OK, I know I wasn't too detailed in my last email I knew I had to get one out though. SO for those of you who keep asking questions about my holidays... here ya go!
Christmas was a great and very busy time for me. I came back from thanksgiving teaching the kids songs for our production. THat is what we worked on for 3 weeks. We sang and danced and learned about CHristmas and why it is celebrated. In the Da ban class we made a book on the story of CHristmas, the true meaning. Our production was Friday the 19th. Our schedule looked like this...
1. XiaoXiao (SH-ow SH-ow, 2 year olds) sang: The gift goes on
2. Xiao (SH-ow, 2 and 3 year olds) sang: Look at the gift and Jingle bell rock
3. Xiaoxiao and Xiao sang: We wish you a merry christmas
4. Dance specialty class danceed to: Little shepherd
5. Chinese teachers danced, Da Ban (rachel and jojo) gave intro Good fortune has come
6. international class did a play called The littlest christmas tree and sang a song ??? i don't know the name
7. Dance specialty class danced again to: happy darling
8. Chinese gongfu class did two displays: 'the drunken fist' and 'chinese GongFu'
9. Teacher Lele did a dance: Happy prairie
10. Da (sounds like it is spelled, 5 and 6 year olds) sang: Do you hear what I hear and Mary did you know
11. Zhong (J-ong, 4 years old) sang: We wanna wish you a merry christmas and Christmas day written by me
12. Da then did a dance to Edlwise and Jinglebells. *****It might sound like an odd comination, but it was actually really cute.
13.We all ended the show with Silent night in english, chinese and german
I think it all went very well.
We went out with all of the chinese teachers and drivers from my school to dinner. We ate so many amazing courses. The chinese also love to drink when celebrating something. So they would play drinking games and toast eachother. When toasting you want to have you glass lower than the person you are toasting. It shows that you respect that person. Then due to all the drinking there was a lot of singing and danceing. Everyone chanted to tell who they wanted to sing or dance next. We all had our turns. And if you like what a person sings you give them a flower. We had 3 flowers so they got passed around all night. When I was singing I got all 3 flowers and then people started bring up food, i got a dumpling, a fish, a glass of beer... it was really funny. That sunday it snowed... one of 2 days of snow thus far in Qingdao since i have been here. Monday it turned to ice and I had the day off, due to the bad roads. Tuesday all the snow was gone. SO I only taught 2 days that week.
Wens night there was a CHristmas Eve service at Fellowship. It was a lot of fun. We had a candle lighting ceremony like the ones we have back home. Made me a bit home sick. After the servie we headed back to the Birkenstocks. We all found a spots on the floor to lay out or sleeping gear. There were 11 of us on the floor and Kianna was in her crib. We all goofed off until it was time for Judy(the mom) to read us a story. It is tradition in her family for someone to read a story on Christmas Eve and this was a tradition she was eager to share with us. I love to be read to and quickly fell asleep. We got woken up at 7am by my phone alarm that went off even though the phone it self was turned off. Nobody seemed to mind. We took our time getting up. Judith Rose (another teacher) came over. We had breakfast and started the present opening process. I was incharge of passing out presents, as I love this position. With 11 people opening presents it took a while. So we took a few breaks. Chuck would read to us and we has a small discusion about the Nativity story. All is all we finished presents around 1pm. Mandy and I headed over to our boss's house. There we joined in the games of Crainium and Blockus. We played for a few hours til dinner. For our Christmas dinner Mandy made Philly Cheese Steaks. They were AMAZING! We went back to the Birks for desert, i had made Pumpkin cake and there were other various deserts. We watched a movie and then mandy and I headed home. We still had yet to open the gifts we had at home. By this time it was 10pm. We got home and opened the gifts our parents sent us. And then we opened our stocking. Mandy and I filled eachother stockings. I was told the the stocking is a western thing to do. It is not a custom in canada or Germany to fill stocking, olny in the states...? IDK the history of the stockings. We finished our day by calling home.
SO I had a very busy, and very blessed holiday. New Years I spent in town walking around. There were lots of fire works and one of the buildings was sending off chinee lanterns into the sky. It was all really cool. New years day I wasn't feeling well so i stayed at home, I i didn't want to take my chances in the cold. But that sat.was feeling better and needed to exersice a bit to get the germs out.. so I climbed FuShan Mountain. I sang at church that sunday... I love singing. This past wkend it snowed, we were supposed to climb WuShan Mountain. But we have plans to climbit this wkend.
Th chinese New Year is coming up in another wk and 1/2. We have been invited to spen it with my friend Jack and his family. So we will be spending this beloved chinese holiday with some authentic chinese. I don't know what traditions they have. I have asked some and mostly just get the anser eat. With as much as they eat over here I am amazed at how small they are, so I am very excited to see what all happens. It is just a new years celebration like our new years celebration, only this is on the chinese calandar. PLUS, my amazing friends Niki and Greg Funk are arriving on the 23rd to spend the New Year and 2 wks with us! I am very much looking forward to seeing familar faces.
My friend Toni was here for a semester teaching english and she has gone home to Australia. My friend Regina leaves thursday to go home for the New year and then is moving to Shanghi. I am sad to be losing friends, but I am excited to see what and who this next semester brings. I do love Qingdao. I still get fircely homesick at times, but I very glad I took this leap. I have amazing friends here and know without a doubt this is where I am supposed to be at this point in my life.
We are supposed to start a small group for singles after the new year which I am SUPER excited about. Other than that, not much is new. I will write again after the new year... prob after the Funks return home. I should have some good stories for you then.
again, i will continue to put my pics on...
http://s405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/kjpics73/
bc uploading is becoming an issue. check out all the albums
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment