Christmas Eve

Our drive to the Orphanage is very interesting, we travel to a different part of the City, it is obviously a poor area but it has a certain beauty to it that is hard to describe, maybe it is only something you can feel when you drive through.  These pictures (both on the way there and home - do not represent all of Luanda. It is very different in each community). We were in one of the poorest as you will see by the pictures at the end. 

I know this is a bad picture  but they women here are truly amazing.  

Some of the back roads we had to go on were flooded because of the rain we have had but our driver did great. 

So on Christmas Eve we went to one of the Orphanages about one and half hours away. We went with 2 other families that we are friends with. It was a wonderful day and such a pleasure to meet all the children. They put on a dance for us and sang songs, it was all very endearing. The school had organized for all the children at the Orphanage to receive a gift, however there were 3 little girls that were not on the list, but we managed to find them something. I had a little boy maybe around 5 or 6 come up to  me at the end and hold my hand, then he kissed it and said obrigada - which  means thank you in Portuguese. It was the sweetest thing. 

The younger children singing a song for us.

 On our way home there was terrible traffic. It took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home. It was pretty funny, for a good 45 minutes Brett, who was in the front seat, got to stare at a dead cow in the back of a truck with some other furniture..... sure hope they weren't taking it to shoprite!