New Year's Eve

I'll be the first to admit it. S. and I are kind of boring when it comes to partying. The last 3 New Year's Eves we have spent eating dinner with S.'s family, on a plane, and eating dinner with S.'s family respectively.

This was our first New Year's Eve alone!

I know it's a Chilean tradition to cook a big meal and eat it really late so you're just about finishing right around midnight. S.'s mom always cooks a FEAST.

S. and I wanted to continue the tradition so we bought a loaf of bread, toasted it in our new toaster (which is a HUGE deal in this country. Chileans tend to toast their bread right over the stove), and ate the bread with some cream cheese. It wasn't even light cream cheese...we were feeling really crazy!

Around 10pm S. conked out. I woke him up at 11 to assure that he wouldn't spend N.Y.E. sleeping, although I'm sure he would not have minded in the least.

Then...

I received a mysterious facebook message. Alright, so it wasn't really mysterious, but it was unexpected. When we first moved in, I met a gringa up at our building's rooftop pool. She facebooked me and mentioned that her Chilean husband's family was coming over and they were going up to watch fireworks on the roof. We were invited.

And all of a sudden N.Y.E. plans materialized right before my very eyes. Around 11:30 we headed up to her apartment on the 17th floor. We were in the elevator with a big group of people also going to the 17th floor...also going to the same apartment. They were my gringa friend's Chilean husband's family. They were really old but shockingly hilarious and fun, as well as ridiculously nice. We all went up to the rooftop together and the show began.

I was mesmerized by fireworks for a good half hour, and then no sooner had the first display finished but another started, this time coming from a different Santiago neighborhood.

The fireworks ended and the younger relatives headed out to party while the older relatives went home and to bed I presume. Or maybe they went out to party too, what do I know?

My gringa friend and her husband (We'll call them A. and O., respectively) were staying in because they have a kid. Well, the kid is actually the husband and his ex-girlfriend's daughter, but she lives with her dad part of the time and happened to be staying with him on N.Y.E.

S. and I were staying in because we have a kid too. HA! JK. We were staying in because we're boring. Actually, no. I didn't want to go out exclusively because I don't like driving places on N.Y.E. There are too many stupids on the road. My grandpa was killed by a drunk driver. I was paranoid about drunk driving even before that, but after the incident in which my grandfather's van was hit head on by a car that flipped over, bounced over the median of the highway and smashed into him at 70 mmph, now I'm a paranoid FREAK.

We ended up staying at A. and O.'s apartment just talking and drinking wine with them until 4 in the morning. It was much more laid back and our style than any big party would've been and I think we had just as much fun, if not more, than if we would've went out. Hanging with people who totally get the cross-cultural differences that make being in a Chilean/U.S. relationship hard is truly amazing. We chatted about anything and everything for 3 hours.

Some of the topics touched upon-

*Chilean women are like Jesus-they can take a loaf of bread and feed massive amounts of people. Seriously, my MIL spends half as much on groceries as I do, and makes better and more filling meals for 3 times the amount of people.

*Why Chileans don't sell pants big enough to fit gringo asses. Seriously, the Chileans have an obesity rate just as high as we do. So why is a size 8 often the largest that a store carries? During my second semester here I gained weight and I was up to a size 10. Whenever I would ask sales people at the stores for a size 10 they would look at me in utter disbelief as if I were asking them, "Excuse me, do you possibly have a pair of jeans large enough to fit the Jolly Green Giant?"

*People in Santiago are unbelievably rude and mean. But it's not because they're Chilean, like many people seem to think, it's because they live in a big city. For example, A. told us about her New Yorker cousin who basically left them behind on the subway when they couldn't keep up because they were loaded down with suitcases after just getting off a flight from Chile. See, it's not Chileans that are evil, it's Big City'ans who are evil.

It was so fun. I'm really happy we rang in 2008 doing something besides sitting on our new futon picking our noses and yawning. Thanks A. and O.!