Do they have Christmas in China?

The answer to that is, YES!


Going through my pictures I am realizing how bad I have been about updating my blog =( I guess that's a good thing, though. It means I'm keeping busy...

This post will be mostly pictures, too, since I have quite a backlog at this point.

Here is my last photo of fall. This is an area on campus in back of our building, near the Muslim cafeteria. I loved the color of the leaves on the tree.



Next we have some pictures of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was surprisingly a "thing" here in China. Many restaurants do a prix fixe dinner on Thanksgiving evening for about 100-200RMB. Some of the oldsters were going to a specific diner for the holiday with their church group so all of us other teachers went with them. It was decent! It definitely hit the spot.

Here is us at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Notice the other teachers with us =) I'm not sure if you can see but Fox News is definitely on that tv in the background.


Here is a picture of the meal served. Turkey, cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, veggies. It was pretty complete!


And when I say complete I mean PUMPKIN PIE, duh.



Here is the afterparty, at Fridays, can we not...





A couple of weeks ago, we were at a tiny dive bar in Houhai (which reminds me of the village -- lots of young people taking over traditionally residential areas) and these two guys were smoking cigars and the smoke was literally RIGHT in my face. After having just showered and blow dried my hair I was cursing them basically to their faces since they didn't know English anyway. When I finally convinced my party to leave to go to another bar, the guy smoking the cigar handed me a picture he had been drawing of me and I didn't feel so upset anymore...





In unrelated news, excitement!!! One of my fellow teachers, Lily, got an OVEN!!! This is very life changing. We have already made three rounds of baked goods, including some really sketchy chocolate chip cookies made with yucky Chinese brown sugar that tastes like sesame molasses. We did better with the makeshift peanut butter blossoms (note the Dove chocolate squares standing in for hershey kisses, kisses are so expensive here!).











Here are some pictures from the first Beijing snow of the year! Everything looked so beautiful! I can't say the city got gross and gray the way NYC gets when it snows because luckily I didn't leave campus that day =) It will forever be a beautiful winter wonderland in my memory.










Regarding the title of this post -- YES Chinese people seem to love Christmas! We went to Tianyi, our favorite mega market near our school and we found TONS of Christmas stuff -- trees, lights, wreaths, santas, ornaments, etc etc etc. I think The Christmas Tree Shop has to worry about Tianyi. Plus, every shop I have gone to in the past week has been blaring traditional American Christmas music (I'm talking, Mariah Carey and Brenda Lee, all the classics!). It's definitely making me feel like I'm not missing out on a legitimate holiday season.

Here are some pictures of the holiday merriment:







And here is the BEST part. Our little Charlie Brown tree. I have to say, it definitely feels more like Christmas with this little thing in our living room! =)





Here are a couple of random pictures to close out my pathetic post.
This is a picture of the street outside our school. The entrance to our school is right on the far side of that gas station on the left.



Here is a night shot of the CCTV building from one of our balconies.




Here is someone with pants that say "fashion" on the butt, except it's spelled wrong.




That's all for now =)