Christmas Time

December finally knocked at our door, making us realize that the first year out of the old continent is almost gone. This season, both here and also in the countries we call home, fills the air with light decoration, good wishes and celebrations, and people smile more, want to be with the family and know how the people we care are doing.

But the celebrations in the different countries differ somehow, there are numerous traditions that we learn as kids, they have a meaning in our hearts, and we feel the need to have them as we knew them. I want to explain some of our own traditions, but also some other that were shared with us by other people. This collection of traditions show that despite having one common celebration timeframe, every culture follow their own customs.

Spain: Grapes for New Year's Eve and The Three Kings

Christmas holidays (Navidad) starts on Christmas Eve (Nochebuena or "good night"). Many families decorate their homes with the Nativity scene, which is also present in churches, schools and public places. Some of them even build the whole city of Jerusalem. A well known part of the meals during Christmas time is the seafood, and their prices reach their maximum during this time. The typical dessert is called turron (a solid dessert made with honey, eggs, almond and sugar), and the polvorones (shortbread made with almonds, flour and sugar).

One special tradition in Spain are the 12 grapes for New Year's Eve (Nochevieja, or "old night"). The last minute countdown is followed from the Puerta del Sol clock, and the tradition is to eat one grape for every 5 seconds, when we hear the 12 bell peals or campanadas. This seems to have an origin one year with a very large production of grapes, to prevent from them to go to waste. The truth is that nowadays is mandatory to eat the grapes, as it is considered a sign for bad luck to enter the new year without having followed the tradition. It is also not allowed to have grapes left after the countdown ends, nor start eating sooner than the countdown.

Instead of the traditional Santa Claus, in Spain are the Three Kings the ones who bring the presents to the majority of the families, on January 6th. The night before, on January 5th, there is a big parade in many cities and towns, where the three kings give away candies and small goodies. Nowadays the tendency is being shifted to have some or all presents brought by Papa Noel on December 24th, since the kids can play with them during the holidays.

Sweden: Advent and Jultomten

The celebrations starts on the 1st Advent Sunday. They use an advent calendar, usually with 4 candles, one for every Sunday preceding Christmas Eve, where the presents are brought by Jultomten (santa Claus). The Jultomte was originally a small invisible Christmas house gnome or dwarf from the Nordic mythology, who watched over the house and its inhabitants. An old superstition still calls for feeding the Tomte on Christmas Eve with a small bowl of porridge. If a bowl of porridge is not laid out for him somewhere in or outside the house, he will bring bad luck to everyone in the house the next year. The modern "Tomten", nowadays is a version of Santa Claus in red cloth and white beard, except that he doesn't enter the house through the chimney, but knocks on the door and asks "finns det några snälla barn här?" ("are there any nice children here?"). 

For the Christmas holidays the typical drink is glögg, it is warm wine beverage mixed with spices, almonds and raisins. Television also plays a big role, many families watch the Disney Christmas special Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul (Donald Duck and his friends wish happy new year). 

On January 13th it is knutdagen, the day where Christmas decorations are removed. 


Germany: Nikolaus and Christkindl

 Is Germany it is tradition for the children to get goodies in their shoes on Nikolaus, December 6th. But the actual gift giving takes place on December 24th. It is a tradition to put up and decorate the tree on the 24th. The houses in the main streets of the city also get decorated with lights.

In most german cities and towns they organize the Weihnachtsmarkt or Christmas Market, which opens on the first Advent Sunday. There they sell food, drinks and seasonal objects. The most common beverage for this time of the year, and especially sold in the Christmas Market is the Glühwein, it is also how wine, but spiced differently as in Sweden, it also changes within Germany. Among the different sweets there are the Plätzchen, small cookies with seasonal forms like stars, moons, Stanta Claus etc.

United States: Thanksgiving and Santa Claus

Thanksgiving starts the Holiday Season in the United States. It is a reunion day where the culinary star is the turkey, normally accompanied with mashed potatoes and other vegetables. Another important item on that day is the football match on television; the Detroit Lions have played every Thanksgiving since 1934 except from the WWII years. The Thanksgiving weekend is the longest holiday weekend of the year, going from the fourth Thursday of November through Sunday.

