Can Santa even carry this much hair gel?

Christmas is coming up (all the writing tutors I've learned from would say not to start with such a generic opening...). Starting tomorrow, the tíos and tías go on vacation, and all the high school and college kids --and us volunteers-- take over watching the kids through the año nuevo.

Buying presents for the kids over the last few days turned out to be an interesting process. The questions that it raises are surprisingly tough: how do you find a balance between giving presents in a way that stimulates their excitement, but without being too over-the-top or making them think that you're just here to buy stuff. On other words, somewhere between making them feel excited (which is certainly a worthwhile thing to do), while also making the present part of some larger process of growth.

After brainstorming a variety of ideas, Leila and I laid out the best possibilities in a spectrum, from 'Most short-term/most obnoxious' to 'Most long-term/most emotionally meaningful'. In order, my options were:

-Candy
-Hair Gel (they love their spiky hair here)
-Boxers with cartoon characters/soccer logos on them
-Printing photos of the kids that I've taken
-Photo albums in which to put those, and future, photos

With Leila's help, I ended up with the photos and photo albums, and candy. We decided that the candy would last short term; then, even if many of them wouldn't be thrilled with a photo album, if it could be meaningful for a few kids, that would still be better than something that loses its meaning for everyone after a week.

I'm scared that it will be a less popular choice in the short term, but I guess learning to keep in mind and work towards that long-term growth is part of why I'm here...

But then Leila came up with how I could also get hair gel cheap, thereby cementing both the meaningless and deep sides of my Christmas gift. Which is how I ended up with this:
It's something like 10 pounds of hair gel (which I'll split into little containers for each of the 23 kids). It's so big, there's actually another normal size hair gel container suspended inside this one.


Well, ¡Feliz Navidad y Año Nuevo!