Christmas Plans

Ni Hao!

Hi everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season so far... we are doing our best to keep up the Christmas spirit here in China. We've decorated our room with paper snow flakes and curled red ribbon. I've even wrapped a few gifts already. This Christmas season we've got a few fun things going on over here...

The school is putting on a Christmas party for us at some restaurant in town. All of the foreign teachers (Thomas and myself included) are expected to sing, dance, and/or perform in some way. Most Chinese people love Karaoke (they call it KTV here) so most Chinese people can sing and dance at the drop of a hat. SO! Foreigners are expected to do the same or at least try. All of us foreign teachers are banning together to sing Christmas carols so if we are going to look like a bunch of idiots, at least we will be idiots together! After dinner our friends at the dorms are putting on a festivous party afterward. That is the made up holiday from the television show Seinfeld. If you don't know what it is, check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS7-jcsB_WQ

We still have to work on Christmas Eve day but a bunch of us are planning on going to a church service in town that night. A few churches have English services for us monolingual foreigners. On Christmas day we are planning on either doing another potlock dinner, similar to our Thanksgiving feast, or going out to eat and exchanging our Secret Santa gifts. It should be fun, but it's definitely not home! Other than that, it will be a pretty low key Christmas. Between a few parties here and there and Skyping family members, that about it!

We've got some BIG travel plans coming up in January. I think our travel itinerary so far is Harbin, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong if there is time. We are definitely looking forward to a break! We love and miss you all!! Have a wonderful holiday season and we will check in again soon!

Zai Jian!