The day after Thanksgiving is often called Black Friday, it is a commercial calling for the beginning of the shopping season, with big sales and deals. Shops often open very early in the morning, or even at midnight, and stay open all day.

And according to the legend, the Santa Claus takes the color of his dress from Coca-Cola, as it is said that before the brand changed the color, he used to go in green. Santa Claus usually comes though the chimney and leaves presents for the next morning.

There is other hundreds of different traditions that people around the world connect to this Christmas time, but only the ones we grow with can really identify this season for us. Before We finish this entry, please clock in the link to be wished a Merry Christmas by two small and funny gnomes.

http://www.jibjab.com/view/z4GjMeBKRlaVrNPxl1xsmg

Thanks for reading,

Lita & Andres

Snow time in Michigan

November is about to end, meanwhile the snow did its first visit already! We were having aorund 10 degC during the week, so we didn't expect so sudden change in the temperatures, but snow surprised us yesterday during breakfast. But despite of the inconvenience that the cold temperatures bring, the impression we get the first time it snows is always pleasant, as looking at some wonderful magic coming from the skies. Of course, it changes the next minute, when trying to adapt the plans for the cold weather...

We have been living almost 9 months in our home already, and are very happy with it. However, there are some things we didn't see at the beginning. One of the things is the two big deciduous trees. There is a layer of leaves both on the back yard, but mostly on the front yard. This is one of the lessons learned for the next time that we look for a house. No big, beautiful trees whose leaves will end up on the floor every fall :)

This photos were taken some weeks ago. As you can see, the leaves were covering the grass completely.We've learned that this can damage the grass, so you can imagine the entertainment of the last few weekends.

Hard work, but also beautiful to see. As you may know, fall is the most beautiful season in Michigan, because of the bright colors that the leave gradually take. People like to travel "up north", to the Upper Peninsula (UP), and enjoy this symphony of colors. I'll upload some photos from the internet, since this year, with our trip to the southwest, we haven't been collecting a lot of photos from around. 

The leaves on the trees make a gradual change from green to red. We could almost see the difference from day to day, when we were walking around the neighborhood. 

Notice the amazing combination of brilliant red, mustard yellow and pale green. This, together with the reflection effect on the multiple lakes of the state, make one of the most beautiful sceneries, especially on sunny days (which, I must say, were quite frequent).

Yes, indeed the most beautiful season. Unfortunately it is already over, now these snowy and gray days became the norm, together with the coldness and the darkness... The next two photos were take yesterday morning, when we realized it was snowing...

Different from the previous pictures, huh? OK, but before getting depressed, it is important to think what is yet to come. Now we are entering the "holiday season", as they call it around here. This is basically the Christmas time, however joined together with the Advent period, so at the end it is almost one and a half months of celebration. It usually starts with Thanksgiving, which takes place next Thursday. This means that this is a short week, only three days of work! On Thursday, since we don't have our family to celebrate with (and since we are not Americans) we decided to call for an "International Thanksgiving", with some European friends who, like us, came here on assignment. We'll tell you more about that in our next entry, it is going to be fun!

Thanks for reading, 

Lita & Andres

The Healthcare Revolution

It has been in the news all other the globe. The US is changing the Health Care Act, and everybody is going insane. There are people in favor and against it, discussions about where the money can come from, the debt is going to explode... As an European, it's not easy to understand the whole thing. That's why we'd like to write an entry on the Health Care conditions in the US in comparison with other countries, how it has been until now and what the "Obamacare" is trying to achieve. Before I start I must say that this is the vision that we are getting and it might be untrue in some aspects; we apologize if some readers feel otherwise.

How has it been for the US citizens until now? Well, for starters, the US is the only developed nation without a universal health care system that provides for all. The result is that 47 million people (out of 314 million) lack health coverage. That's the Spanish population! There are several reasons why there are so many uninsured, some of them just can't afford insurance, such as the unemployed, or people with serious chronic diseases and such: because of their medical condition, the insurance companies would only offer extremely high-cost plans, so they could not pay it. But there is also a group of young, healthy people that decide to "risk it", because the chance to get sick and need medical treatment is relative low.

