Christmas Shopping

The holiday season has arrived! Even though we are far away from what feels like “normal” holiday traditions to us, we are trying to do what we can to still make the holidays feel special here. In honor of us, Heather, Anna and I went to town recently to do Christmas shopping! Here is a glimpse into how differently Christmas shopping looks for us this year.

Heather and Anna walking to town for our Christmas shopping

We decided to walk to town so that we could enjoy the views and not have the stress of driving. As usual, we greeted people along the way and met new people along the road.

There are a lot of new things in the market this time of year because of Christmas. One of the main differences is that there are a lot of large piles of used closed (mostly from the States, it seems) laid our in different places throughout the market. The bulk of our Christmas shopping this year was done by sifting through the clothes in these piles. All of these clothes are used (even though some of the men selling them insist that they are “completely new”). It was quite entertaining to rummage through the clothes. We found all kinds of gems including t-shirts with pictures of ET, Star Wars characters, a worm holding a bottle of Jim Bean (yeah??… very random!),  Rolling Stones, The Beetles and many more. It was also funny to see shirts from different colleges in the US. You never quite know what you will find! Since the piles of clothes are completely out in the open, there is obviously no where to go if you need a “dressing room”. So, you improvise! You put the item of clothing in question on over your clothes and as your friends to be your “mirror” for you :).  The best part about rummaging through these piles of clothes is that they will often have music blaring nearby and you never quite know what will start playing. While we were looking at one pile, Bob Marley was jamming through the speakers.

Trying on a shirt in the market. Don't worry, my "mirrors" told me that this was not a good fit for me. Personally, I think the woman's look in the background says enough :). 

Heather displaying a random find from one of the clothes piles

We also went into several of the shops in town during our Christmas shopping excursion.  To the right is a picture from one of the shops. They all look similar to this. The shops are small rooms with items placed wherever there is extra space. There is usually no guessing what will be in a certain shop and each shop can have a large variety of items (such as plates, flip flops and socks all in the same small shop). I walked into one shop and got extremely excited because they had Q-tips! I had not found Q-tips in town before, so I was thrilled! Oh the things I get excited about now ;). 

Anna and Heather holding the "bounty"
from the day of shopping!

We ended up finding quite a few things to give as Christmas gifts! We also did our grocery shopping at the same time since all of the shopping is in one place. The problem with walking to town to shop is that you might have a lot to carry back! Fortunately, Shawn met us with the car so that we did not have to walk back with all of our items.

It was a great day of Christmas shopping! Christmas will look different in many ways this year, but we are all looking forward to starting new traditions and enjoying new ways of doing things throughout the holiday season.