Holiday Blues

We decided to go out for the first time in days today. I've been sick with a bad cold and spending my days alternating between the couch and the bed. I woke up in the afternoon today after a night of uncomfortable sleep from the cold medicine I took. I tried to take the first shower in the apartment now that we finally have a gas tank for the water heater, and I got about 50 seconds of hot water. It wasn't great to start the day with a cold shower and leftover grogginess from the medicine.

The Zocalo downtown is set up with winter activities and lights at night, and Jose has been dying to visit so we finally went today. It probably wasn't a great idea for me to go, but he was starting to go crazy in the house and I thought it would be a nice experience. Apparently the Zocalo "winter wonderland" is a very popular Christmas event in the city. There are stations for kids like snowball fights, snowmobiling, snowslides, and snow man making. The main attraction is an ice skating rink. Anyone can ice skate and it is totally free, so the lines get really long. We sat and watched for awhile, but it was mostly a line of people dragging themselves along the railing. Jose had never seen an ice rink before, so it was a good experience for him. He didn't want to skate because there were so many people, but it is definitely something we will have to try in the future. We had planned to stay until it got dark and the lights on the surrounding buildings turned on, but I was worn out and we left early. It was still nice to see something that is so popular and important here during the holidays.

The biggest bummer of the day was that Jose left our camera on the bus. We bought it on our honeymoon and it was our big splurge after the wedding, so its unfortunate that we only had it for a year. Jose realized he had left it on the bus less than a minute after we got off at the metro station. We started running to try to catch up with the bus, but it had already gone out of sight. We knew where the bus would go to start the next run, so we ran over there and tried to find it. We knew that the windshield had swatstikas, and we checked each bus. I talked to a young bus driver and told him what we were doing. He took us all around the station until we actually found the bus. We looked inside, but the camera was gone from the seat. We think the driver had it, because there were only two other passengers on the bus who wouldn't have passed our seats when they left. The young driver who came with us talked to the assisant of the swatstika bus and asked him to just give us back the camera, but he claimed he didn't have it. The young driver later told us that he would have asked any other driver to give us back the camera, but the driver we had was known for not caring about other people. We tried to get it back, and it feels better to know we tried to find the camera, but it is still annoying to have lost it. At least we had it for September and October when we got all our good travel pictures and pictures of Cholula as a puppy.

While going to the Zocalo wasn't worth losing the camera or even really getting out of bed, it was nice to see the Christmas festivities. I realize that Christmas Eve is tomorrow, but it could easily be 3 months away because I have no holiday spirit. I'd usually be thrilled about tomorrow and all the cooking I'd do, but I can't even get myself to make eggnog this year. Its going to be a very different Christmas than usual, but at least I can blame it on being sick.

I hope everyone enjoys a great Christmas.
-Emma