Baby Santas

Yesterday was the Pastorela at Quinn's school. We didn't know exactly what this would entail, but it turns out it's basically a traditional Christmas pageant. With some extra things. The older kids did the pageant roles (Mary, Joseph, 3 Kings, shepherds, angels, etc.), but the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes combined forces to sing a Spanish version of "Jingle Bells" (same tune, but as far as I could tell the words did not involve bells). And they did this all wearing teeny tiny Santa suits. It was overwhelmingly cute!



Here's our girl backstage -- she was very interested in the shepherds in the row behind.

And the grand moment when she took the stage:

Yeah, she's in the front row, on the left, with her face obscured by the microphone.

I went around the side to get a better angle.


I know she looks tiny here, but they had her standing next to a kindergartener. Some of the other front row kids are almost as small (but she is the youngest student in the school).

She was pretty pleased with herself.



The more traditional Christmas pageant was next.

And I think the name "Pastorela" comes from the tradition of having little kids dress up as shepherds (pastores in Spanish). This is also really cute, it turns out. The pageant had a few unexpected twists, including a troupe of belly dancers in Pharaoh's court.

There was a singing number and a dance after the pageant finished. I think these were 3rd or 4th graders.

I thought this was so cute, because the first half of the dance, the girls were on one side, and the boys on the other, and they were all groovin', pretty confident in their moves. But then when the part came where they couple up, they all hesitated -- they knew what they had to do but were pretty embarrassed to actually take the hands of the child of the opposite gender.

It was a very fun cultural experience -- we heard a lot of nice Nicaraguan Christmas music and it definitely helped us get in the Christmas spirit.