My 1st Vincy Christmas

The holidays are upon us!
Christmas has come and gone; Boxing Day was yesterday; and New Year's awaits...

I checked with some people in my community to see if there would be any holiday activities in my village. Things here are rather low-key and quiet (more than normal) in my village for Christmas, so that left me with time to spent on my own for the holiday. There was a party--also called a fete or bashment--at our community center late last night for Boxing night.

Now I've grown up around the Christmas holiday, but I didn't know what Boxing Day was. Sure, I'd seen it on calendars, but whenever I ask someone (even here) I didn't get an informed reply. Turning the to power of the internet and wikipedia--Boxing Day is supposedly a day of charity when gifts are given to those less fortunate. Some still hold that tradition but for many countries, it has become a bank and consumer shopping holiday. The mass retail sales are akin to the U.S. Black Friday/day after Thanksgiving sales. Snopes.com also disproved that is not the holiday to clear the post-Christmas boxes from the house.
Just figured in case anybody else was wondering too.....

We all met on Christmas Eve Day--although we didn't have a white holiday, we did have plenty of rain on and off the past few days.

So Christmas started with me collecting some goodies to bring up to Stephs and contribute to the food--I gathered coconuts from the tree in my backyard and sorrel flowers from the bush in the front and grabbed the breadfruit I was saving. At sun-up I went to the farm and harvested some dasheen leaves to make callalou. We had planted to make our feast with a Vincy theme. Took a van up to Chateau--no more than a 30 min ride--and met with Scott, Steph, and Laird.

The boys decided to go for a hike and wanted to go to Trinity Falls, an estimated 5 hour or so trip...but with all the on and off rain decided to hike Dark View Falls which was much closer. I would have taken pics of this part, but with all the rain decided against it. This was my 3rd time to Dark View and each time I find something new to explore. This time we learned of a mystery 3rd waterfall up in the hills and made it our mission to find it. After climbing around in mountain bush, vine, steep slope, and at time no trail at all--we finally found the location. Sadly, I was the only one to reach the 3rd falls since part of way up involved trusting some vines and climbing up--perhaps I should have been thinking a bit more of safety first... Next time I'm bringing some rope (yeah...I packed rope when I came here) and will help the others climb up.

We spent some time swimming in the 2nd falls and regressed to a elementary kids state--making a somewhat smooth rock into a water slide. Standing at the base of the falls and looking at our surroundings, I'd say that we all were capturing the moment--it was gorgeous. Our little expedition ended with a grapefruit harvest. Once before Scott, Steph, and I used a big stick to knock down some grapefruit; this time Laird and I went into the tree with a big stick and really whacked down some citrus goodness. We must have collected some 20-25 grapefruit at least. Laird stayed for a bit after the hike, but eventually went back home.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out. We roasted the breadfruit for the next day. Steph made an awesome pizza with eggplant, onion, and tomato. It was the firs pizza I've had since coming here. Yeah, pizza is available--but at EC$8 a slice in town, I haven't decided to go for that treat yet.

The next day was the day of food goodness. Before the food, we took a traditional swim in the sea and the water was great despite the heavy waves. For breakfast, we had oatmeal and banana fritters (courtesy of Steph) and some really good juice--a blend of orange, grapefruit, and coconut water. Around mid-day we walked to our APCD's (in-country boss) house, since he lives in Chateau, and sang to him 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'.

Later on we made our dinner feast and all pitched in to make it taste even better. The deserts, ginger beer, and black wine were gifts from Steph's home stay parents. Sweet chunks with dumplings, callalou, steamed banana & plantains, fried breadfruit, mashed wild yam with garlic, onions, and honey, yellow cake, black cake, black wine, ginger beer, and sorrel drink all came together to form a mighty feast. We ate very well and had plenty of leftovers. We learned that blending the 3 of these holiday drinks was very tasty--bringing out our inner bartender. ^_^

Of course it wouldn't be Christmas holiday without one of the many over-played movies of the season. Steph had a copy of A Christmas Movie--which was selected over my copy of The Muppet Christmas Carol; rest assured that I will still watch the muppets later. lol. We played Uno, having forgotten how much fun that game can be. By then it had gotten really late and closed an awesome day.

The next day it was a leftovers day and a few games of Boggle. If you have never played that one--I highly recommend it. We had thought the vans would be running on Boxing Day; we were wrong. So I began my nice long walk back to Spring Village--Scott living much farther opted to stay another night till the vans ran on their normal schedule. No worries, I got picked up part way by someone I knew and dropped off at home. I was surprised though at how many people tried to buy my cutlass from me...but I enjoyed their reaction when I told them that I actually used it regularly and wasn't interested in selling.

Later last night, one of the local guys XC (who I also do banana harvest with) was putting on a party at our community center. It was the normal....loud music and drinks. They started with a free party for the younger kids that ended around 10pm. After shuffling everybody out, we had a party for the adults that went till 3am. I finally got to bed around 5, but it was worth it.

Hope your holiday went well too.
Stay happy and well
ciao tutti
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn

Here's a few pics to wrap up:
Find the whole album on Facebook at this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5866&l=d8dc2&id=1627482248

freshly roasted breadfruit

starting to make the sorrel drink

our feast

YUM!

Steph with Ginger Beer, Me with Sorrel Drink, and Scott with Black Wine

XC and me dancing at the party--this would be a better pic if it was focused. >.<