...CHRISTMAS! ^.^

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

As such, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays to everyone in the world!

This past week I’ve been busy with preparing final essays, and for the final exams I have tomorrow and next week. I did make time to celebrate Christmas though.

In China, Christmas is not considered a national holiday, and as such, students are not allowed to have time off to celebrate. Yesterday I had all of my classes, and since I am an obedient student, I attended all of them without complaint. Since I am living in a different country, I believe it is best to respect the rules and customs of other cultures even if that means I must change my own habits for a short time. I was lucky for Christmas day though, because I only have one morning class, so I spent the rest of the day skyping with my family, going to a Christmas party with some of my friends, and then spending the evening preparing for tomorrow’s classes.

My Christmas was a very satisfying one, even though it is my first time celebrating Christmas without being with my family back home. My parents sent me some presents, which included lots of smartwool clothes and chocolate. These gifts made me very happy because after exams are over, I’m going to go visit Harbin with some of my classmates. Harbin is a city in northern China which is known for its ice sculpture festival, and extremely cold temperatures during winter. These smartwool clothes will be put to good use. Thank you so much mom and dad!

Here's some pictures of my AWESOME smartwool clothes:

I also had fun explaining to my roommate what Christmas is. She is from Thailand, and since the main holiday there is the New Year (similar to China), Christmas is typically only celebrated by foreigners. She told me that a lot of her classmates who are westerners were complaining about not having time off to celebrate Christmas, and that she didn’t understand why Christmas was so important. It was quite fun to explain it to here, and I gave Bam her first ever Christmas present, which was a chocolate Santa and a red scarf. Bam told me that she really liked it, which made me happy. She’s been a great roommate and friend, and I wanted to get her something nice during this time of the year.

She also gave me a present today:

Today when I went to class I learned an interesting fact. My hanyu teacher asked me if I had given any apples to my friends yesterday, and when I said no, she asked if I wasn’t celebrating Christmas. I told her that I gave my friends chocolate, and asked why I would give them apples. Apparently in China people give each other apples on Christmas Eve because the Chinese word for Christmas Eve has a character which sounds similar to a character in the Chinese word for apple.

Christmas Eve: 平安夜 (Píng'ān yè)

Apple: 苹果 (Píngguǒ)

After class I went to a Christmas party hosted by my friend Christianna, the girl who is in charge of our trip to Harbin during winter break. She’s lived here for a year already, and she thought it would be fun if everyone came by, watched Christmas movies, drank mulled wine, and exchanged gifts (we did a white elephant exchange, which was EXTREMELY fun).

Here's a picture of some of the people who came to celebrate (there were twenty of us at one point in Christianna's room):

(She also made this tree for the holidays too!)

(And this was just a fun calender in her room. It reminded me of Christmas...)

(We also played Uno with mini Uno cards, one of the gifts from the gift exchange)

For the gift exchange, I eventually got the following (due to there being so many people, it took a long time for people to exchange gifts and figure out who finally would get what, but it was a lot of fun!):

(these are socks, in case the picture looked strange)

I am very lucky to live in such a great community with fantastic friends. I am also forever grateful to have Skype, because I know I would not be as happy today without being able to see my family who has been completely supportive of me in every way. I love you mom, dad, Vicki, Andrew, grandma, and all my other awesome relatives!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

(Yum!)