Haven’t blogged for a while – we’ve been busy! The Christmas season is crazy busy here in Manila, but beautiful also. Almost all of the buildings in the CBD have been decorated with Christmas lights, there are nativity scenes all around, and Christmas music blares out of stereos everywhere. (Okay, so the last bit does get a bit tedious…) Christmas started here just as soon as Halloween was over. So we’ve been ‘in the season’ for almost 6 weeks now! We started our Christmas shopping around about then, and are now thankfully finished (the malls are just getting busier…).
In expat circles, all the parties etc. are scheduled quite early on as many, like our family, leave town for the Christmas period. The MADS group (Mothers and Darlings) hosted a Christmas party the first weekend of December for all the 0-5 year olds. There was face painting, cookie decorating, hat making, card making, a bouncy castle, and of course a visit from the ‘man’ himself to give all the kiddies a present.
Last Saturday night, the primary school choir (and their pianist, Nigel) performed some Christmas carols at a local hotel. As a thank you from the hotel, we were all given an evening meal. The previous week, the senior school had a Christmas concert, which was very well done, and of high quality.
This week, Emily has two performances of her Nursery class Christmas pageant. She’s a sheep (quite appropriate for a Kiwi…) and she has known all the words of the songs off by heart for weeks now. The last day of school (Friday) she also has a Christmas party, which we’re all invited to. And the staff at school have a party on the Thursday evening, with the theme ‘Glitter’.
Amidst all of this, Emily had a sports day at school. This was quite good entertainment, actually. The school hall was full of 3-5 year olds running, jumping, throwing, balancing and resting. One funny part was when Emily’s group had to do relay races around two cones. Well, the first student didn’t know where to run, and ran off sideways. The next student ran straight (as he was told) but all the way to the other side of the hall. Emily, being 3rd, obeyed the order to just run around the cone, but she ran around the first one, which was all of a metre away! I think the 5th student finally got it right!
Oh, and we hosted a party for Zoe’s birthday, too. Our ‘baby’ has turned two! There were 8 little ones in our living room celebrating together. We even had a fairly successful game of pass the parcel. Zoe needed a bit of help blowing her 2nd candle out, and Emily was more than willing to do the honours. We finished off the afternoon by going down to the pool, which has become one of Zoe’s favourite things to do.
This week is our last week in Manila before we head home for even more Christmas celebrations and a couple week’s holiday. We decided that we’d have a small, nuclear family Christmas here first, so we didn’t need to bring presents around the world and back again. So we did this on Sunday after church, and enjoyed a fairly quiet afternoon & evning in. And now, the countdown begins! FOUR days to go!
The birthday girl asks for help with the 2nd candle from her big sister, who happily obliges.
