Last Day at the Preschool

Over two weeks ago I had my last day with my preschoolers. The school year has ended and they are now on their summer break which will last untill about March. We had a little party on our last day. We had a clown, lots of food, music, and cake to celebrate. I´ll miss these sweet kids, Here´s some pictures I took at our celebration.

Spending Christmas in Iquitos

Well, our second Christmas in Iquitos was a success. We spent the day of Christmas Eve hanging out in the house trying to hide from the heat, it was uncomfortably hot. We barbequed for lunch and then saved our appetites for the big meal at midnight (typically the time when Peruvians eat their Christmas Eve meal). We went to church and then over to join our friends at their house. We were in charge of the hot chocolate, champagne, and Arabic rice. The meal was delicious and it was a lot of fun slipping into a food/champagne coma with good friends. We spent Christmas day having a lazy morning and relaxing by the pool followed by watching Christmas movies on TV.

Garlic had a nice lazy Christmas too. He followed us around the house in between all of his naps. Our other cat has temporarily run away. We´re hoping that he´ll return soon because we miss him, and so does Garlic.

We also played with some fireworks and sparklers, as is tradition in Peru. You´ll hear the sounds of fireworks gioing off everywher all over the city around midnight.

My friend actually created a big snowman for her front yard. And she made the whole thing by hand! A wired shape and a white cloth for the body, a cardboard hat, a real broom, and some construction paper for the details. It was pretty impressive.

It was a great Christmas because we also had the chance to skype with family back home. I hope you all had a great Christmas!

Decorating For Christmas

We have decorated our house for Christmas, well just the outside of the house. Something that makes me feel a little strange and homesick about celebrating Christmas in the jungle, is that it´s really hot here. And to me Christmas is supposed to be cold and snowy. I feel like it´s not really the season here for Christmas since it´s permanently summer. So, I decided to focus on wintery decorations to convince myself that its Christmas time. I hand-made a bunch of snowflakes and used the colors blue, silver, and white. Props to Coco for putting up all the lights and helping me shop for all the decorations. We actually had a ton of fun listening to Christmas music and decorating.

 We even managed to find some silver pine cones in the market of Belen. They obviously reminded me of the pine trees back home.

Below is a picture of the snowflake ornament my mother gave us. It was kind of our inspiration. And it´s hanging in the center of everything.

Coco was asked to decorate the squad so I helped my out a bit. I helped him decorate the tree and made him some snowflakes since he kindly requested me to make some. I think he did a great job putting it all together. Merry Christmas everybody!

A Little too Late

Well, I kind of missed the whole wedding, oops. Like I explained before, I was already committed to my preschool Christmas production and couldn´t escape during my friends wedding. I rushed to their small lunch reception and arrived just before the food was being served. All I could manage were a few pics of them sitting together. But I saw pictures from others, and I think it was a beautiful ceremony, too bad I missed it. Best wishes to my friends Carmen and Cesar!