Campo Christmas begins

Christmas is coming and last night the whole campo – around 8 houses – got together to put the Christmas tree up on the road and drink ginger tea. The tea was made on the fogon (outside cooking stove) by one of the neighbours, Barbara. It has ginger in it, obviously, sugar and all sorts of leaves - no idea what they are.

The ginger tea I have had before, people drink it most evenings at different houses in the neighbourhood at Christmas time but I have not seen the tradition of Christmas trees on the road.
Throughout the area we live, people are putting up their trees outside the house and here we have one tree for the whole campo.
Firstly the men put up the tree by banging a metal bar into the ground and then they and the ladies stick the bits of the tree onto the bar.

It is then secured by wires and decorated, the plugs are snipped off the light bulbs and the wire is taypeed to an extension lead. Great excitement when they work!

And hey presto we have a tree.

It really was lovely all coming together as a community. By the way, I was sent back to Barbara's house to get more ginger tea, and look what was inside the house.

I can just imagine my mother's face if someone wheeled two motorbikes into her living room.

Talking of trees, this is what I saw outside a café in the local town yesterday. A tree made of the local beer bottles, Presidente.

I have a friend coming for a week tonight and have been cleaning the house from top to bottom. Well, not just me cleaning it as in true Dominican style everyone offers to help. If in England someone offered to help me clean I would say “Thank you, that is so kind of you but I can manage.”  I can tell how much I have changed. Now I say “Great. Get yourself in here and put your pinny (apron) on.” And they all did. Luckily we did clean as look what I found under a cushion which the dogs had knocked onto the floor.

And the big news for this week is that Meg has had her puppies. They were born on December 1st and there are nine of them. This is the first 7 just after they were born.

Mother and pups are all doing well and they are growing very quickly. Here is a little video I did of them so you can see how noisy they are.If you can't see it you can find it on Youtube here

Meg is looking after them very well and is extremely busy. Meanwhile Dad is helping – not at all, just lies on the couch and complains about the noise.