Christmas

I am a very bad exchange student for you see I assumed Christmas is the same date everywhere, you know, December 25 and all that jazz. WRONG! Why would anything be remotely the same?

A few weeks before Christmas everyone in my host family on my host Dad's side pulled names in a secret Santa for our christmas. I pulled my host sister's name.
So on the 24th I wrapped my secret Santa present and got ready to go celebrate Christmas at my host Grandparents house. I had in my head that this would be like at home where it was a small Christmas celebration with the extended family on Christmas. I was told that we were leaving at 6:30 so at 5:45 I was slowly getting ready. At 6:00 my host Mom comes to my room and tells me that we are going to open our family presents before we go." CRAP!" was all I could think because I wasn't planing on wraping their presents until later, hence why I was panicking!
I raced around the house wrapping my presents. It was not a pretty sight, paper cuts and tape everywhere!
Then I finished getting ready and then joined my family down stairs.
We opened our presents then immediately left to go to the grandparents house.
I was soo surprised for my gift. I got a one day trip to DISENYLAND PARIS!!

The rest of the evening was interesting.

We started by having some Champagne and hors d'oeuvres then we continued to open up the secret Santa gifts.
This secret Santa was different because we had to give clues about who's name we pulled. It was my turn and I said, "she's a girl, and she has a very strong voice" Everyone started Yelling LUCILLE!! LUCILE!!!
I received a new makeup bag and perfume.

We had a beautiful mean then watched fireworks at midnight.
It was a lovely evening but hard all the same. I was fighting back tears the whole evening. Christmas is a wonderful time but not the same with out family.