Merry Christmas!

It's a shame I don't have photos for this post. Next time.

The last few days have been full of stuff. Saturday was midwinter's day, and in China it's traditional to eat dumplings, and as you're eating them you remind yourself to put on an extra layer of clothing. That's advice I should have heeded earlier - I have a cold right now. The dumplings were very tasty, though.

On Sunday the school had Christmas celebrations, and instead of regular classes the kids just played games all day. Alex dressed up as Chevady, the school's mascot, and I dressed up as Santa Claus - so I spent the day saying "ho ho ho, merry Christmas", and giving out candy to the kids. After the kids had left, all the teachers (except Ariel, because she was sick, and wasn't there) piled into a couple of taxis - four people in the back seat of each - and made our way to Mary's house (one of the admin staff at the school). I played Chinese checkers, and then we had barbecued chicken for starters, and hot pot for the main meal. Delicious!

On Monday, Yoyo (one of Ariel's friends) came over to teach me Chinese, and Ivy joined in too, so we're going to do it on a regular basis. After that I went with Yoyo to her university, we met up with Cao Yan, and I got to see the inside of the girl's dormitories at the university. They're very Spartan - there are four people to a room, and each person has a bunk, and a desk underneath the bunk.

Then we went into the city centre to meet Ariel, which turned out to be no mean feat. Although the Chinese don't officially celebrate Christmas, the streets were packed with people. We did find her eventually, but they cancelled the buses in and out of the city centre because of all the people - so we had to walk to the edge of the old city before we could catch a bus. On the way, we bought sugarcane from a street vendor, and munched on that until we found a bus.

All in all, it was a pretty good Christmas Eve. Hope yours went as well!