Due to the terrible rainy weather we’ve had recently, today in coffee and conversation I wanted to talk about holidays. I asked Mayerly from Venezuela and Juan from Colombia to tell me about their ideal holiday; where they would travel to, who they would go with and what kinds of things they would do when they got there.
Mayerly chose an island in Asia near Thailand that she wasn’t sure of the name of. Apparently it is a beautiful tropical island and she would go there with her whole family to swim in the sea, eat delicious food and relax.
Juan would like to visit Japan with his girlfriend as it is a country with a completely different culture to the west. He would also like to go to Egypt again as he visited last year and really enjoyed seeing the pyramids and going on a boat down the Nile river.
My fantasy holiday is to visit Brazil for the carnival and then spend some time on the beach and visit the Amazon jungle. I would go with my best friend as we have had lots of holidays together and we always have a lot of fun and laughter.
Our conversation moved on to discussing our plans for Christmas and the differences between traditions here and in Colombia and Venezuela. The main difference is that in South America, as in many parts of Europe, Christmas is celebrated on December 24th, whereas in Brtain we celebrate it on the 25th.
There were lots of similarities however, the most important one being that Christmas is a time for families and we all said how we enjoyed spending time with family at Christmas. Another similarity is that lots of special food is eaten at Christmas and that a family meal forms the main part of the celebration.
Buying presents at Christmas can be very expensive, especially if like Mayerly and Juan you have lots of relatives. In Mayerly’s family they each choose names from a hat and everyone buys just one present for that person. This game is also played here, often with a group of friends or colleagues and is called ‘Secret Santa’.
Thanks to Mayerly and Juan for joining me this morning for a very enjoyable discussion.