Merry Christmas

This is actually my first Christmas where I didn't wake up in my bed at my mom's house and have breakfast with my family. It's the first time I didn't see my extended family (mom's and dad's) and have dinner with them Christmas evening. It was interesting. We didn't do much today. Our friends walked around the deserted city while Kane and I scoured the internet for plush downtown housing. Kane and I went to the CBD (downtown) for a bit to see if anything was going on there, and it was basically a ghost town. Some shops were open (mainly Jewish or Israeli owned), but most were happily closed. So, we came back home to meet our friends and eventually went to the tourist beach area of town for dinner.

Dinner ended up being delicious, but started out crappy. As I have mentioned (complained) before, the restaurants here are really expensive. A normal cafe will cost about $20 a person as compared to $10 or $12 in the U.S. This keeps us frequenting crappier places that border on fast food or have only pre-made stock, which is unfortunate. We usually eat in. Tonight we went to a place for dinner where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. We browsed the menu for a few minutes then went up to order. As I ordered, the guy cut me off to tell me that they are only serving chicken and french fries (chips). No burgers, no salads, no nothing else on the menu. Awesome. Why didn't he tell us this as he stared at us while we were deciding from the menu? Jerk. I didn't really want french fries for my Christmas dinner (though I would have happily settled for a salad), so everyone else ate there and Kane and I went down to the Vegetarian Pizza place down the street. It was delicious, I was very happy. And the pizza man didn't even charge us full price for no apparent reason - score. So, Christmas was saved after all.

Christmas is big here, much like the United States. I hadn't realized that we had been missing the relentless and continual assault of holiday-itude while we were in Thailand, and I literally didn't miss it. They have the Christmas music in all stores here, decorations everywhere, children in little foam reindeer antlers, and even the Salvation Army donation collectors (although they didn't have the bell to ring...). It's relatively awful; I'm not a huge fan of the in-your-face mega-capitalist Christmas. I suppose it's nearly over now, so we can enjoy the sales and move on with our lives.

Tomorrow, the day after Christmas, is Boxing Day. This is celebrated throughout Commonwealth countries and has nothing to do with the sport of boxing. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_day. This isn't a holiday where people really do anything, but there are huge sales at all the stores, probably similar to the day after Thanksgiving. Kane and I need a bunch of clothes, so we're going to take a deep breath and release ourselves to be consumed by the masses tomorrow. It will probably be total madness; I'm a bit frightened. Kane and I both get pretty cranky pretty fast when we shop, so we'll see how we do.

This is also our last night with our visiting friends, which, among other things, means our last night of free internet. So, until our laptops get shipped over from SLO, we will be at the mercy of expensive internet cafes around town. We'll still be online frequently, but I probably won't blog with quite the fervor, so forgive me. Anyway, we both wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday. Hugs all around!