Feliz Navidad!

In the last few weeks, people at work have been talking a lot about "canastones". From what I could tell, these were baskets of goodies traditionally handed out before Christmas. I had imagined they would contain some chocolates and perhaps a bottle of wine or champagne. Well, I was in for a surprise. On Friday, we each received our canaston. Instead of a basket, we received a custom-ordered backpack (with our name and the Pro Mujer logo) plus a big plastic bag filled with .... what I can most easily sum up as non-perishable food items. There was a package of spaghetti, a jar of mayonnaise, canned peaches, canned peas, condensed milk, some packaged cake, powdered mix for pudding, powdered mix for Jello-O, a jar of Nescafe, Bolivia's version of Spam, quite a few other things, and a bottle of wine (at least I wasn't wrong about that). Wow! They certainly have me stocked up through the New Year now. It was all so heavy that I needed help bringing the bags home.

On another Christmas note, a new movie theater opened up across from where we live. Actually it's a mall, but only the ground and basement floors are ready at this point, i.e. the movie theater and food court. Apparently, that's enough to have a grand opening. Despite the fact that the rest of the building is still very much in construction (as you can see here) - with steel poles sticking out, unpainted cement slabs gracing the next 1-2 floors (and the building is supposed to have 10 floors of which 7 are still missing), and construction materials surrounding the place. Safety standards are a little different here. It is a good theater though. We saw Avatar in 3D there yesterday and it was impressive (plus I really liked the movie itself).

We won't really be celebrating Christmas this year. It feels odd to do so when it's 20+ degrees Celsius out and we don't really have close family and friends around. The whole Christmas spirit has largely passed us by. But the travel spirit is still very much alive, so we'll be making our way to Chile instead, which I can't complain about at all as an alternative.