Day 1 - of T, K and A's visit - decorate the tree. Ole and I had spent a long time perusing the local markets for a Christmas tree. They do sell cedar trees for Christmas trees, but what on earth would we do with it after Christmas? We have never had a fake tree. Even in the most tropical places we have found something that could be used as the symbolic Christmas tree. In Mozambique we had a wispy, pine-like tree that we had trudged through the white sand on the beach to fell. In Bangladesh, we had a Norfolk pine. In Malaysia, Maersk shipped in spruce trees for the embassy staff. So the challenge here in Ecuador was to find a suitable tree for Amelia's first Christmas. We are really excited to have a lemon tree for our Christmas tree this year. It comes with small green lemons and we decorated it with a our Chinese elves (from our time in Beijing) and a few angels that we have picked up over the years, plus new angels I bought in Calderon, a suburb famous for it's cottage industry in Christmas decorations made from dough, painted and glazed. (It's really called marzipan here, but for us marzipan is a delicious almond sweet.) Oh yeah, the branches of our lemon tree can even hold our Danish candles, which we will light on Christmas eve. Perfect!
 |
| Everybody helps decorate. |
 |
| Now - this was special! Last night as we were finishing dinner at Casa Sol, in Otavalo, we suddenly heard children singing. We were invited downstairs to see some of the children in Peguche participating in the Novena de Navidad. It is a tradition here that people get together for the 9 nights preceding Christmas to sing and say prayers to prepare for the arrival of baby Jesus. It was beautiful! |
 |
| Not sure what is going on here - but it's a great shot of father and daughter. |
 |
| Can you spot the tourists in the Otavalo animal market? |
No comments:
Post a Comment