Christmas is coming...

Thanksgiving came and went and, despite being away from home and family, Laura and I had a really good night. We went to Chen's in-laws' as planned, and the food was just as wonderful as we expected. We even had pumpkin, not pie, but pumpkin nonetheless. There were boiled sweet potatoes, yams, and chicken (as a substitute for the lack of turkey in China). We topped it all off with some wine, and had quite the pleasant evening. On our walk home, Laura and I decided that the one bottle of wine over dinner just wasn't quite enough, it's the holidays after all, so we stopped at a market and bought a second. We popped it open on the walk home (no open container laws in China) and were feeling pretty good as we got back to our apartment.

There are many different buildings in our complex, and ours only has 6 floors so there's no elevator. The building across from us, however, has like 12 or 13, so we voted for riding the elevators and checking out what it had to offer. We were able to get all the way up on the roof and watched all of our students leaving school for the night. By Friday we were all excited to see the show by Classes 1 & 2 of Senior 2, but they had to postpone because the kids weren't ready yet, and then Christine called and had to cancel (again) because it was "Parent's Weekend" at her school and she had to stay to teach. The positive side of this was that I got to follow my tradition of watching White Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. It was Laura's first time seeing it, and she really enjoyed it as well!!! Although our weekend plans fell through again, Laura and I decided to follow through on those fort plans that we made during the week. So on Saturday night (in the snow!) we made the trek to the Suguo for supplies. Some sticky hooks, a circular clothes-dying hanger, 2 bed sheets and some metal clippy things later, and we had quite the abode. We're looking into adding another sheet to make it more comfortable, but it's already awesome, and you really can tell the temperature difference inside the fort with the heater.

On Sunday we went for a walk to one of the parks in town that has a really nice coffee shop. We sat for a while with lattes and relaxed, when some random Chinese men decided to buy us tea. We accepted and stayed longer, they didn't speak any English so they didn't bother us. But it was just a weird situation. A woman from the coffee shop came and sat with us, and told us that they wanted to take us to dinner. We agreed but only on the condition that she would come along, because she was the only person who would speak even a little English. We went to dinner, which was hilarious, and afterward one of the men let me drive his car!!! It was an Audi, totally decked out with all the bells and whistles, and drove like a dream. He was really impressed with my driving skills, which makes sense because the Chinese are horrible drivers. All of them. The next day he wanted to take us to lunch and then dinner again, but we casually declined mentioning that we are very busy during the week and maybe at the weekend we could go to another meal together. It's a little creepy, but he can't even ask us himself, so we don't really feel bad saying no. We're also leaving soon enough, it's not a big deal.

Now that it's December, I've decided to theme all of my lessons towards Christmas. I've been teaching carols, and making paper chains where each kid decorates a link, and writing letters to Santa. My English Corner students will watch The Polar Express in their lessons right before the holiday. They really don't know much about the festival, and while I can't explain any religious details, I still like the excuse of being able to listen to Christmas music all month, and sharing my holiday spirit with the kids. The top students really love the activities so that makes me feel good. It's hard to believe that after New Year's I'll only have 1 classroom lesson left with each class. Senior 2 was able to put on the show tonight, and it was one of the most entertaining things I've seen in China. Some acts were really good, some were not. And others were simply hilarious because the students were able to write their own skits, and the Chinese sense of humor is so different than ours. Either way it was great to see them put their English to use, and I'm glad I was invited!

As things move along I've come to conclude that December will probably be the longest month. The excitement of Christmas is great, but the anticipation of home being close, but still far is what will get me. I figure January will fly with trying to get everything in line...but I can't look that far ahead yet! Right now I'm just waiting for a package to arrive, there was an attempted delivery on Monday, but apparently no one was in the mail office at school so they didn't leave it. Chinese mail is frustrating, but hopefully it will show up soon!!!