La Noche Buena

The next day, Christmas Eve, is the big celebration day, not Christmas day. At about 10 am my project partner came to get me so that I could eat some of the pork that they had roasted the day before. So I get a big hunk of pork on a plate that he basically just tore right off the pig. They serve it with pan de casabe, which is sort of like a cracker/wafer, similar to Wasa Crackers, if you know what those are. Oh yeah, and no utensils. So I stuffed my face until I was ready to explode. After that is when I began drinking, switching off between rum and scotch, because that’s how they do things here. At about 12 came lunch when I had to eat more, even though I was full.

Then at about 2:30 I had to go home because the pork that my family cooked was ready, yeah more eating. After that I had to take a nap so I slept til about 5. I woke up, showered, drank some more and at 7 was dinner with the whole family. It consisted of pork, a potato salad type dish, salad, rice/beans, pan de casabe, apples and grapes and probably other stuff which I’m forgetting. I swear I was about ready to vomit all over the table from all that food.

At 8:30 we left, I thought to go to a party, but no, it was to a family friend’s house to eat yet another dinner. When we got there I saw that the table was all set and I thought it was some sort of joke, but it wasn’t. I barely ate a thing or I definitely would have vomited all over the place. They seemed kind of upset with me since I wasn’t eating and I got some dirty looks…but that’s how they roll here.

After that we went to drink some more, at first outside under some tents, and at about 12am we went back to the friend’s house where we partied it up til 3:30 or so. Before we left we all got served more food, which at that point I was hungry again because it had been about 6 hours or so, and I was used to eating ever other hour. No wonder they call the night before Christmas, “La Noche Buena,” or the good night, because it was very good.

The next morning I woke up around 10:30 or so, ate breakfast and went to a cockfight with my host dad. After watching the pig get slaughtered, this didn’t even phase me. I have a video of it and I’m trying to figure out how to upload it, as it is too big to upload to the blog.