Merry Christmas to all! After a lovely time preparing for christmas in Panama, with paper snowflakes, solar powered christmas lights and stockings, we were ready to celebrate. I taught the ladies to make stockings with traditional ngobe designs and we sold them to other volunteers. They loved the tale of the stocking, especially the part about the children who don't behave themselves and only receive lumps of coal for christmas. The day before I was headed out on a plane to celebrate Christmas at home, we had 17 stockings to finish sewing. So we had our own little Santa's workshop. They asked me to sing Christmas songs to lift their spirits up. So I sang every song that I could remember ( lots of forgotten lyrics, but it doesn't really matter, you just get to make them up). They loved hearing about the man made of snow who melted away one day in the hot sun.
Now I am home, visiting the my family in the US, for my first trip home in a year and nine months. And it feels great to be with family and friends and see the beauty of the northwest again.
Merry Christmas to all my friends and family, wherever you may be in the world!
