Lost my Christmas spirit...

This morning I noticed that I lost my Christmas spirit. When I got into
the office my cubicle was all decorated with colorful Christmas lights.
Michelle yelled "Surprise". Even though I really liked it, it made me
remember how I used to like to set the tree and all the decorations
around my house for Christmas back in Brasil. I was sad...
Being all by myself in Los Angeles, far away from my family has been
hard on special dates such as Christmas and New Year's. It doesn't feel
the same specially because Christmas is such a family type of event. I
miss it...
Of course over these four years that I have been here I had many ways
to remedy that. In my first Christmas all by myself, a lil bit over a
month after I got here, my mother calls me at the 24th and tells me how
fun it has been and passes the phone to my whole family one by one... I
remember crying a lot and so did my close cousins. It was so funny. Now
I am used to it. I made some awesome friends with whom I have been
spending that date together. I learned how to play the "White Elephant",
that happens to be much more fun than the obnoxious "Secret Santa". I
explained how it works to my mother and she applied to their party. They
seem to be pretty satisfied with the new game despite the older people
feel like "stealing" other people's presents is not appropriate...
This year I will be spending with Randy and his family in Greeley. I am so excited to go back there and spend Christmas as I have always seen in films and books full of snow. As opposed to USA, in Brasil we have the summer in December, January and February which means that on Christmas it's EXTRA hot and we have our shorts and tank tops on...