It's beginning to look like Christmas?

It's December 19th.

A blizzard is hitting the Eastern seaboard of the US, dumping what is expected to be 20 inches or more of snow on DC. Friends and family in Paris, London, and Brussels are dealing with the beauty and travel delays associated with snow storms there late last week. Not to mention the ones in the northern Midwest.

Meanwhile, here in Lima it is nearly summer. The spring was unusually gray and chilly. But a few days ago, the sun and warmth finally made an appearance. Today, we awoke to a blue sky and sun in our garden. It inspired us to go buy some charcoal and fire up the parilla (grill) for dinner.  By midday, however, the clouds had rolled in, so now it's back to gray, though still warm enough to cook outdoors for dinner.

We are coming close to the one-year point of our lives in Lima. There's much we've learned, and gotten used to. Little by little we are adapting. But, it's definitely hard to get our minds around the concept of Christmas with palm trees. There are many fewer decorations here for Christmas than in a typical US or European town. And it's funny to see the efforts some do make to hang icicle lights or put out the dancing reindeer in a country where Christmas signals the beginning of beach season.

We did buy a Christmas tree (even though we'll be in DC for the holidays). And for the first time in any of our lives, we had to buy an artificial one. Firs and pines simply do not grow here, though the poinsettas thrive and turn into trees. And you should see what happens to a ficus, when it's not constrained to a pot and left to grow in a tropical climate...

We put up the creche. And we decorated our putti.

So here are some photos of the pre-Christmas season in Lima:

This photo was taken near our apartment, by a fancy hotel. The colors are Christmas-y - even the red and white Peruvian flag on the building. The palms trees and 70 degree temperature are not what we are used to associating with this time of year, but that's just our biased perspective.

This is our putti. He's a permanent feature of the apartment, located by the entrance. We can't move him, so we decorate him to suit the seasons.

Here is the first fake tree we've ever had. And I guess we'll be using it for the years to come. We all groused about it initially, but it's nice to have a tree and hang it with the ornaments we've collected over decades. It even drops fake needles...

A sign of Christmas in Peru. The weather is warmer and beaches more crowded. Britt and Addison celebrated the early morning sun by going surfing - though the clouds rolled in by the time they hit the water. They don't seem to mind.