Merry Christmas?

From when we are children, we learn that Christmas is the most important holiday of the year, not necessarily because of Jesus Christ, because a lot of people I know don’t even go to church on Christmas. Christmas is the time of year when everyone SHOULD have time off of work, gifts are exchanged, old friends converge on their childhood cities that they’ve abandoned for college or jobs, and most importantly, you eat like you will never eat again.

I didn’t realize that I was a big Christmas person until I realized that the Italian and I would be spending it alone. Its not that I wasn’t excited for us to spend our first Christmas together, but in my eyes Christmas has always been a group activity. Unfortunately we don’t really know anyone in Cotonou, which is where we spent our Christmas.

We are staying at a house for girls which is supported by an Italian NGO and run by Franciscan priests, and on Christmas eve, Frere Maxim invited us to celebrate Christmas with them. 🙂

So Christmas morning we hopped in a truck and drove to another huge center for boys, supported by Italians and run by priests. We went to mass, of which I understood 40% of the words, but since it was Catholic and mass is standardized across the globe I was able to keep up and say my prayers and English. After mass, the girls sang, the boys played the drums and everybody danced until there was sweat dripping down faces and shirts sticking to backs. It was a good ole time.

After mass we ate a huge lunch. There was about 90 of us total and even though no one sat next to us, I was happy to be around so many people. For the first course we had a delicious bean soup with some mystery meat that I refused to eat. I gave mine to the Italian. We later found out it was lamb. If you ask me it was the tongue of a lamb. YUCK! The second course was chicken with rice and spicy sauce. We passed on the spicy sauce. Frere Maxim was kind enough to give us some wine and they even had champagne. The kids all looked so happy!! The little ones received juice boxes and the big ones had their choice of a bottle of soda all to themselves. I was just happy to finally see these kids smiling.

After lunch their was a bit of a talent show. Most people danced but one group of boys put on a skit in which one of them dressed up as a girl. It was pretty funny. Even though I dozed off for about 30 minutes, it was quite an enjoyable time.

After that, the Italian got the best Christmas gift ever, he finally got to play football, and since he had on flip-flops, he played barefoot like everyone else. 🙂

We left around six and had to share the backseat of a car with an Italian priest who spat on me when he talked and put his hand on my leg for a little too long.

For dinner we ate at an Italian restaurant where the food was okay but they gave you waaaaaayyyy too much. We finished that with an ice cream cone and home we went.