Ciao ciao

We are heading to France tomorrow to celebrate the end of the year. We are meeting our Colombian friends (remember the sisters we met in Spain?) and we are very happy about getting together again. We will all stay at Maria Teresa's house in Portes les Valence. This will be one of the reasons we will remember our time together, the fact that we will ALL stay at the same house! We will cook together, eat together, talk about anything and everything. I am sure we will have a great time, with great food and fantastic conversation.
I do not know if I will be able to post from France, but I will try. I will have pictures to share and great stories to tell. I am sure!
Ciao for now...

Holiday Memories

Not too bad for a beginer... My word today for Sunday Scribblings is Holiday Memories. I should have some of those stored someplace in my brain... let's start digging them out!
Kidding aside, I do have great memories of Decembers past. My birthday is in December -the 11th- and my mom would always make my birthday party around a holiday theme: Christmas tree cake, little stockings filled with party favors, red and green tableware, and so on an so forth. When I was little, I used to hate the fact that I had to wait a WHOLE year to get my presents, but as I got older I changed my mind. My birthday was my own personal beginning of the holiday season, then on the 16th the "Novena" would begin.
Here I have to stop and explain what a Novena is for those of you who are not Colombian. The "Novena de Aguinaldos" is a catholic tradition exclusive to Colombia. The 9 days before Christmas are celebrated by reading from a book of prayers. This book is written in old fashioned spanish, and it is the same all over the country. There have been attempts to modernize the language of the book, but they have been unsuccessful (thankfully, as I do appreciate the original text). The book includes some prayers for everyday, as well as a narration of Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem. Additionally there are traditional songs or "villancicos" that are a fundamental part of the novena - this is what kids really enjoy, playing the maracas, panderetas, drums, etc with gusto! You can hear a Novena from a block away. You DO NOT celebrate the Novena on your own, ever! (unless you just moved to Italy, and you do not know of any Colombians in the vicinity) So, you always invite your friends and family to your Novena, and they will host their Novena another night. Only 9 nights and so many friends... Sometimes one must "sacrifice" and go to more than one house, and eat until stuffed. As in any part of the world, all main celebrations revolve around food, and what great food!
OK, everyone still with me? So far we have birthday cake, followed by nine days of music, friends and good food! What else is there? Well, in my hometown Popayan, people make a beautiful dish called "Nochebuena" or goodnight. This dish includes some fried dough with sugar- hojaldra, a kind of plain donut -rosquilla, a fried cheese bread -buñuelo, an assortment of fruits cooked with sugar -desamargados, and dulce de leche -manjarblanco , Every family used to create a beautiful display with all these elements and send it on their best china to their neighbors! Can you imagine? When I was little only really good friends would exchange "Nochebuenas". It was a pleasure to know that there was going to be plenty of delicious sweets on the 24th.
Traditionally Colombians celebrate Christmas eve, with the last novena usually taking place at grandma's house. There would be a nice dinner, followed by the opening of presents. At midnight some people go to mass, and that night is when "baby Jesus" comes and brings the presents for the children. It was so exciting! We would dress up, sit down at a beautiful table, try a sip of wine, open some presents, and then try and stay awake to see baby Jesus... I was never able to stay up for long!
From Christmas on, one would focus on the creation of the "taitapuro", or "año viejo" which is a giant stuffed doll. It represents the old year, and it is filled with firecrackers and fireworks. In order to buy all this "special effects" one needed to collect money, and the most common way to do so was to create a toll gate of sorts on the neighborhood street. We would have a long rope, a tin can. and two children keeping guard. The rope was stretched across the road as a means to stop traffic, once we have accomplished this task, one child would approach the driver with the tin can and ask for money... easy piecy...
I realize that this was not the safest of traditions, but to see a "taitapuro" burn was something-else. Some people would get a little creative with the dummy, and they would make it look like their boss, or a disliked politician, or any other public figure that looked better when lit on fire!
As a counterbalance to all this fire, we would play with water (lots of it) on January 5th and 6th, or the Epiphany. My whole town would come out to the streets, water balloons in hand, and get everyone in sight wet! It was not really the whole town, but all the young people from the town, for sure! I am not sure where this tradition comes from, but it is sure a lot of fun.
It is midnight now, so it is officially Sunday, and I am taking a bow and retiring to my quarters. I have not edited, and I hope I won't regret it. The exercise was successful as far as getting me to write, I will have to read this post tomorrow and see if it is worth it. Good night!