One could think that due to so many uninsured, people would actually have less bills for medical care: less people go to the doctor, not so many control appointments etc. At least that is what I thought, but I was wrong. The US is the country that spends more on health care, both per capita and as percentage pf the GDP, as you can see in the picture below.

According to some studies, the US spends 900 billion a year on unnecessary medical treatments. Part of this is due to doctors that order tests that give little useful information to perform procedures that don't heal their patients. This happens for several reasons. First of all, some doctors just don’t know which procedures or tests are useful and which ones aren’t. Some order useless tests because their patients expect or ask for them.  Others do it to protect themselves from possible lawsuits. Second, the prices for the medical treatments are much higher here in comparison to other countries, as an example, a MRI costs more than $1000 in the US, versus $600 in Germany. 

So what are the the goals for such health care revolution? The act wants to cover both points mentioned before: universal coverage, and decrease in health costs. 

For the first goal, it means that everybody that doesn't have health insurance must get insured, or they get fined. There are some exceptions, such as people facing financial insolvency. But the rest will have to. This way, healthy people who don't pay insurance as of now, will help cover the treatments for people that need more medical assistance (sounds familiar, Europeans?).  In order to make this change more attractive, the government has created these insurance exchanges. The idea is to provide access to low-cost insurance if the person meets determined requirements, like for example the unemployed. That way people can "shop" insurance depending on their needs (at least this is the theory, the reality that people are experiencing is that these services from the government administration are slow or unusable).

For the second goal, the idea of to reach single-payer health system can contain costs and streamline clinical management protocols to avoid unnecessary testing and procedures of private fee-for-service. As the single payer, the government needs to prevent disease to maintain a budget, rather than having the incentive of making money from managing a disease (doing procedures, ordering tests) but not preventing it.

Additionally, the act also intends to harmonize the services covered by the insurance. Something that is happening lately to some people is that, depute being already insured, they are getting terminations letters for their plans. What is happening is that some programs don't meet the requirements defined by the government, for example they don't cover preventive care without co-payment, or leave out coverage of maternity care. That means that the consumers had to pay for some services (the out-of-pocket money in the left graphic below), which now must be covered by the insurance. For me, this sounds like a low-cost flight companies, and I would be very scared to be covered with those conditions.

And what is the opinion of the US people? Like always in these situations, there is a variety of opinions. There is a broad impression that such a system that covers everybody can't be sustainable. Rather than that, the Americans look at the Obama Care as not affordable that will only increase the debt. 

Two groups are especially against this: the group that is losing their "insurance", and the "voluntarily" uninsured. The first group feels like the government is putting them in jeopardy. The most criticized matter is that Obama promised that if people were happy with the insurance they were having and paying, they could keep them, which now has shown, is not true. And although these plans were just cheap insurance plans with little coverage, some people did not dislike them, especially because now they'll need to pay more for a new, "real insurance". For the uninsured, this means that they now must get covered, or they will get a fine. And the massive problems that people are having accessing the website to get the insurance, is only making things worse.

But on the other hand, the majority don't need to do any changes: looking at the right graphic above, the employer-sponsored insured and the consumers covered by  Medicare and Medicaid (which are public programs for the elderly and low-income population) may keep their insurance unchanged. That is almost 80% of the population. And the 15% who are uninsured, most notably people with pre-existing medical conditions, will have new access to affordable plans.

In my opinion, Obama and the Obama Care are getting people upset, but it is not because the of the program itself, but because he oversimplified and made promises that couldn't keep, and the government wanted to offer something that is creating unexpected difficulties on the way. But the pre-Obama Care was not a viable option. First, having uninsured must be avoided at all times, it is the only way to ensure a healthy country, and people with serious diseases must have the rights to get affordable coverage, it is not their fault to have a "weak heart". Second, these cheap insurance plans are making people fall into insolvency because of medical bills. Both situations are not the way for a system based on prevention and health protection, but rather high costs treatments for already developed diseases. Although some people were happy with the "Ryanair-like" health programs, maintaining them would be a step back. But I think this is not over, there are more problems to overcome. And if I think of the European system as it is now, having to build something like that in a matter or days would be impossible, since it has been developed for centuries. 

