First Peak at Christmas Chilean style....

It's Christmas in July down here.... literally it's a million degrees, people are planning beach trips.... and it's Christmas time? It's just doesn't feel quite right, but hey I'll take it. It really doesn't feel like Christmas and since none of us really want to invest in Christmas decorations it really doesn't look like it around our home either.

However, I did get my first taste of Christmas this week....
One of the girls at the hogar told us that we could get Christmas trees at a place near the hogar. We were so excited! Briana and I both wanted a tree for our apartments so we asked the tias if we could go with the girl who told us about them and get some. That some how translated to.... we would like to buy a Christmas tree for the hogar. We said if they weren't too expensive absolutely! How can they have Christmas without a tree? It's just wrong!

That is where the fun really began.... Briana and I take off in 90 degree weather with 4 sixteen year old Chilean girls who are getting dressed all nice because they are so excited to leave the hogar for a bit. So they take us to this market near by where we quickly realized we were buying a fake Christmas tree. (I have no idea why I thought for even a minute that we were getting a real tree) So we are in the packed open market with vendors selling toys and decorations for like 10 blocks. We of course found one we liked right away, but one of the girls said no absolutely not. We have to see all of them and compare prices and find the best one. So two gringas and four Chilean teenagers wandered up and down for about an hour comparing prices. For some reason it was just the funniest experience in the world. We finally came down to 2 trees that we liked..... a really tall ugly one and a shorter prettier one. Two girls wanted one and the other two wanted the other one.... great... a tie. Bri and I didn't care (I wanted the one that one of my favorite girls wanted, but I'm not supposed to show favorites). So we did a coin toss and the shorter, prettier one won! They handed us our boxed fake tree and we were on our way.

The next day we got it out and started to put it all together (with 3 of the 10 year old girls that I love so much). It was so fun! They looked putting it together and decorating it with such care (the hogar had ornaments... but no tree? really?) We also sang Christmas songs while decorating... Chilean and American. It was just amazing. Later that day we made little "windsocks", Christmas style, with toliet paper rolls and green and red paper. I was feeling the Christmas spirit.

Not the best picture.... but here's our little tree all decorated!

Our Christmas activity for the day.... it was actually a big hit.

Today rounded out my third day of Christmasy things at the hogar, but this one was a little odd.
We were asked to come in early today to help take some of the girls to a Christmas party..... at their criminal psychologist's office. A few of the girls see a psychologist once a week and they had a Christmas party for all of their patients today. We were asked to take the girls, along with another tia, because it's pretty far and the kids are horrible in the metro. I really thought it was going to be so weird, but it was actually fun and it was really good for the girls. We got there at 10 and they each got a big bag of candy, had their face painted and got balloons. Then there was a "show" where a local ballet group performed, followed by a slightly creepy clown who did a show for like an hour. They wrapped it up by giving all of the girls a really nice gift and lunch. It was like 3 and half hours in the heat, but it was great for the girls. They were all dressed up too. It's easy to forget that they are just little kids sometimes because they act so tough in the hogar. So today we got to see that side of them and it was so nice.

Lots more Christmasy things to come hopefully! I'm planning a workshop for making gingerbread houses this week.... we'll see how messy that one gets!