Christmas turns out to have been no exception. An enormous - maybe 10 feet tall at least - Elf on the Shelf moved to a different place on campus each day. We're talking about places that must have required a crane to move him to - ie, standing beside the school mascot bronze lion with a lasso around the lion or standing on top of one of the buildings waving. Not sure that the students appreciated how much effort went into all the decorations but all I kept thinking was that these wonderful parents clearly are looking for an outlet for their creative talents!
The most interesting part of this is that it all revolved around Christmas - where at our school in NC, you didn't even talk about Christmas specifically but just talked about the Winter Break and the holiday activities but nothing focused on a specific religious holiday. Everything at Stamford revolved around Christmas for three weeks and this is despite the fact that there is definitely a larger percentage of the school community who are not Christian here versus back in the States. What's wonderful about Stamford is the fact that there are children there from so many different racial and religious backgrounds and so many different nationalities are represented (it's about 35% students with American passports).
So one Saturday the PTA held a Christmas Fair where families were invited to do crafts, eat, play, laugh and shop on the school campus. It was an impressive effort and the kids had a lot of fun trying to pretend they were someplace cold. Here are a few pics ....
Can you see the snow? More foam blowing around campus!
We loved this sign
December always brings holiday parties and luckily we were still invited to a couple despite not knowing that many people. Drayton, of course, decided he had to wear his "christmas" pants to the parties. Let me describe these pants for you - wide waled, corduroy red and white striped slacks, just perfect for Tropics. But Drayton can be stubborn and wasn't going to be dissuaded from wearing his holiday pants - I had already tried to discourage him from bringing them to Singapore in the first place! He wore them with a big grin each time and tried to not look like he was sweating profusely.
In front of our real, live Christmas tree
Even other "creatively" dressed party guests at the party thought that Drayton's pants took the prize for best/hottest!
The American Club where we are members does a Toys for Tots party very similar to the one held annually at Hope Valley Country Club where we used to live. We brought toys for the marines to collect and donate to kids and needs and then visited Santa and had dinner. It was fun to be able to continue our tradition in another country.
Decorating Christmas cookies....
Visiting with Santa (with the Marines standing by)
Carols sung by the tree (and swimming pool!)
The official lighting of the Christmas tree (I was just relieved no one fell into the pool)
In front of the American Club with it all lit up for Christmas
No comments:
Post a Comment