As a last comment, this Medical Revolution aims to mean a step forward in the American Health Care system, but there will surely be more to come. Medical costs will not decrease over night, lots of people will get covered, but the co-payments for certain treatments will remain constant. Besides, there is still a lot to be done for disease prevention, and this doesn't have to do with medical treatment but with the lifestyle. A change of health conception is needed, and this is nowhere to find in the Obama Health Care Act.

We want to finish the entry with humor, hoping you enjoyed reading and didn't fall asleep in between :)

Thanks for reading, 

Lita & Andres 

Wild Wild West - Week 2

... So, Where were we? oh, yes, by the second part of our trip visiting the south west area of the US. By that time, we realized that the chances for the reopening of the government before our flight back home were low. Of course we didn't lose hope completely, so when we were driving in the car, we would always search for NPR (although in the middle of the desert sometimes it was very hard to even find one station), and every hour we would listen and wait for the good news. And despite not getting the news we were waiting for, I can say that since then, we've become addicted to the station :) So this is the itinerary we followed in the second week. You will see that it was not somehow unorganized (catch the irony:)), where we drove one of the roads back and forth like 5 times, as a result of the uncertainty with the reopening of the national parks making us change our minds on the go... But after all, we can say we did the very best out of an unlucky situation, and the trip was, besides long driving, very optimized.

First Station: Mexican Hat and the Monument Valley

One of the days with much driving but also astonishing views was driving from the Escalante Region,  in Utah, to Page, Arizona. The Road 24 is a scenic drive that took us through the Capitol Reef where we could see some more nice petrogryphos. After approximately 2 hours of driving a sudden change in our surroundings took place: we where descending to the Valley of the Gods. This vast desert has numerous beautiful rock formations, some of which don't really seem to follow the laws of gravity, like the one you can see in the picture below, called the Mexican Hat. To me, it really looks like a Mexican Mariachi from the back :)

Driving to the Monument Valley, in Arizona, we cross the Colorado River for the first time, it will not be the last one, though. As we drive though the Valley, we feel  surrounded by these huge so called buttes, these big rock formations with vertical walls and remarkably tall. The most famous panorama is the one shown below, there is millions of pictures in Internet, as a sign of how unbelievable this form of natural art is.

As a proof that we were there, here's a photo of us in the middle of the rocks (they seem small compared to us, but we were far far away :))

Second Station: Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend

We didn't have enough of slots canyons in Utah, so we visited another one in this region. This one was much more prepared for walking in the slots, it even had stairs in it! Despite not being so challenging physically speaking, it was also fascinating, how the morning sunlight colors the walls in intense red and orange tones.

It was hard to get rid of the people for the photos, but with patience, we could take the chance for photos alone... 

In the evening we visited the Horseshoe Bend. It is a one of the most spectacular views of the Colorado River, which makes a wide sweep around a sandstone escarpment, almost a whole circle around it. The views from above are breathtaking. 

We spent there around 2 hours until the sun came down. By that time, Andres had done around 150 photos of the Bend. Lucky for you, we just show you what we consider the best picture :)

The dusk left spectacular cloud colors in the sky. 

Third Station: Santa Fe

The next day, given the circumstance that the government didn't hear our prays yet, we decided to change our route and visit Santa Fe, in New Mexico. Otherwise, it would have been too much time to spend in Arizona. It was a prompt decision and absolutely worth it!

Santa Fe is a small town near Albuquerque, and is one of the oldest cities in the US, with a lot of history inside, melting Hispanic, Anglo and Native American cultures in its architecture, the food they offer, and the art visible along the streets. 