While reading other blogs, I have found that the majority of the people writing them seem to know what they are doing. I, on the other hand, write when I feel like it, and sometimes there is a lot of time in between posts. I want to be a better blogger, so I have decided to follow in the footsteps of Sognatrice from Bleeding Espresso; She used to do Sunday Scribblings for a while. I enjoyed her posts and liked the idea for my own blog. This is a writing exercise, but a creative one. The writers behind this idea define it like this: "Sunday Scribblings was set up to provide inspiration and motivation for anyone who enjoys writing and would like a weekly challenge".
The premise of this challenge is that they will provide a new word on Saturday, and I will write about, around, after, inspired by this particular word on Sunday.
I hope I am up to the challenge!
See you on Sunday then...

Three friends about Paris

Remember my post about friends? I mentioned on that post my friends from my hometown Popayán, and the fact that I feel as close to them as I did when we used to play together as kids. Childhood friends are easy friends. No need to explain who we are, or where we come from. We know each other from the inside out. Of course people change, and some take paths that lead them to places we don't recognize or understand, and we mourn their loss.
I left Popayán after high school. I went to California as an exchange student, and came back to Colombia to study in Bogotá. I went home for holidays and vacations, and I stayed in touch with my friends via "the mom net" (back then, there was nothing like the Internet). Moms would let us know about our friends, who was getting married, who was living overseas, who was staying close to home. We would see friends sporadically, always in a hurry, a lunch in between other appointments. It didn't matter how much time went by, or how short the meetings were; we would pick up the conversation as if we had been together just the day before.
I left Colombia as many others did. My generation went every which way, and we all found a future in far away places. We keep on coming back to the town, we keep in touch, the mom net still does its job well, but the internet has made it really easy to be "close". When I moved to Italy, I found myself physically closer to a group of special friends: My best friend from childhood, Ana María lives in Israel, our friend Catalina lives in France and our other friend Claudia lives in Spain. We e-mailed each other often, planning a big get-together with all the families - we had to find a big enough space, close to everyone, and additionally we needed to find a time slot when all the children would be in vacation. Needless to say, we were a little overwhelmed by all of it, until Cata's husband suggested that we could meet by ourselves (what a wise man!) It took us very little time to find a date and a place: Paris, December 14, 15 and 16.
We were ready, and very excited until our friend Claudia, who is pregnant, was diagnosed with placenta previa... we were saddened by the news, but we knew there was nothing else to do other than planning another reunion to meet the baby! With this in mind, we went ahead with our plan and met in Paris.

I wouldn't dare to try and transcript all that we talked, suffice to say that my friend Cata's sister, who lives in Paris, said that we were going to "run out of words". We had such a great time! We talked until the wee hours of the morning, we walked to beautiful places, and eat fabulous food. We walked a lot, without a plan, just making sure that we were enjoying each other's company. We told each other all the little details that make our life special. We talked about our husbands and our children, and we laughed! We laughed so hard! It was everything that I remembered and more! I love my friends.

I am alive and well!

You would think that a big hole opened in the northwest of Italy and swallowed me, or my computer... but no. Everything is fine, just a little hectic at the moment. I am a year older and I guess my brain started to deteriorate! No, seriously, I had some internet problems (a 1,200 euro kind of problem), but it has been fixed, or so they say. I had to limit my access to the Internet until everything was streightened out. Of course my e-mail piled up, and I am still trying to catch up.
Additionally, I was out of town. I went to Paris for the weekend to meet with childhood friends from my hometown: Popayan. It was a lot of fun, and I wil give you all the details tomorrow. I am tired, cold and out of practice. Please be patient. I will be back tomorrow, I promise.

