Our christmas tree beats your christmas tree...

...Why? Does your Christmas tree have balloons on it? Or a penguin? Umm...didn't think so.

 

So the weather is beautiful here, with temperatures in the 80's every day and usually a nice breeze. This makes it a little hard to remember that it's winter and snowing back home. It's also strange to be singing advent carols at church and making plans for Christmas celebrations in this weather!

 

Last night I was up on the roof after dark and discovered to my delight that people put up Christmas lights in Haiti too! I guess I had assumed that was an American/European thing, but nope, even in third world slums people hang up a variety of spazzy, blinking, colorful lights at Christmas. (How exactly this relates to the birth of Christ, I have yet to figure out.) Also the girls have told me that people set off fireworks all over the city at midnight on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so I'm super-excited for that.

 

Today the girls dug up a fake Christmas tree, from who knows where. This thing has definitely seen better days. It's like the Charlie Brown christmas tree. But, undaunted, we raided the craft shelves in the library for everything and anything that was red or green or remotely ornament-like. Several packets of water balloons were blown up and hung on the branches as ornaments. Larger balloons were placed strategically to disguise structural problems and make it stand up straight. We made red and green paper chains. Red and gold tinsel appeared. Someone collected a bunch of beanie-babies and artfully arranged them around the bottom, except for the penguin who holds a place of honor nestled among the lower branches. The whole time the girls sang Haitian christmas songs (which are way more lively than English ones), and when they declared the tree finished they started a rousing chorus of "Oh Christmas Tree" in French. Except they had the usual problem of not remembering any of the words after "oh christmas tree", but they just made up some verses of their own. Guess some things are pretty consistent in any language. :p 

 

I don't think I have ever had more fun decorating a tree (and I LOVE decorating christmas trees). I'm gonna go ahead and claim that we have the best Christmas tree outside of Swizterland this year (gotta give credit to the Swiss, they take their christmas trees very seriously).

 

Tomorrow I think I'm gonna try to make an angel for the top. Wish me luck!