2019 has come and gone, but the end of the year is always my favorite time. It's when we get to decorate our house and spend every last penny on food and decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. This year, however, we did things a little differently.
For one, we didn’t buy a turkey for Thanksgiving. Instead, we ordered from an amazing Venezuelan spot in Córdoba City, Argentina, called D'Lucas Gourmet. We’ve been ordering from them for about a year now and absolutely love their food. Since it’s spring and summer during the holidays here, we decided to skip turning on the oven and ordered out as much as we could. The meal might not have been traditional, but overall, it made for a lovely Thanksgiving.
Then, of course, came the second Comic-Con of the year, which you can read about here. But just a few short weeks later, Christmas rolled around, and I was battling the flu. Fortunately, a couple of cups of Vicks tea a day helped us still enjoy Christmas Eve.
Another big change for us in 2019 was the lack of gifts. Don’t get me wrong, we still bought gifts for ourselves, but we decided not to buy anything for anyone else. It may sound selfish, I know, but we’d learned that some of our friends felt uncomfortable with things like stocking stuffers and gift exchanges. When we asked one friend to make a wish list last year, she responded by saying, “I don’t feel comfortable asking my friends to buy me gifts.” We kind of pushed her into it, and afterward, we felt bad about it.
It turns out that Argentines aren’t big on buying gifts, which is a real shame because we feel completely different. We get a lot of joy from buying things for the people in our lives and seeing their reactions when they unwrap their gifts. But we learned the hard way that Argentines don’t like opening gifts in front of people. They’d rather take the gift home and open it there. Otherwise, they feel embarrassed. This isn’t just for Christmas presents either—it applies to birthday gifts, too. While we don’t quite understand their perspective, we respect it because, well, this is their country and their way of thinking. I’m sure they find our approach just as confusing.
On Christmas Day, we had a quiet celebration with just the two of us. The food was mostly whatever was left over from the night before, but we also made stuffing and served hallacas from a Venezuelan restaurant called Naguara Resto-Bar. They’re similar to the Puerto Rican pasteles my husband used to enjoy with his family in the States.
We spent New Year’s at the Sheraton Hotel in Córdoba City and had an amazing time. I’ll share more about what that was like in my next post.
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