Santa Fe has a distinctive architectural style all its own. The traditional style of the houses is characterized by earth-colored walls made of adobe bricks, which consist of a mixture of sun-dried earth and straw.  They don't have a roof, proof of the many sunny days they get thought the year. Many of them hang big bunches of chiles to dry them with the sun. 

One of the most important things that Santa Fe offers to the public are the many art galleries. There are around 300 galleries along the streets, and you can find everything from painting and photography to pottery, sculpture, textiles and jewelry. In the picture below you see a lovely outdoor sculpture gallery with beautiful wind sculptures.

Fourth Station: Zion National Park

After two nights in Santa Fe we were heading to Sedona, where we planned to stay two nights, until our last night in Vegas. However, on our way there, we heard in the radio that Utah would open their National Parks despite the Government Shutdown. This changed everything! Despite having to drive for more than 12 hours, we decided to change route to visit Zion National Park. And it was worth it!

We did a hike called "Angels Landing", a route that climbs up to one of the high walls that form the Zion Canyon. As you can see in the picture, the way high is a nice walk that takes like an hour. However, the last part is really steep and strenuous. There are chains to help you climb up, but it is very difficult anyways, not to mention how scary it is to see the cliffs at both sides of the path, like as can see in the left picture.

But the views of the canyon once you're up make you forget everything else

Fifth Station: Grand Canyon National Park

On our way back to Utah, we heard that Arizona has followed the lead that Utah started, and had opened the Grand Canyon! This exiting news defined our itinerary, changing all our plans again :) We headed back to Arizona, crossing the Colorado River for the third time, and arrived to the park at night. We couldn't see the canyon yet, we had to wait until the next morning.

Our journey in the Grand Canyon started around 6,30 AM. We had decided to attempt the climb down and up in the day; despite the big effort needed, we wanted to get our feet into the river!!! That means to go down more than 1 km, which of course has to be walked back up... Our way down was the South Kaibab, it is really steep and strenuous to come up, but the views are much more direct to the river.

As we were hiking down, the sun was rising up, giving us the fabulous views of the light reflecting on the canyon walls.

Soon we got to see the river, as we neared to the steep cliffs.

And at 9 in the morning, we got down to our goal! We got our feet in the Colorado waters, it was such a nice feeling, if only we could have stayed there longer...

But we had to come back up again. We decided to take the Bright Angel Trail to come up, it takes longer than the way down and it soon move away from the canyon, but it is not so steep and therefore more bearable. It is important to say that it is not encouraged to do the way down and back up in one day, there are several signs to advise against attempting to do it in one day, and there are campgrounds in the way in order to split the journey in several days. But we just didn't have the time, and besides, it was kind of our challenge of the trip! Also, on our way we saw people doing the same thing, some even run down and back up, there's crazy people everywhere, no question about that!!

We managed to come up to the village around 2,30h, we were very, very tired, and just wanted to go to bed and never come out again. In fact, after having lunch, that is exactly what we did, we went to bed and spend around 15h in there before coming out. Everything was sore and tired! But the feeling of having accomplished such a dream was enough to forget the hardness of the way.

The day after we went back to square 1, Las Vegas. It was a very slow day, just walking around visiting the city. On the afternoon we went to see the Cirque du Soleil and enjoyed it very much. But I must say, compared to the rest of the trip, this was just a city, and of course it has a lot to offer, it is not as astonishing as the beautiful nature we were just leaving. 

That is why I'd like to finish this entry with a view of the canyon while hiking up. This last station was not only unexpected (due to the shutdown) but also far more satisfying than expected. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip. We realized, we will always visit other beautiful places, but this kind of natural scenery is only here. The slots, the vast valleys, canyons, buttes, the sandstone being eroded by wind and water. Really something we will never forget. 

Thanks for reading,

Lita & Andres

Wild Wild West - Week 1

Hello again! We are back from our vacation, sorry we left the blog a little aside, but here we are ready to update you from our beautiful trip!

