Operation Christmas Child

I've spent the last 23 years buying gifts and making up Christmas shoe boxes. Each year I cram fluffy toys, crayons, soaps and woolly hats into a box and wonder who will receive it. I never thought the day would come when I would be the one unpacking the boxes and distributing the gifts!

wrapping prsents

I usually send these shoe boxes!

Amy and I spent the afternoon rooting through big boxes of goodies and sorting out gifts for the school children. Got filthy dirty but it was quite a success. Amy used her tallness to heave down the boxes, I put on some festive music and the rummaging began....

piles of goodies for each child. Who's been good?

Sounds of Santo at night

Rain falling, tin roof
Crickets sing and cockerels cry,
dogs bark, mosquitos buzz.

A good mornings' work

A few weeks ago our new school ball pool arrived. this meant that Amy and I had to change over therapy rooms. Apart from the gym ball, crash mat and whiteboard I had nothing to shift but Amy had decorated her room and it took her ages to remove, move and re-glue all her pictures etc. I feel bad that my room is so tiny and plain so to this weekend I took steps!

  I've made 2 notice boards and put up photos of the children doing work with me.

Please note pretty lace border!

 

I've made and put up a VERY basic Christmas decoration and got the different textures board up. Hopefully with time I'l be a bit more inspired and do other stuff to make it interesting. Any ideas?

   This morning I did some work with one of our older girls. She is 15 but has the mental age of  a petulant 5 year old. She can recite colours, numbers, words etc but doesn't actually know much at all. Today in our session she was great! She separated out colours with no prompts,

counted to 7 (and seemed to realise it was more than 6), used full words instead of actions, recognised vowels

working on vowels (guessed which picture I did?)

 and finally mastered the intricacies of a star jump!!! I don't know if she was simply in a good mood, she was lucky and guessed everything right or she has miraculously made progress; either way it was a good morning!

After break time some ladies from our church visited and gave out Christmas presents to each child.

Needless to say the children were thrilled!

average advent pancake week

Sometimes my life here is incredibly hard and sometimes I have an amazing time! This week has been a good week.

   On Tuesday Amy and I went to our first rehearsal for the Christmas drama. Last week the woman in charge was desperate for volunteers and everyone was busy staring at the floor and Amy & I caved in during a moment of weakness. We agreed to help out on the proviso that we did not get speaking parts. Sunday and Monday was happily spent picturing ourselves as background shepherds or as a heavenly host. Tuesday quickly shattered these happy illusions!!!! We are doing a sketch about Santa Claus and Amy is bossy&demanding woman and I....am an elf! Not only do we both have large speaking parts but I'm called "Candy" and have to wear a full elf costume. And no you can't see photos! My only solace is that we will perform this on Christmas eve in Laura Flores so I know those poor kids will get at least one laugh this Christmas!

On Thursday my friend Claire invited us round to hers. She baked Christmas cookies and we decorated them (watch this space for photographic evidence before we ate them all) and she made us mulled wine and played a Christmas album. It was soo nice! It felt all festive, definitely the happiest I've been in weeks :0) It was so kind of her, I am incredibly lucky in my friends here.

   Today Amy cooked the refugerio (snack) for our youth service. She decided to make pancakes and introduce Ecuadorians to the joy of lemon&sugar pancakes, yum! I didn't cook but I watched, did the washing up, tested the dodgy ones and even poured out a cup of flour (exhausting work!)

WE piled up the pancakes, tucked a dozen lemons in our handbag and off we went. We decided to splash out on a taxi since it was raining and we didn't want the food to get wet; this idea was rather ruined by the fact that guy with the church key (only 1 copy for entire church) didn't come for half an hour. Did we look weird standing in the rain for 30 mins on the busiest street in the city holding unto a stack of pancakes-yes. Were we bothered? Not at all.

Persuading the locals to try lemon&sugar was a battle...

                                                   but we converted them all!!!

                                                   A triumph for Great Britain.

P.S. Sometimes the "youth" here isn't always all that young ;)

bad day/good day?

 On Friday our school went to a special open day event and it didn't go well. Somehow Amy and I ended up stuck in a hall listening to speeches for 2 hours whilst trying to control our kids. We did not always succeed! One kid ended up on the stage, one boy punched another, 2 kids tried to run away (and into traffic!) and one little girl wet herself. By lunchtime I reeled home ready to hide under my duvet and never leave the house again.

After lunch I wrote a Christmas card to my family. The reality of sending a card as opposed to actually being with my family at Christmas depressed me so much that I just stayed in all afternoon and moped. Amy kindly posted my card off for me and brought me back a card from England. A lady from my church had sent me a Christmas card! It was such a pleasant surprise and the message was so sweet and encouraging that I cried! Realising that sobbing over a Christmas card is a tad foolish I pulled myself together and made a nice pot of tea (tea fixes every crisis!)

  That evening a friend invited me round for dinner. I was still feeling a bit "sensitive" but she lured me out with the offer of a home made Shepherds Pie so off I went. It turns out that Santo Domingo is like every other city in the world; you cannot get a taxi on  a Friday night especially when it's raining! So I walked. All alone, depressed, far from home and in the dark and rain..not a good start to the evening. As I walked I could see all the Christmas trees and lights in the houses I passed. It was night time in December but I wore flip-flops and a tshirt. Far from home but I was meeting a friend who wanted my company. Suddenly I realised I was having a great day!

Happy Christmas

I have done all my Christmas shopping! How impressive is that? Actually, before you get carried away by my brilliant organisational skills I should tell you the whole truth. As I'm away my gift giving is somewhat limited, in fact I am doing a "secret Santa" with other missionaries and that's it. This year I will receive and give only 1 gift! I don't know about you but for me that is weird, only one present?! Our Christmas meal and Secret Santa is on the 17th so on actual Christmas day they'll be no gifts at all!!


  Anyone who knows me will know that I am a Christmas FANATIC. If not stopped by friends and family I start counting down to Christmas in July :) I just love Christmas! I know it can be a really hard time for some people but for me it's magical. Everything is bright, pretty and cheerful and even though it can be stressful I find people are generous and kinder.


  Christmas day goes by so fast so for me Christmas is the whole build up to the big day. Helping my gran decorate her tree, nagging my mum for a Christmas eve gift, picking out gifts for that "difficult" person you know, wrestling the cat away from the baubles, mince pies, Carol concerts and the ever enjoyable festive nag to our church organist to play my favourite carol! This year I won't get any of that.


  No carol concerts, no silly festive earrings, no panto and worse of all no family. 


Each year someone I know teases me about my Christmas earrings (so cool!) and says that Christmas isn't about tinsel and fairy lights. My response is "I know what the real meaning of Christmas is but tinsel makes it better!" Away from fun and fairy lights,church, family and friends I guess this year we'll find out if I really do love the real reason for Christmas.

pompoms + gold medals=Olympics

Quick update on the last 2 weeks;
Cockroaches in the kettle and ants in the teapot.
2 power cuts and a tremor.


and today was our regional Disabled childrens Olympics!

  It was very exciting! We had an army battalion who gave out the medals,We marched round the arena, sang the national and regional anthems and even had an Olympic torch! Local sporting champions escorted the torch around the stadium  and lit the beacon.

Lighting the beacon

  

Our kids were great. Only won 2 races but we got a gold and we cheered for every race :) 

long jump!

Getting ready for the assisted race

Spent all of yesterday making pom-poms and am exhausted from manic pom-pom waving!