Holidays abroad! Jo jo jo

WOWie!! What an incredible time this has been!! I have been falling behind a bit in my writing so here is my Winter holiday round-up:

Firstly:Thanksgiving! I taught my school a little about Thanksgiving in American and showed them a cute video about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Do you remember the commercial from a couple years ago where the two balloon characters are fighting over the Coca-cola and then lose it, then Charlie Brown ends up catching it in the end? Well everyone know Charlie Brown and the kids thought it was great to see exactly how ENORMOUS the balloons actually are!! To finish off our Turkey Day we drew old-fashioned hand turkeys and wrote things we were thankful for in the feathers. It fit in perfectly with our animal unit!!!

It is really interesting to look at our customs through the eyes of foreign children and then try to explain why these normal traditions for us are so special.
 

Secondly: My mom came to Spain for Thanksgiving!! It was pretty wonderful to have someone here from the States to finally see what my life is like here. It was great to show off this part of the world to say some of our ordinary everyday life “necessities” are the exactly the same but n the other hand a lot of the customs here are different.

My group of Auxilares got together and had the most make shift Turkey day we could muster up. It was perfect. A bunch of us missing home, thinking about all the things we were thankful for and realizing we were all going to miss out on Black Friday.We had all the fixins for a great Thanksgiving day feast (minus a turkey and plus a few roasted chickens) and we ate it on Spanish time, the dinner started around 9:30 p.m. or so! The best of both worlds. Did I mention my mom was here?? All in all it was perfect.

Thirdly: Christmas.  I've been learning all about the different customs of Christmas all around the world just because the customs here are intriguing to me. It finally makes sense to me why stores in American skip right from Halloween to Christmas, because Thanksgiving isn't celebrated outside of the US and the distributors are busy sending out Christmas specialties all over the world right after Halloween.... "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.." Some stores here literally rolled out the red carpet and lanterns for Christmas shoppers here in Santiago. It was also interesting to hear the kids in my school debate over who was more real: Papa Noel or The Three Kings.

Like every place I've ever lived, the holiday lights were hung around the city and the tree decorated in the city square. Everyday I walked around my charming new town felt like Christmas. People rushing around with packages in hand and all the Christmas gift baskets ready waiting to fill a home with treats from all around Spain! The language is different but the love is the same.