The holiday season arrived and with that our hostel filled up with guests, the streets and beaches with tons of tourists, the roads with cars and the shopping windows with Christmas decorations. My favorite was surfing Santa, I could not resist from taking a picture with him. 🙂
The Vintage hostel was nicely decorated with Christmas lights and a Christmas tree thanks to Sander’s (hostel owner) parents Sander and Sinara who also came to stay with s for the holiday season.
Christmas tree upside down … yeah because we are on the other side of Earth 🙂
In Brazil, Christmas is celebrated on December 24th, just like in my country and we got to experience a wonderful home-like Christmas dinner with a lovely chocolate/ice cream cake with some cherries on the top. Being that my birthday, I got to blow a candle that was placed on top of it. And our Christmas dinner crew consisted of a wide combination of nationalities from Brazilian, English, Indian and Czech of course.
The main thing happens at midnight when people stay together and exchange presents, some even fire some fireworks. We were hoping to see a midnight mess at the church that stands on the hill not far from the hostel. It’s been decorated with light beams for the entire advent season but there was no sign of life on that very special Christmasy moment.
A week later, the dinner decorations changed from red to white and everybody was getting ready to welcome the New Year. On this day, the Brazilian people select carefully what colors they are going to wear that evening and the next day. White stands for peace and that is the color most of the people wore. Those who want money in the next year, dress in yellow, pink stands for love, green for health …
Eating 12 grapes on New Year’s Eve symbolizes 12 lucky months ahead and you mustn’t forget to jump 7 waves on New Year’s either. 😉 Doing all that, I think we have a pretty awesome year ahead.
