Christmas Traditions

My family has many Christmas traditions. We start the season off by getting a tree when everyone in my family is home and has time to decorate it. While we’re decorating the tree, we always have a cup of hot chocolate. As Christmas gets closer and closer, my mom is in the kitchen more and more making delicious family recipe cookies, her famous cinnamon rolls, and on Christmas Eve, a secret, family recipe Christmas bread. Christmas Eve day is spent with my mom in the kitchen, us, the kids, cleaning if it’s our turn to host Christmas, and my dad running around for last minute ingredients and presents. Our Christmas Eve night starts at church where we are all in our best clothes. The service ends with singing Silent Night by candle light. After church, we come home, stay in our best clothes, and eat a fancy dinner on fine china. After dinner, we all settle down with a cup of hot chocolate to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. It ends up being a pretty late night. On Christmas morning, everyone in my family wants to kill me. I’m ten and eight years younger than my sister and brother, so I was always more excited for Christmas morning than they were. It’s become a tradition that I wake my parents up early, then I get permission to go wake up my brother, which let me tell you, is hard work! My parents have to wake up my sister. If I ever tried to wake her up that early, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it! We all meet in my parents’ room, and after my dad goes downstairs to make sure ‘there aren’t any reindeer left,’ we walk downstairs to the tree, oldest to youngest. My brother always picks on me on the way down, for instance, he walks very, very, very slowly so I can’t get past him. We go through our stockings first, and then we move on to the presents under the tree. Our long Christmas day ends with a long drive to one of my aunts’ or uncles’ house on my dad’s side. We have many Christmas traditions that we try as hard as we can to keep going as everyone gets older and moves out. It’s a challenge that is well worth the struggle. Merry Christmas!

The Power of One: Reaction

We recently finished watching a heartbreaking movie, as most inspirational movies are, about how one person, P.K., helped a few people in little ways that ended up giving hope to many. There were many, many scenes in this film I could not watch, for instance, when Botha and his friends decided to use P.K., played by the most adorable little kid, as a restroom. It was at that moment I realized that it wasn’t just the native Africans that were discriminated against. Sure they received the worst of the discrimination, but the English were also treated unfairly. Two more scenes I could not watch both involve Piet. I was not prepared for the cruelty inflicted on him by Sergeant Bormann. Following the scene where he made Piet eat off his shoe, I could barely keep my lunch down as I was eating it. Luckily, my friend had warned me what the sergeant would do next to Piet, beat him to death, so I along with my friend, covered our eyes when that horrible scene was taking place. There were as many inspiring moments in this movie as there were violent ones. My favorite included when Piet stood up to Sergeant Bormann right before he died. Just because I didn’t watch that scene, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t hear what was happening. I also liked the scene at Maria’s funeral because I felt that when everyone from Alexandria came and sang it showed her father that relationships exist despite race, religion, and social status. I agree with my fellow Globies who said this was their favorite Global Ed movie so far. It was very hard to watch, but you are totally immersed in what living in South Africa would have been like for the various races.