Christmas 2008

Christmas 2008 was a much more enjoyable affair combining Bolivian
traditions with the more familiar British traditions. The evening of Sunday
21st we sat and enjoyed the nativity story portrayed by members of the
church, which was a good mixture of acting and multimedia use.

To help us stay in the Christmas mood up till Christmas, Monday evening we
had a number of other 'gringos' (expats) around our house to eat mince pies
and other festive nibbles whilst watching 'Muppets Christmas Carol' which
was thoroughly enjoyed by all, the following night we invited a number of
our Bolivian friends over to introduce them to the world of mince pies and
Stollen cake. The contrast in the time keeping of the two groups was quite
amusing, the gringos all arriving within half an hour of the stated time and
the Bolivians within 2 hours!!!

The eve of the 24th we celebrated Bolivian style with friends eating
together the traditional 'Picana' which is kind of like a spicy stew with
chicken and beef, vegetables and choclo, the big white maize that is common
here. The only difference to normal traditions being that we ate together
at 7.30pm as opposed to 12.30am.


We arrived back home in good time for Alana to put up her Christmas stocking
before all heading off to bed. Christmas morning got off to a nice lazy
start, opening our Christmas stocking presents all together on our bed, then
after breakfast making most of the morning for Alana to make her way through
opening her mountain of presents (thanks to everyone who contributed to
these).


Once these had all be opened we then made our way back up to the Snell
household to celebrate the British way, with a roast dinner filled with
vegetables and stuffing, followed by Christmas pudding (made by Sarah and
Melissa), and of course to start it all off we pulled our Christmas crackers
(sadly minus bangers) so all got to look silly wearing our hats and groaning
over the bad jokes.




Once we were all feeling fit to burst we enjoyed some fun and games all
making fools of ourselves until it was time to leave and return home. All
in all it was a very enjoyable day.