Holidays to Remember

Early in the morning of December 19th, the Africa Mercy pulled into her spot in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After a twelve day sail, all of the crew were more than ready to set foot on dry land. By noon, we recieved clearance to leave the ship. By 12:01 my friends and I were on our way into town.
After several months in Benin, we all knew exactly where we wanted to head as soon as we entered a first world country: McDonalds. Now I'm not exactly the biggest fan of plasticy hamburgers and greasy fries, but somehow that first taste of the All-American fast food was incredibly satisfying. After our thrilling McDonalds trip, we headed to the park. For the first ten minutes in the park, I was in such shock over seeing well maintained, green vegetation that I could harldy move! After recovering from the shock of seeing a well kept garden, I played on the swing sets and climbing apparatuses with my friends for the entire afternoon.
After a few days of exploring, then a couple days of work, we had a five day holiday for Christmas. The first night of holiday was a sad one as we had to say goodbye to two of our dear roomates, Michelle and Bonny Jean. Of all the goodbyes I have said over the past 4 months, that day was most definately the hardest.
On Christmas Eve, Aimee decided to make a giant brunch for all of the younger girls on board. After the majority of our close friends left, Aimee Chelsea and I realized the need to bond with the newer girls on board. Aimee did a wonderful job preparing an elaborate brunch and recruited Chelsea and I to help out with a little bit of cooking in the morning. We had a great, relaxing morning enjoying a delicious meal of pancakes (made in 3 different varieties), hash browns, eggs, and fruit with about twenty of our fellow crew members.
On the evening of Christmas Eve, it is a Mercy Ships tradition for everyone to put a shoe out in the hallway and in the night crew members go around and place their presents in friends' shoes. It was so fun to wake up Christmas morning to discover a shoe full of candy and other little treats!
Christmas day was another wonderful and relaxing day. While I missed my family more than I can say, my roomates and I had a wonderful time having our own "family" Christmas celebration. In the morning we woke up to a wonderful array of delicious breakfast foods served in the dining hall. Aimee and I chose to attend the Christmas morning brunch in our pajamas, mine being fleece footie pajamas covered in polar bears and snowflakes while Aimee's get up looked similar to an 80's workout instructor. We recieved several complements on our choice of attire then headed back to our room to open presents. The three of us took turns opening the presents from our shoes, each other, and our families. Michelle and Bonny Jean had filled our stockings before they left but had carefully instructed us not to open them before Christmas morning. To our surprise, they had filled it with candy coal! While typically coal is considered a bad present, I must say that this coal was probably the best coal I have ever recieved. After opening presents, Chelsea and I headed over to the cabin of our friends Elliot and Julle, our adopted parents for the day. A few other friends came over as well and we all spent the afternoon telling stories, opening presents, and playing games.
On Christmas evening the city held a giant symphony concert just a mile from our ship. The giant outdoor concert was free to attend and ended at midnight with a beautiful fireworks display and loads of fake snow being shot into the night sky. It was a beautiful ending to an already great Christmas day.
The rest of the weekend was spent doing more exploring around the island of Tenerife. Since we really dont know much of what there is in each city, we decided to explore by picking a random bus and seeing where it might take us. The first time we tried this, it turned out wonderfully! We ended up in the most picturesque little town where we sat at a cafe and drank coffee, then explored a giant garden overlooking the mountains. Our other attempts at random bus choices have not turned out quite as picturesque, but still ended up making for great afternoons.
On New Years Eve, everyone decided to get dressed up and go out for an evening in town. To our dismay, New Years Eve traditions dont start quite as early in the evening as they do in the States. When we headed out at 10 o'clock, the streets were completely empty! We wandered up and down the streets looking for something to do. Finally, around 11:30 we heard music in the streets. We followed the music and stumbled upon a street all lit up with colorful lights. At the front of the street a stage was set up and a live salsa band was playing. As the clock ticked closer and closer to midnight, the street slowly began to fill up, and by 11:55 it was so packed we could hardly move! As the countdown began, we tried counting along in English, but soon we realized their countdown had not begun at ten! Apparently there is a tradition here to eat on grape every second for the last twelve seconds of the year; therefore, the countdown had begun at twelve, not ten! We were so confused that right when the countdown hit zero, we still weren't sure if it was the new year yet! After a moment, however, we saw all of the fireworks and heard everyone cheering and knew that it was now the year 2010. The salsa band continued to play into the night and we danced for a few hours longer before heading back to the ship.
My time in Tenerife has been extremely enjoyable up to this point, I cannot believe its almost halfway over! These next few weeks will be extremely busy as well. On Friday, my sister Alyssa is flying up to visit for a week and in a couple of weeks I am flying up to Madrid to visit a friend for four days. While our time here has provided for a much needed break for all of the crew, I am also getting excited for heading to Togo in less than a month.