Monday, November 7, 2011

Holidays in Bogota

For Halloween last week, decorations were commonly put up in windows of the apartments and at the gates of the apartment ‘complexes.’ We went to the mall for our monthly "end- of- the- month" treat: an ice cream cone. The mall was packed with dressed up parents taking their dressed up kids to go trick- or - treating from store to store!  Wow! It was crazy to see some of the outfits, some cute, but most of them scary... even the adults! I can see why many Christians here stay sooooo far from the Halloween scene as possible. 

 Looking onward to this month , according the school calendar, we have multiple days off of school we have a day off for “All Saint’s day,” “Independence of Cartagena,” and two days off for Thanksgiving (thanks ECA being an  American school). We are thankful for the days off of school to relax a little bit at home and visit with others. We are not sure what we will be doing for Thanksgiving.  We decided not to go on a get- away trip for three days with a number of other staff from the school. We intend to keep it low key, maybe get together with another family or two.  One thing we made sure we packed to bring down with us for our tradition was: Thanksgiving, a Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey. Last year, we read this book for the first time, which is about the Pilgrim’s sacrifices and God’s provision for them.  The book is arranged in such a way that it can be a short read or a longer more detailed account of history, which will be nice to alter the story/ devotional as the our family grows. Plus, it comes with a CD of worship music… wonderful!

Christmas season is in full swing! It is a bit weird to see the Christmas season without seeing Thanksgiving or fall seasonal items out. Considering they don’t have fall and Thanksgiving as we do in the States, it makes sense that the Christmas items are out now since Christmas is the next major holiday.  The mall has a big Christmas tree, snow- flake lights up on light posts,  ‘snow drifts’ made of plastic hanging over the side of the mall to look like icicles, and oversized presents that decorate the outside walking areas.  Seeing the snow decorations makes us chuckle because Bogota never sees snow, yet they associate Christmas with snow. Infact, most of the world does not have snow at Christmas time. The Christmas music we have heard thus far in the mall has been the same Christmas music we would hear in the States.   The decorations are not yet finished but we have been told that once all the lights are up, there are multiple power outages in our area due to the energy being used for the decorations! Guess we will get to have a cheaper electric bill with all the blackouts! 

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