Feliz Natal!

Merry Christmas, Feliz Natal and Boas Festas to all my friends and family in America and Cape Verde! I miss you all and hope you are having a wonderful holiday wherever you are!

Love, Sarah :)

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Santa Claus pumping out the jams at the community center Xmas festa

Look at that snow! (or as the kids here call them, Christmas flowers!) And yes, our cat loves us.

Keeping warm by the Yule Log.
Christmas Eve with Thaysa and Heni (our upstairs neighbors and landlord's kids)

Some of my English students from the Youth Center in Cha d'Matias (Espargos).

The Camara Municipal (local government) building is definitely ready for Christmas.

Liz (a fellow SOS Tartaruga-er)'s last night in Sal. There was a lovely beach party send-off.

Some of our Senegalese friends jammin on the beach.

Only in Cape Verde...

A random list of some of things that could only happen in Cape Verde (and are reasons why I love this place!):

1. You can walk into a store with a cup from home to purchase just one cup of wine (to either drink there or take back home with you). This applies to other things as well – you can buy a whole pack of printer paper, or you can ask them to open the pack to just buy by the page.

2. Every conversation begins with a back and forth of asking “How are you?” in almost every way this language allows:
• “How are you?”
• “Are you fine?”
• “Are you super?”
• “Is everything good?”
• “How is life?”
Even after the conversation gets going, if there is ever a lull it is almost always filled by someone asking, “So, everything’s good?” and the back and forth begins all over again.

3. You can blast Michael Bolton or Celine Dion in a public space and not get weird looks.

4. When asking for/giving directions, a perfectly acceptable answer to, for example, “Where is the bakery?” is “La (there).” The amount of stress placed on the word, la, indicates the exact distance – La (just there) or Llllllllllllllllllla (wayyy over there).

5. When you visit someone at their home they will always offer you food or drink, even if they have close to nothing and are living in a shack made of corrugated metal and shipping crates.

6. Criteria for something to be considered a real meal:
• There must be at least one serving of rice and/or beans on your plate
• You must use a spoon or fork to eat it
• To make something fancy, just put a fried egg on top (yum!)

7. Going to pay your electric or telephone bill is an all-day event. But nobody seems to mind (maybe because they are the only air conditioned buildings in town).

8. The most popular activity is to stroll around the block to see what other people are up to and stopping to chat with everyone you run into. Or you can just park yourself somewhere on the side of the street and yell to everyone who walks by.

9. EVERYONE (and I seriously mean everyone) watches and loves Brazilian soap operas.

10. When meeting somebody for the first time the line of questioning is often:
(after the series of “how are you?” questions, of course)
• “What is your name?”
• “Where are you from?”
• “Do you have kids?”
• “Do you want a Capeverdian boyfriend?”
(the order of these questions can vary)

11. Everything shuts down when it rains.

12. Justin Beiber and Eminem are national obsessions. And James Blunt is the karaoke artist of choice.

13. From breakfast to midnight snack, anytime is a good time to eat fish.

14. It is possible to hear Christmas songs randomly played in restaurants, year-round.

15. I have thoroughly confused everyone here about my nationality. I’ve gotten everything from Chinese to Mexican, but never American. I can have a 5 minute conversation with someone trying to explain that I am from America and they will still leave unconvinced.

Its December, why am I still sweating?

Its December and people are starting to get into the Christmas spirit! Store windows are decked out with lights and Christmas trees and they’ve put lights shaped like stars, bells, reindeer and bows on the street lights throughout town. Its all very festive. But there is something about sweating uncontrollably on a daily basis that makes it hard to believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away. Every morning I wake up and open our kitchen window to find the same thing: blinding sun (seriously the sun feels stronger here; and combined with all the light reflecting off white tiled buildings and sidewalks it sometimes feels like my corneas are being burned), clear sky, blue ocean, wind, dust and dryness. Then I step outside and immediately start sweating. Don’t get me wrong, I would gladly choose being hot over being cold and there is nothing like going to the beach in December, but hearing people from home talk about the changing colors of the leaves and wearing sweatshirts does make me miss the different seasons. But I can’t change the weather here so I am prepared for a hot, white (sand) Christmas.

With the turtle season over, I’ve picked up a couple English classes to keep myself busy. Three times a week I go to one of the youth centers in Espargos to teach English and help out with activities and then twice a week I teach English at a youth center for homeless kids and kids from less fortunate families in Santa Maria. The kids are all really excited and enthusiastic about learning English and its very rewarding to run into my students on the street and hear them say, “Sara! Good morning!” Even if his response to my asking, “How are you?” is, “My name is fine.” At least it’s a start.

Before coming to the youth center in Espargos, I had never met a group of kids more excited for Christmas. Everyday for the past 3 weeks they have been drawing pictures of Christmas trees, Santa Claus (Pai Natal), candles and wreaths and making decorations for their classroom. Today we made a Christmas countdown by making a paper chain with each link representing a day until Christmas. Each kid decorated a couple links and they are all excited for their day to cut their link. There was a small brawl over who would get to decorate the Dec, 25th link, but in the end all was resolved with the decision to have everyone draw a small picture on the link. They also taught me a Christmas song – its to the tune of Jingle Bells and roughly translates to:

On Christmas, On Christmas

Just toys made in China

Play with them today

Play with them tomorrow

And after tomorrow they are broken.

Kind of a sad Christmas song, but still incredibly catchy!

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Helping our neighbor's kids put up their Christmas tree!

The "road" to our house.

The main road in Espargos - almost all the buildings you see are either offices, Chinese lojas or mini-mercados that all sell the same exact things for the same exact prices. The Cape Verdean business strategy still puzzles me...
Santa Cruz - the poorest zone in Espargos. They have no water and electricity only after 5pm.