The 29-year-old from Mexico City arrived in Bendigo this July to study a Masters of Community Planning and Development at La Trobe University.

While most international students had flown home to visit family, Mr Navarro will not be alone on Christmas Day thanks to the generosity of Bendigo woman Robyn Gordes. 

Mrs Gordes and her husband, Wayne, have kindly invited Mr Navarro to their home for a traditional Australian Christmas feast.

Mrs Gordes works in Student Support Services at La Trobe and when she heard some international students would stay in Bendigo over the break, she was eager to lend them some cheer. 

“It's important to be with people and share this time,” she said. 

“That's what Christmas is all about.” 

Although it’s the first time an international visitor had joined the family for Christmas, Mrs Gordes remembered her parents had invited new friends to lunch when she was a young girl. 

Mr Navarro said he was grateful for Mrs Gordes’ invitation.

“I feel really blessed because I will be able to share a special day with people who don't know me,” he said. 

“It reminds me that there is always someone willing to help you and that I should be helpful to other people.” 

Mr Navarro said his homeland had some special Christmas activities of its own, like carrying a figure of baby Jesus to church on Christmas Eve.

The statuette is blessed before being returned to its nativity scene and sung to sleep. 

Mexican children often received clothes for Christmas, with toys reserved as gifts for Dia De Reyes, or Day of the Kings, on January 6 instead.

But Mr Navarro said the message of Christmas was the same everywhere.

“The important thing about Christmas, regardless of your religion or what country you're from, is getting together with the people you love, and I think that's why this festivity has become so important all over the world,” he said.

Mr Navarro thanked the Bendigo community for its friendliness and said living in a regional city had helped him focus on his studies. 

“It reminds me of my childhood when I lived in a small town in Mexico.

“It was very green there too and I could walk to school.”