I cannot believe that it has been three weeks since my last update. Much has happened in those three weeks and I will do my best to share the details with you.

We had our Christmas party with a lot of Chinese friends in attendance.  Actually, we had two Christmas parties: a children’s Christmas party and an adult Christmas party.  For both of these parties, skits were performed of the Christmas story.  The children performed theirs and we, the foreign teachers performed for the adults.  I was the narrator and very thankful for it because I was losing my voice. Acually, I can’t remember the last time I had a voice that worked properly for more than a few hours at a time.  The party was fun and six of my Qinghua University students came to the party.  After the party, one of them came up to me and said that he learned a lot.  🙂 Oh, just thinking about them makes me miss them even more.

The week before Christmas was filled with shopping for my secret santa gift and my white elephant gift.  In our group, we exchanged names a few weeks before Christmas.  I had one of the guys who was really easy to shop for. I was disappointed in myself that I wasn’t a bit more creative with his gift, but I did get most of the items on his list.  I was told the white elephant gift was supposed to be something crazy/useless/interesting/found/etc.  My white elephant gift was my old bike seat that was hanging on my wall (and is now back on the wall miraculously!), a gaudy Chinese decoration, the Hannah Montana movie bought for 5 kuai on the street and another item that I can’t remember.  Obviously the gift was not the greatest if even I cannot remember what it was.  I feel bad for the person who got it.  At least she liked the movie. 🙂  FYI – the secret santa gift that I received was a Qinghua (Tsinghua) University sweatshirt, a talking Chinese calculator :), and a ‘bead’ curtain.  There is a story for the ‘bead’ curtain.

Early in September, one of the male teachers told me that it would be really awesome if I made him a bag for his BOOKS that he buys each week from Ch**ch.  He buys a box each week and transports them to my apartment where we have our weekly service.  These are for distribution to our new Chinese friends who are beginning to study the GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.  However, each box is marked as to what it is and he wanted to be a bit more discreet about it on his way to our place.  On our way to lunch the same day he asked me to make him his bag, I said, ‘you should make me a bead curtain.’  So, he said that if I make him a bag he would make me a bead curtain. So the deal was on.  I, not wanting to wait for anything, immediately sought out a way to ‘make’ this bag.  I took the cheater way out and had a tailor make the bag.  I picked out the fabric and that was that. When I got it back two days later I realized that I had not asked about handles. 🙁 hmmm…….  So I took the bag to a different tailor (they seem to be everywhere here…thankfully so) and had him add handles.  I ‘asked’ him (by asked I mean I pointed and smiled and shrugged…the usual) to put buttons on the bag so it would close.  We finally understood each other and I left. Thirty seconds later, he called me back into his shop and showed me some Velcro! What a great idea! I didn’t even think of velcro but it was perfect.  I came back later that day and the bag was finished.  I gave the bag to this teacher and then told him I was looking forward to getting my bead curtain.

After a while, I sort of forgot about the bead curtain.  This person, however, did not and ended up drawing my name for the secret santa exchange.  He also knows of my love of playing cards.  I have a feeling this gift took a LONG time to make and was probably mildly frustrating. I had a picture of it but I think I accidentally deleted it. 🙁 I’ll take another one and post it later. I do think it was one of the most thoughtful and creative gifts I’ve ever gotten though! 🙂

I was blessed with quite a lot of time off during the Christmas holiday.  The FOC school was closed for two weekends (three weeks) because two of the three teachers went to America for Christmas.  I enjoyed my free time and used it to get together with friends.  I also got an unexpected week off at Sinopec during the week of Christmas.  My students had to learn about their exam while I was enjoying my freedom.  That was also my last week with my Qinghua students.

I attended the Qinghua Christmas party on Christmas Eve night before our Compline service.  This was probably one of the most interesting Christmas parties I have been too.  I brought two of my American friends because Ms. Fan told me to bring as many as possible. 😉  One of the things they had us do was play musical chairs.  However, there was no music.  This game consisted of the three of us walking around two chairs starting when one of the men clapped once and stoping when he said stop. We really didn’t know what was going on and just sort of went with it.  We then ate an abundance of fruit, dumplings, nuts, and candy. We also had beer with them.  They kept trying to get us to drink more. ‘Amber, where’s your drink?’ ‘Amber, cheers!’ Thankfully the beer in China tastes like water and makes me full before it does anything else. As my friend and I were leaving the party, they tried to get me to sing for them.  I kept refusing and said I had to leave. Man, they are insistent.  I finally got away, without singing, and went to our Compline service.  Not a party I will soon forget! 🙂

Christmas day was full of singing and reading the BOOK! We had Mexican food for our Christmas dinner.  I have never had tacos for Christmas but it was a nice change from Chinese food.  We exchanged gifts and had our white elephant exchange.  Christmas night was spent hanging out and chatting with American friends.  I received an interesting gift from my friend Kevin.  I had someone take a picture of us at the Christmas party and I emailed it to him.  I did not realize that he would make it into a coffee mug that reveals the picture when there is a hot liquid in it! 🙂  It was also a really thoughtful gift. 

