The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

Its Christmas time and I just wanted to update you on how I have been celebrating the holiday season here in China. Mostly, this post will be so you can see the pictures! 

Once the kitchen fiasco was taken care of, Camille and I decorated our apartment! Some of it is quite tacky, but hey, we did the best we could with what we were given! Chinese people don’t really celebrate Christmas, but they really love the cheesy decorations! And you can see a little bit of what our apartment looks like! 

Camille decorating our tiny, but charming Christmas tree! We went for a slightly different look for the tree skirt…its actually a shower curtain! Again, we did the best with what we have!

We have two trees! Of course one of them had to be an LSU tree! Camille’s old boss actually sent her that in the mail and we were pumped!

This picture was taken from the door of my bedroom, so you can see part of the living room and into the dining room, which is separated by this very interesting sliding glass door.

The door that leads to the outside world! You may be wondering why we hung the wreath on the inside of the door and not the outside. Well, the light in the stairwell has been out since we moved in and it is too dark to see anything at night so we decided to put the wreath inside where we can always see it! There is a giant Santa head on the outside, so don’t fret!

Our window! Tacky? Yes I think so, too! But I kind of like it!

A close-up! 

Snowflakes and snow! Those two doors lead to our bedrooms. And yes that is a Justin Bieber poster you see in the background! In our defense, it was a gift from a student!

CAROLING

All of our students have been asking us to do things with them on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. There are so many students that it is impossible to hang out with all of them, not to mention we already have a few plans of our own for Christmas, like skyping with our families back home and going to Ch.ur.ch to celebrate the TRUE meaning of Christmas. Even if they wanted to, students would not be allowed to come to ch.ur.ch with us. So, Paul had a great idea to invite all of our students to celebrate Christmas with us this past Saturday by singing Christmas carols together. Saturday is the only day our students have off from school! Camille and I invited all of our students from the No. 1 High School and Paul and Erin invited all of their students from No. 3 High School. This means thousands of students were invited! We had all taught the students a couple of Christmas carols as part of our Christmas lessons at school, so the songs weren’t completely foreign to them!

We had a pretty good turn out, about 200 students showed up at the people’s square to join us. Most of the students thought they were coming to watch the foreign teachers perform so they were a little confused when they realized we wanted them to sing WITH us! We had hundreds of copies of song lyrics and got our students to sing, as best they could, Joy to the World, The 12 Days of Christmas, Jingle Bells, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas! We all stayed to hang out and talk with the students after singing. It was a lot of fun and I really think the students enjoyed hanging out with each other and us outside of school!

Paul doing a wonderful job leading the group! Check out the mass of students behind him!

More students!

Camille with some of her students! They really love her!

This is my student’s little sister! So cute!

Students from class 13! Ben, Ken, Zin, Kathy, Memory and her little sister! These boys used to be my troublemakers, but I have a great story for later of why they have become my most attentive students now!

Students from Class 3- Raymond and CC Smith! 

This is Rorwing from Class 9! She is one of the sweetest girls you will ever meet!

All of the foreign teachers minus Kevin– Paul, Erin, Camille, Aaron, me, and Chelsie- went to sing Carols. The Randalls came to sing also. Hope and Grace are in the picture. All of our students kept asking Hope if she was a teacher, too! She is 13!

 WAFFLE PLACE

After Caroling, we all headed over to the underground mall where they have this waffle place that makes delicious waffles and egg sandwiches! It is right next to our apartment, so Camille and I eat her at least once a week. Without fail, every single time we go we end up getting our picture taken, so I figured this time I would get some pictures of my own!

This is Liu (pronounced the same as Leo). He and his family run the waffle place. He is super friendly loves taking pictures with us! Man photo!

All the girls with Liu.

I hope you enjoyed the post and are having a wonderful Christmas this year!