Christmas day in Chile

I knew Christmas Eve and Christmas day were going to be a little hard on all of us, but I think we did a pretty good job of trying to make it fun....

On Christmas Eve after getting back from the hogar, two boys in my volunteer class came over to our apartment to make a traditional German Christmas dinner. Apparently in Germany they celebrate Christmas on the 24th so they really wanted to make  big dinner and it was amazing! Half of our volunteer class were at their hogars so it was about 8 of us for dinner. We had homemade dumplings, some red cabbage and this amazing mushroom gravy to go on all of it. All topped off with champagne with pineapple sherbert in it.... a new Chilean drink they had just learned about.

After dinner we headed off to church for the 11:30 Christmas Eve service. It was just like home! It was the English speaking/expat church that we have been going to and we sang loads of Christmas carols and ended the night with Silent night to candle light.... just like home :)

The next morning we woke up early to start cooking brunch and started blaring the Christmas music at 9am. We all made something for brunch and one of the girls families was visiting from the states and even brought us fresh bagels! It was perfect. We opened our stockings (we all bought a little $1 gift for everyone's stockings) and then started with our secret santa gifts.

Jess, Nola, Allison and I on Christmas morning

Opening secret santa presents

Safia, Jess and I at Christmas brunch at our apartment

Our pretend Christmas tree....

Stockings all hung in a row....

After brunch, we headed to on of our friends apartments for another later brunch/lunch and some time in the sun by her pool.

Rooftop pool on Christmas day

We rounded out the day by watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and then Bridget Jones' Diary.... classic holiday movies! We were about to watch the greatest holiday movie of all time.... National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but unfortunately by the end of the day I wasn't feeling well and now have been sick for 2 days. Not fun to be sick when it's a million degrees outside and you have no air conditioning, but oh well! It was a pretty good Christmas so that's all that matters...