My Christmas this year was out of the ordinary. I had 40 new family members, went without snow, caught a ride in the back of a truck on Christmas Eve, witnessed a clown performance, and got to experience every single village in Guatemala set off fireworks at the exact same time at midnight.
The week leading up to Christmas began our festivities. My team and I are all teachers for the next three months to the most amazing kids. On craft day we had them make Christmas ornaments that looked like Christmas trees. They glued three popsicle sticks together and tied yarn around them, and put a finishing touch of a star at the top. The amount of yarn the kids used is insane, they really had fun with it.
The Friday before Christmas the school was putting on a presentation for the kids. They wanted us to teach the kids an English song to perform. So at first we started with silent night, but soon realized that that song was extremely hard and too slow to keep their attention. We changed it to our second option, Feliz navidad! This was a lot easier to teach because 1/2 the song is in Spanish. On Friday we also were asked if we could put on a skit of the nativity scene. Let’s just say that Esther has a talent for it.
Friday came along and we helped prepare for the party all day. The night started with the pastor talking, and then it was our turn to perform.. we all went up and did our skit- which I think seemed a lot funnier to us than it did to the crowd… after our kids went up and preformed (which was adorable),There was also a clown that came. See this is where I was so confused… why a clown for Christmas? But anyways it was funny and very entertaining to watch.
In the photo with me and boys rapped up in the poncho was later in the night as the sun was setting. A thing about Guatemala is that it can be so hot during the day but as soon as the sun sets everyone is in winter coats. So the boys were trying to get warm again.
On the way home we rode in the back of a pick up truck for 35 min and it was soo much fun!!
On Christmas Eve we all got dressed up, what ever your “world race dress up ment” and took a lot of photos!
Below is our big family photo taken by my squad leader Aly b
This photo is of my beautiful team! From left to right it goes Kori, Lexi, cami, Melissa, Abby, me, Mackenzie, Gracie and Sophie.
For dinner we all sat around the table and ate as a family. It was filled with stories of traditions back home and implementing them into our new one.
At 12 pm the whole country side lit up with fire works. All around the compound you could see fire works that lasted for almost 2 hours. It was cool to see the celebration of Jesus through fire works.
We woke up to Santa coming to Esther’s room and giving us little stocking with sweets in it. At 10 we had a whole squad secret Santa opening of presents. It was so much fun to see how creative people got. My secret Santa had me as well and we got each other almost the same thing, lots of sweets and chocolate!
Later jackie cam out as Cindy loo hoo. It was definitely a sight to see.
The rest of the day consisted of watching elf and baking/ eating a lot!
In the evening we had a family feud competition, v squad edition. It was so much fun to reflect back on slag and stories from the last 3 months.
Over all it was filled with laughter love and new experiences!
I wish all of you a merry Christmas and happy new year!