The day after Christmas was the birthday of one of the teachers. (Coincidentally, also the birthday of Chairman Mao…hmmm.)  As this teacher hates being sung to, she wanted to get away from the crazies who like to sing and celebrate birthdays. There is no better place than the Great Wall.  We went to a new section of the Wall this time: Badaling 八达岭.  Little did she know that a Chinese friend that came along planned the whole day with much singing of the ever popular happy birthday song…in many languages! 🙂  We took a bus to Badaling.  Most people would not have gone to the wall that day because it was SUPER cold outside. We, of course, were crazy.  We took wine and a bunch of snacks and had a picnic on the wall!  We also had noise makers and santa hats and sang happy birthday many times. 😉  The birthday girl, dressed in her commie coat enjoyed it…even if there was singing. 😀  On our way to the wall that day, we met three foreigners trying to get to the wall also.  We all ended up on the same bus and we ran into them a few times on the wall! 

After we got back to Beijing, we went to an Indian restaurant for supper.  The other three foreigners came with us to supper and another one of my Chinese friends (Ross–a student of mine) came along also.  Supper was fun, drinks and tiramisu afterward was also fun!  I had quite a bit of time off during the last week of December and spent that time with friends and taking pictures and such.  It was really quite a blessing to have this time off.

For New Years Eve, the single girls (and one married girl) went to a Persian restaurant for a lovely supper. It was delightful!  The plan was to go back to one of their apartments and play some games while enjoying a few cocktails.  I got sidetracked because a Chinese friend sent me a message during supper to see if I wanted to get a drink with him that evening.  I figured I could take an hour or so break from the ladies and rejoin them after meeting a friend.  When I rejoined the ladies there were no games but just good conversation. We made it to midnight (a first for me in many years!) and then went our separate ways.

I go back to teaching again at the FOC school.  I have two Saturdays left before the break.  I’m looking forward to the time away even though I just had time away.  I’m rethinking my enthusiasm (if you can actually do that) for this school.  I really like my 7th grade class but the 3rd grade class is more of a burden and a stress for me than a joy.  I keep trying to find the small blessings in this class but the students wear on me after a while.  Pr*y for me and for my 3rd graders.

As I ride my bike through the streets of Beijing and laugh at the oddities that are everywhere, I try to make mental notes of what I should write in my blog.  I think, ‘I have to make a note of that.’  But then when I sit down to write it, I can’t remember most of the things that crack me up from the day.  I should really write them all down somewhere.  For example, Snow Removal in China.  Apparently this is the most snow that Beijing has gotten in a very long time, if ever.  I picked a great year to come to China. 🙂  So, in a city where they are not used to removing snow from the roads, they just put it off.  And when they get around to it, they use many people with foot-wide shovels to clean off the roads.  It’s hilarious to see this happen.  I guess it’s the government’s way of providing jobs for their people.  But, it does take forever!  They are currently (I mean right now at 9:30 pm on Friday) cleaning off the streets that are going to have snow on them again tomorrow.  This snow came almost a week ago.  It makes for really interesting biking also. I try to avoid it. 

Another thing that made me giggle today was the nut stand in an alley near one of the apartments.  There was nobody manning the stand and there were many small birds enjoying the free meal.  🙂  The cars that drive down the side roads the wrong way…this is actually more of a frustration but sometimes it’s funny.  Traffic is mostly a frustration.  I will try to keep a better record of life’s little hilarities so that I might share them with you in the future. 

Life continues to be cold here.  I’m looking forward to the travels that I have coming up. I’m planning to go to Harbin which is in the far north part of China.  Apparently, I am not cold enough in Beijing.  The plan is to stay there for only two or three days to take in the snow and ice festival.  Google it. It’s supposed to be incredible! I’ll post pictures!   Hopefully I will go to Hainan Island sometime in February to warm up a bit, then it’s off to Hong Kong for the FOC retreat.  I will try to have another entry before I leave for my travels.  It’s becoming more difficult to keep up with it. 

I will post pictures soon!  May HE continue to bless you and your family in the New Year! GB!