Its Christmas eve. If you now imagine yourself a dark day, possibly snow outside, cold, the open fire, a huge christmas tree, lights, candles, the whole family  present-including even your mother in law-, and a turkey, then you are mistaken.

Today is probably the hottest day of the year. One website says its 34°C but feels like 48°C. Lets just say its hot. The whole day there was a 80% chance of thunderstorms, but instead we had a steel-blue sky all day. Too hot for turkey, way too sunny for candles and lights, the air conditioning is on and all the windows are closed. And the family? Well they all live at the other side of the world. Its just us. And 2 kids, both with a jet lag. And my brother with his family flying over as we speak, arriving tomorrow, just in time to share Christmas day with us.

A tree doesn’t really fit here, but tell me, where do put the presents when there is no tree? Hmm. Thats a tiny little problem. We all got the Argentine ‘lets-get-our-stuff-last-minute’ germ, my kids left the house at 4pm to buy presents. Why do it in advance if you can do it the same day anyway? I spend the whole day in the kitchen, a supposedly perfect meal is to be served in a few hours.

It is hard to get into a Christmas mood here in the southern hemisphere, but once Christmas is there, there is no way around it.

Buenos Aires is already running empty, in a few days there will be hardly anyone left, except for the many tourists. The extremely loud and busy city is changing into something quite different.  You can easily cross the streets without waiting for the green light, and you get to your destination in no time. Where did all the Porteños go? It is as if they all started a summer sleep, like bears up north do in winter. But thats another topic.

First there is Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!