¡Navidad in Montanita!

As a New Yorker, it was hard to feel like it’s the Christmas season without Black Friday style shopping insanity, blistering, nose-numbing cold, non-stop cheesy Christmas music blasting from every store and window, and tacky over-the-top decorations covering every house, tree and street. And all that usually starts in October! Montañita definitely has it’s own way doing things.

Along with the intense winter sun and beach weather came all the Christmas lights. Thankfully, unlike in the New York suburbs, there were no giant inflatable snow globs in front of people houses, or 15 foot Santa Clauses on the roofs. Decorations are on a small scale here, and walking through Montanita seeing the trees peaking out from windows, gave us cute little reminders of the season that finally made me feel like Christmas was coming.

A couple weeks before Christmas at the school, we got together at the school cabañas with the students to decorate the common areas and drink hot coco. Groups of friends got together to organize amigo secreto swaps, and by the time we had gotten all the lights up and the tree set, we were feeling in the spirit. As Christmas approached the local parties began to pick up. There were parties for every school in the area, every day care center, every clinic. Just walking down the street meant passing parts of town that were cordoned off for a Christmas fiesta. We had staff parties, homestay family parties, student parties, amigo secreto parties, and by the time the day actually arrived, we were all happy and exhausted.

For most of the office staff, and the students, this was our first Xmas in the tropics. The hot Ecuadorian sun, the palm trees, bikinis, plastic Christmas trees, and the lack of a pre-Christmas commercial frenzy, all seemed so different. But the spirit was the same. Family, togetherness, gift-giving (on a more reasonable scale), music and delicious food, all made this Christmas still feel like home. Only instead of digesting your big dinner on front of a fire with a hot eggnog, it was in a hammock on the beach with a Mojito in your hand!