A singed arm hair christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the finca del niño!!!

I hope the Christmas season and New Year were full of the peace and hope that only baby Jesus can bring.

It has been a while since my last entry, and as action packed as it has been, I will just give a short account of Christmas and New Years.
Christmas on the finca this year was as beautiful and joyous as I could have hoped for. Christmas eve morning, I woke up at 5 am to help 5 teenage girls make almost 500 tamales (okay so this number might be slightly exaggerated, but not by much!) I stirred a pot of corn paste over an open fire until all the hairs on my arm were thorough singed and I thought that I may have dislocated my shoulder, and then I stirred about 30 minutes longer. Just between you and me, I am not sure that the taste reflects the amount work that is put into tamale making. I think the richness of the tamale comes in the time spent with family and friends watching your arm hairs burn off.
After bandaging my arms, I collapsed on my bed for a quick nap before mass. After mass, the finca and our neighbors gathered to share a traditional Honduran Christmas dinner of tamales, chicken sandwiches and coke. After stuffing our mouths, we watched Christmas plays that the kids prepared that went smoothly until a spider appeared on stage and scared one of the angles. As she ran screaming off the stage the rest of the angles began stomping in a futile attempt to kill the interrupting spider. It took me about 10 minutes to regain composure after my laughing fit, and the rest of the night I had to fight spewing coke out my nose when thoughts of Diana, the poor spider and killer angles popped into my head.
As Christmas eve is the big day of celebration at the finca, Christmas day was pretty low key. The volunteers spent the day passing around the phone so we could talk with our families, eating chocolate, and swimming in the ocean.
New years eve was just as memorable. After an evening communion service, we all filed into our youngest girls’ house for more tamales (yes!) and coke and dancing. Exhausted from the previous week, I was looking forward to the dancing to end around 10pm and me hitting my pillow in a deep sleep by 10:15. No such luck. The dancing only paused long enough to shoot off a few fireworks (aka small explosives) and then continued well past 2am!
Early the next morning, Laura (another volunteer), sister Margarita and I all piled into a pickup and headed off for Buenos Aires to celebrate the baptism of a former volunteer’s son. Buenos Aires is a tiny village about 1½ hike up a small mountain with no electricity. The view is possibly the most breathtaking in Honduras. That night we shared a meal of beans, coajada and tortillas de maiz by candlelight as our host shared stories of living in rural Honduras, the effects of the US economy on Honduras (yes, we feel the US economic problems here as well) and his hopes for the new year. The next morning we woke up at 5am to hike up the hill and watch the sunrise.
Beginning 2009 with star gazing, baptisms, sunrise watching and great conversations, I can feel nothing but hope for the year. I feel so blessed to be apart of this incredible mission for another year and am so thankful for the opportunity to experience the Love that envelops this project.

I hope that you all are well, and look forward to hearing from you soon!!!
love,
Jenny