value relationships here. Long after most Americans would want to leave to be alone or go do something, Guatemalans just enjoy being together. Christmas and New Year’s perfectly exemplify this love of each other’s company. To be honest, at times it’s a little exhausting for me. I think that it’s both being American and an engineer, but I love that we get to love these guys and spend so much time with each other.