Life [ex]changes: April 2012

Easter, well we got out of school on the Wednesday before Easter Sunday. On Thursday, I went to my friends house for Easter vacation. It is only 4 days but I went for about a week. She is a Mexican in my district that lives in a town nearby. Another girl from Mexico that I had met before also went. Well, the tradition here is to buy chocolate Easter eggs for people. There are different sizes and all types of fillings. Here in my house we decided to make the eggs this year. So, there is a mold of half an egg, we poured the melted chocolate into the mold and then put it in the freezer to let it harden. You have to be very careful with this whole process because if it cracks, you have to start all over again. You first make the two sides, the chocolate at this point is very thin so you might have to repeat this and make another layer. After you made the two sides you have to choose what you want the filling to be. I wanted to fill mine with Palha Italiana (a type of fudge with cookies in it) So while my egg shells were in the freezer I made the filling. When the filling was done and cooled you fill the two halfs and put another layer of chocolate on top. Again, put it in the freezer. when it is hardened, you put the two halfs together to form the full egg. You then need to put it back in the freezer and after some time let it sit out and "sweat". When all is ready you put it in a pretty wrapping and it's ready to give to someone or wait until Easter to eat! My sisters and I made around 25 eggs, for family members, friends, and co-workers. All of them had different fillings. There were some with Doce de Leite, peanuts, Brigadeiro, solid chocolate, white chocolate, white Brigadeiro, Palha Italiana, and all sorts of mixtures. I made one for myself and one for each of my friends. I am pretty sure my egg weighed around 1 kg of pure chocolate plus the filling. On the day of Easter we ate the eggs, obviously I could not finish the whole thing in one day. It took around 5 days to finish it, with the help of my friends. Some people get 2 or 3 eggs, imagine that! Natalia's dad also gave us each a bar of chocolate. So much chocolate to eat, but so delicious! Although I did miss the peeps and chocolate bunnies from Easter in the USA, i will definitely be sharing this tradition in the years that come. At night Naime, Natalia, and I went to a church service. They are both catholic and already planned on going to church, I decided to go with them and see what it was like. The service was at 8pm. It was a little play of the story of Easter and it was actually very cool!