Christmas and New Years in Chile

Christmas with the our zone missionaries (we are the ones on the right!):

Christmas caroling in Orsono with the missionaries there.  There was a little girl who wanted to "help" direct the missionaries' singing of carols in the plaza so Hermana Call let her.

And after the caroling -- Santa comes to Chile!

Christmas and New Years were interesting here.  Christmas Eve we went to two different dinners -- one at 1 pm and one at 9 o'clock at night!  Obviously the Chileans like to eat late.  Both were delicious and supposedly Chilean. 

The "lunch" meal was with the Holquins and was a lot like shepherd's pie but with beef chunks instead of hamburger. The spices are different though I cannot tell you how.  

Dinner was with the Paredes and was turkey (a roll of both light and dark meat) with two kinds of potatoes (both white and purple which taste pretty much the same), salad with tomatoes, avocado and butter beans (green and larger than  lima beans though shaped the same), peas and hard boiled eggs (together), cornbread muffins (comfort food made by the sister missionary who with her companion live in an apartment next to the Paredes), and chocolate ice cream with strawberries and cookies for dessert.  There were 9 of us at the table only three of which were Paredes.  The rest were friends and us (newcomers).  It reminded me of Christmas at Mother's.   

Christmas day was calm -- no little children running around.  So sad!  Obviously not a Christmas that we are used to, but they were interesting and we had a good time both meals.  Lots of good conversation (some of which I could understand) and good food (which I did enjoy!).

I wrote thank you notes to the sisters for each of the dinners. Thank you Google Translate!  My Spanish is not up to thank you notes and I decided to write them myself as Keith was busy so Google to the rescue.  I wrote them in English and put them into Google Translate and showed them to Keith.  He said they were translated correctly but wanted to change one section.  Fine with me!  We had to go out and buy thank you cards.  It wouldn't do to write thank you notes on graph paper which is what the notebooks use here  .No lined paper!  We ended up with blank cards which was fine.  It only took me three tries to complete two thank you notes.  Writing in Spanish is not automatic (for me) like writing in English is.  

New Years was different in the neighborhood.  The neighbors had two parties going on -- and we were not invited to either!  We went to bed well before midnight and were awakened at midnight with fireworks, etc. going off which we expected.  New Year Eve is the same all over the world.   We went back to sleep and were awakened at 1:30 am with loud music from the house across the street.  Because of the tin roof and not much insulation, that house was rocking!  Dad called it the boombox house!  But we managed to go back to sleep only to be awakened by another house down the street at 4:30 with the same problem.  I think we were meant to get only a little sleep so the nap we took on New Years day was welcomed.  We couldn't stay awake!