A Very Special Christmas

Hi friends!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and you're all looking forward to the new year.

We had a really nice Christmas, although as I mentioned before it was very different.  I decided to jump into Christmas decorating, so we bought a tree and some other things to fill our little apartment.

Plastic, but it looks pretty good.

Subtle, but sweet.

I even found some stinkin' cute stockings!

I also got more into the holiday spirt by spending time in, of all places, the mall.   I always enjoy shopping for gifts, and I like the Christmas music and the decorations.  Call me a sap, but I love it.  I also love seeing all the little kids lining up to see Santa... they are always so excited!  This mall had a huge snow globe with snow whirling all over the place for the kids to see Santa.  Again, it's an entirely different world than the hot summer outside, but whatever. 

No kids at this point, but
a few minutes later it was packed.

We went to Viña del Mar to spend Christmas with Eduardo's family, and it was really wonderful.  We had lots of good food, and the weather was great.  Well, mostly.  On Monday we washed several loads of clothes and hung them out to dry, and then went to the grocery store to buy 1500 pounds of food.  When we came out of the store, it was pouring rain and our clothes were soaked by the time we got home.  Still, the weather was hot and sunny on Christmas day so the clothes re-dried quickly.

This is what we woke up to on Christmas.

After exchanging gifts and having a delicious Christmas lunch, we went on a little mission to play Santa Clause.  The day before, we had stopped into the post office and I saw piles and piles of letters from kids to Santa, or Veijito Pascuero.  The post offices in Chile will put them out for people to read and send presents.  They aren't all from poor kids, but you can pretty much tell from the address.  We read a letter from one girl who was just asking Santa for a nice Christmas dinner for her family.  That one really broke my heart.  We also read letters from kids who wanted a Wii, a laptop, an X box, and a cell phone.  Then there was the little girl who had a list of 19 items, all of which were "Monster High" dolls.  She wrote at the bottom, "I want them all, but if my mom buys them, then no."  I'm not entirely sure what "Monster High" is, but I think it may be some sort of cartoon?  We saw a lot of Monster High dolls in the toy stores, and they are basically un-dead Barbies.  (I think this zombie thing has gone too far.)  We ended up taking a letter from a little girl named Estefania who is 5 years old.  She wrote that she had been "muy vien" that year, (instead of muy bien), and that she had gotten very good grades.  She was even learning English, and she had gotten an award in her class.  Then she asked for either a doll called "la la lo si".  We didn't know what that was, but some other girls in the post office told us it was a doll names Lally Loopsy, or something.  We never saw it, so it's still a mystery.  Estefania also asked for a "Li Do Es Pecho".  Again, we turned to the girls in the post office, and they told us she wanted a little animal from the "Littlest Pet Shop".  It was so sweet, because Estefania is just learning to write so she did the best she could, and to her, it sounds like "li do es pecho".  We bought two Littlest Pet Shop animals and wrapped them up with a bunch of candies.

We drove to her address, and the apartment was in an ancient social housing block.  We met her grandmother there, and she told us that Estefania was down at her other grandma's house and we could go meet her if we wanted.  She led us down, and we walked through the poorest area I had ever seen.  Estefania came out, and she's really adorable.  She was shy, but her face lit up when we told her that Santa had delivered her present to us by mistake.  She said that she really likes math and English, and she enjoys school.  She's obviously really bright, so I hope we made her Christmas a little bit memorable.

After our delivery, we went to the beach, which was the weirdest thing to do on Christmas, but it was awesome.  It was warm and beautiful, the sand was hot and the water was absolutely freezing.  It was a really nice afternoon.

We came home that evening to skype with my family and open a few more gifts.  We sat in front of our twinkly little tree, ate some cookies and enjoyed our Christmas.  We're drawing Christmas out until tomorrow, when we'll get together with my family down here to open gifts and grill some burgers and play in a kiddie pool.  We're combining traditions, I guess. 

All the best for 2013!