Probably you read in our previous post how unsure we were about the government shutting down. We were flying on a Tuesday afternoon, and we were listening to the radio until Monday midnight in order to know what to expect, well, actually almost convinced that we would have to change our plans. Indeed, at 12 o'clock AM they informed of the shutdown, meaning that all national monuments, museums, parks etc. would be closed until further notice. Of course, it was too late to change anything, so we flew anyways, and started the "alternative route". I'm going to tell you how we did and accompany the description with beautiful photos from Andres, who did the best job o recording the  beauty of the places we visited. The best thing would be to split it in weeks, that way you don't have to read everything all at once, because at the end we did a whole lot of things :)

First station: Snow Canyon, Zion and Coral Pink Sand Dunes

We arrived to Las Vegas at night, and started our re-planning right away. Our first station was supposed to be California, starting in the Death Valley National Park. However, since the parks were going to be closed, we thought the best idea was to start with Utah, since there is also a lot of state parks as an alternative. We visited the Snow Canyon state park, and the next day drove "around" the Zion National park. It was very beautiful to start seeing this kind of sandstone that characterizes the whole region we visited.

The tree leafs starting to go red were also a delight to watch.

Since there is a state road that crosses Zion, they let us drive though the National Park, however we couldn't stop even to make photos. It was a mixture of fascination with the beauty, and disappointment for not being allowed to visit is more in depth.

After that we stayed the night in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. As its name indicates, awesome sand dunes raise in the middle of a region as if it were the Sahara desert.

This phenomenon takes place because of the type of stone that surrounds the area, which is easily eroded by the wind. This carries the sand up to a more open area, where the sand is deposited and cumulated. The result is odd and beautiful, mostly at dawn and dusk, when the sun reflects on the dunes.

The bad thing there was the wind. It was a cold, windy night, so in a tent we really felt it (by the way, we were the only tent in the campground, the others had RVs, but also felt it going below 0 degC).


Second Station: Kodachrome Basin and Bryce National Park 

After that we visited the Kodachrome Basin State Park. It is a region with "geysers" similar to the ones found in the Yellowstone area, but dried out. The forms of the sandstone spires are incredible, difficult to believe that such monuments raise naturally.

Also there are some amazing caves hidden behind enormous stone pieces.

In the evening we drove a road to the only possible spot to look into Bryce National Park. It was not a lot, but at least we got a nice view (of what we were missing...).

Third station: Escalante River

Moving on, we spent one day walking at the sides of the Escalante river, which follows the path of a wide canyon. The hike was very enjoyable, since we had to cross the river every once in a while as the path would disappear on the side we were. This meant taking off the shoes, at a certain point we gave up and kept walking barefoot. Some highlights on the way are shown in the photos: some Indian petroglyphs somehow hidden to the public, and an amazing arch.

After this hike we drove up to the falls that gave place to the same river, where we could take beautiful views of the whole valley.

Going down, the stone had amazing shapes, as it had been modeled by gigantic fingers.

Below the falls (not much water in October).

 That night we did free camping, and despite some fears to humans and other animals, it was a great experience to wake up to the views of the valley.

Fourth Station: Peek-a-boo and Spooky Canyons

The next day we experienced a new thing, the so called slot canyons, they are basically narrow canyons made by the water rushing though rock. In contrast to bigger canyons (like for instance the grand canyon), it is not very wide, in fact sometimes the walls are so closed to each other that you can't get through with a backpack. 

Peek-a-boo shows difficulty from the beginning, because we had to climb up about 2 meters to get in, and the eroded walls did not make it easy to crawl in. After that, there numerous ins and outs, you have to jump up and down to make the whole length of it.

It is amazing to see the waves that the water did to make it though the rock, sometimes it just goes straight, sometimes it goes up and down, right and left,... And this rock is just so soft that takes these beautiful forms that water leaves behind.

And the end of doing both slots we were as tired as if we had been working out for hours. It goes without saying that the next day I muscles were so sore I could not move my arms or legs :) 

This ends the story of our first week out west. Next week we'll tell more about nice places we visited in Arizona, New Mexico, and... Utah again. We'll keep you busy!

Lots of love

Lita & Andres