Good news, bad news

Well, here I am, writing offline... I am not complaining. Really. I am just telling it as it is. Ok, to summarize how I got to this point, I should take you back in time, like a week or so... remember that Fernando was in the States, and that he was bringing home a lot of goodies? Well, he arrived safely and he had no problems with his luggage. He enjoys some benefits as a "platinum" member of a certain airline that should remain nameless; he had two suitcases with him, one barely between the limits of the specified weight and another one BEYOND the limit. He was not charged extra for it, nor was he bothered by anyone because of it. We got everything we wanted, and now we are very happy AND very warm! But I am not getting to the point, am I? Well, Fernando decided to surprise me, and since my birthday is in December (tomorrow if you must know!) he bought me a new computer! Yes, I am the proud owner of a Mac-Book!!! YES!!!
I always got Fernando's second hand computers, as he is an engineer and he needs to update his hardware often. As an artist, I always wanted a Mac, but I was happy just to have a computer. That is until my 9 year old laptop decided to hibernate. ctrl+alt+del was my most common use for the machine. Talking on Skype was like playing voice charades. Needless to say I was very happy to get my dream computer! I had to wait a little to use it as all my information and all my files were on another hard disk that is not compatible with my new computer. OK, you must be wondering what all of this has to do with the fact that I am writing offline? Well, there are always ways in which we learn to appreciate what we have, and this usually happens when we no longer have them! In my case, I get my very first brand new computer, and Telecom is the instrument the universe chooses to show me how lucky I am. Telecom Italia had been calling Fernando for over a week, and since he was out of the country or at work, they never were able to talk to him. Finally, last week, I was able to talk the operator into telling me (the wife, not the account holder) whatever information they had for Fernando. Well, they were calling us because our bill was too high! What? A company calling a customer because they are paying too much? Yes, the operator tells me the bill is in the THOUSANDS of euros! WHAT? Yes, even though we requested a flat fee Internet service (about 20 euros a month), we are being charged by the hour, at the extravagant fee of 2 euros an hour! I keep my computer on most of the time, and the Internet is connected as soon as I turn the computer on... hence the super-bill of sorts. When talking to the operator I was able to tell him that this was a mistake, and that we would have never ordered the hourly fee and use it as often as we had. He was very polite, and he gave me a phone number to call to get everything straighten out. Up until this point I was very proud of myself and my Italian speaking abilities, but when it came time to call the service center, a machine answered my call, and I learned that I understand "human" Italian but not "machine" Italian. I called my relocation agent and she took care of the problem, or so we think. We have to wait until we get the bill in the mail, and then we can ask for a recalculation of the bill.
Some side effects of our little misunderstanding: they blocked my account for a while, and once service was reestablished, it shows that we are still paying the hourly fee... it can take only one second for someone to make a mistake and change my service from a flat fee to an hourly fee, but it would take 10 days to change it back!
This is the story of how it came to be that I am writing this entry offline.

Suitcase contents

Literally! What makes it in and what doesn't? What to bring back and what to leave behind? These are some of the questions my husband must be asking himself as he readies his luggage for the trip back to Italy. He is in the States as I write this post; and he has the not too easy job of getting everything in the list I gave him before he left.

Here I should take a moment to write about the global economy, the dollar versus the euro, the euro versus the lire, and so on and so forth... but I am not an expert, and all I can tell you is that we get paid in dollars, and that the dollar is going down, down, down... hence our predicament: Should Fernando buy another suitcase and pay for the extra luggage? Do I really need the cornbread mix from Trader Joe's? Or should an additional book take its place? The Wonka candy for Nick is coming no matter what, but what about all the other "stuff" like the kid's Tylenol, or the baking powder I so desperately need?

By now you must be thinking that I am a little crazy to ask for all this. I don't know if I am still too "new" to the Italian economy, but I check the prices and I do the math, and I can not bring myself to buy much more than the absolutely necessary here. Italy is known all over the world for its fashion industry, and here I am buying all my clothes on sale in the States. The price difference is extraordinary! Furthermore, some of the clothes that are popular here, all come from the US! I am talking about 10 year old's fashion here: O'Neill, Quicksilver, Converse, Nike, Gap, North Face, Timberland... You get the drill. Nicolas loves the fact that all things American are so popular amongst his friends, he takes some pride in pointing out that some of these companies started in California, his birthplace.

To further complicate this matter, we arrived to Italy ill prepared. We lived in Southern California for more than a decade, and we owned a couple sweaters, and a jacket or so. Our "winters" there are mild, not much rain, no wind. Well, now we are living in the north of Italy, in the mountains, near Switzerland and the Alps, and yes, I would not call our weather "mild". I know it could be worse, but this is cold enough for me, thank you very much! I am Colombian!!!

Fernando is buying coats, and scarfs, and gloves, and hats... I sound like Dr. Seuss... and how will he manage to get it all in two suitcases? Well, he is an engineer, I think he will be fine! We are ready for our early Christmas, sans gift wrap. I am still setting up the Christmas tree though.