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Christmas this year was always going to be very different from any other Christmas, but luckily I can say that it was still brilliant and that the absence of roast potatoes didn't impact too badly on the festivities. Nicole and I played host again, with the other 6 Jiangxi volunteers - plus Ned's friend Salome, who was visiting from France - staying from Saturday until Wednesday. Our house - as I've said before - is bloody enormous, so there was plenty of room for everyone. The big problem was the temperature of our house. If you've spoken to me recently, I've probably already moaned about how cold our house is to you already, but for those who've managed to escape this delight I should really say... OUR HOUSE IS COLD. Very cold. Although Jiujiang is actually warmer than England right now, our house is designed to keep cool in the summer heat, not ward off frostbite in winter. We have no central heating, half of the windows never fully close, and downstairs is so open plan that you've no hope of trapping/storing up any heat. As an added bonus, only a select few of the plugs in the house work, so you can't even plug the one heating fan we have in most of the places where you'd need it. To survive, you really need to wear at least 3 layers, never go barefoot and wrap yourself in blankets whenever possible (if you look through my photos, you'll notice the omnipresence of these blankets). Mine and Nicole's rooms are the sole oases of warmth in the house; the spare rooms are, if possible, even worse. I know I went on for a while there, but I'd say the cold was a defining feature of this Christmas so it really deserved to be described!
Everyone arrived at various times throughout Saturday afternoon, so we spent the afternoon chilling (literally) around the house and catching up, before heading to mine and Nicole's favourite restaurant for dinner. We all emptied our presents for each other under the tree and Salome brought out all the gifts she'd brought us from Europe: Nutella (!), Lindt chocolates (!!) and... tampons (almost impossible to get hold of in China). What with the general temperature of the house being similar to that of a fridge, the Nutella solidified, so we each earnt our share of it by hacking and gouging at it with a spoon, or microwaving portions of it. Completely worth it, though! We endured the cold downstairs for a couple hours and introduced Salome to our favourite game, Taboo, but all retreated upstairs to bed fairly early.
On Sunday, I'd arranged with some students from one of my Senior classes that they'd come by to visit me and my friends for Christmas. They arrived at 2pm, bearing gifts and a home-baked cake, which is particularly exciting because ovens are a rarity over here. One girl, Elle, had also brought a Taylor Swift DVD, so we all (not quite all of us, as a lot of people were out exploring Jiujiang) sat around to watch it together. We were talking about what music we liked and one of the students explained that his name was b****, because he loves Britney Spears... "it's Britney, b****!", geddit? Naturally, we volunteers were a little shocked by this and he picked up on our reaction, because after a hurried conference with his classmates, he reintroduced himself as Stephen. We shared out the chocolate cake the students had brought, which was delicious, tried a card game and I showed them all the IGS recreation of Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time", which went down very well! After this, Beth, Cat, Dan and I went out with the students to try and fly some kites in the square. Dan had found these kites in one of our many spare rooms and fixed them up last time everyone visited, but unfortunately our attempts to make them fly weren't very successful. The square was quite busy, and there were a couple of show-offs with kites about 20 feet up in the air, but I've no idea how they managed it - there wasn't even that much wind. Eventually we gave up on the kite-flying and we volunteers said our good-byes to my students and headed off to do the shopping for our Christmas dinner. The girls had assumed responsibility for the dinner, but nobody really knew what we were going to make. Recreating a real roast dinner with only a microwave and a wok was never going to work, but the back-up plan wasn't a bad one: we stocked up on pork steaks, armfuls of potatoes and lots of English-y vegetables. Whilst we'd been out, everyone else had been for a hair-cut (Nicole can now see past her fringe again!) and dinner at McDonald's, so the four of us followed their lead and treated ourselves to burgers and McFlurries. That evening was our Jiangxi Christmas Eve, as we were celebrating Christmas a day early because not everyone had enough time off to stay for the real day. Somehow, after everyone else had gone to bed, Cat, Dan, Matt and I ended up staying up for a stupid amount of time discussing the Ouija board we'd done during the last Jiangxi reunion and general supernatural stuff. So we saw in our Christmas Day thoroughly creeped out about ghosts, spirits and curses, to the point where we had to move about the house as a group so no-one would be left alone (and therefore vulnerable). Cat, Dan and I also pushed our beds together for security, and we realised for the first time quite how much my air-con sounds like someone gasping and sighing. All very festive!
"Christmas" morning, we were woken by Beth running into each of our rooms, screaming "Merry Christmas", accompanied by Rob dressed as Father Christmas. We all gathered in the living room, cowering under blankets, whilst Rob, aka Father Christmas, ferried back and forth between us and the tree, delivering stockings and presents. Nicole and I had bought and labelled a stocking for everyone when we first began decorating, and we'd all contributed a small gift to these - including the traditional chocolate coins! so we had those to open first. There were plenty of gifts from each other, several presents that had arrived from home (thankyou emails and letters on their way!) and, for several of us, special Christmas poems. This was organised by Nold, a volunteer in Gansu: the idea was a cross-China Secret Santa where, instead of buying gifts, we would write each other anonymous poems. Beth, Cat, Dan, Rob and I had all been involved, so we each had a poem to read. What we learnt from these was that girls write *much* nicer poems than boys. Much nicer... and much less graphic. All of this was topped off by a phone call from Winston, telling Nicole and I that we had an extra day off for Christmas, and that one of my Senior classes had prepared Christmas presents for the two of us.
Having whiled the morning away dressing up in our Christmas best, making our own plaster Christmas tree decorations (Cat's mum had sent her a DIY kit) and the suchlike, Nicole and I donned our Santa hats and went into school to visit my class and collect our presents. En route, the gatekeeper stopped me to deliver a present from Livi and then had a good laugh whilst I spazzed out happily. Winston and the Vice Principal were waiting for us outside my class; once inside, we stood a little awkwardly and wished them a merry Christmas in Chinese. Then, two by two, students began coming to the front to deliver gifts: a huge white rose, a little Christmas snowglobe, an apple (it's traditional to give apples at Christmas. I think it's lucky or something?) and a card each. Then, for me, there came a large rectangular parcel. I ripped it open and found a great white framed photo of myself teaching this class - one of many their teacher, the VP, had taken during my first lesson. I was completely taken aback and just didn't know what to say. I opted for "oh my god, thankyou!" "thankyou!" "wow!" "this is so kind!" about a bazillion times until everyone was laughing. I'd also had to stop mid-gift-unwrapping to readjust my Santa hat so I'd basically been as goofy as possible throughout the whole thing. Think Bridget Jones at any particularly awkward moment and you're close. Winston asked me to sing the class a Christmas song so I led them in a rousing(ish) chorus of We Wish You a Merry Christmas before staggering out with my gifts, saying lots more thankyous.
Next on our festive tour, we were headed to visit some of Nicole's Junior 1s to deliver sweets. This was partly a Christmas gift and partly a reward for good behaviour, but it went down a storm. When their teachers explained what we were interrupting their lessons for, roars went up around the classroom and they were all jabbering and grinning and cheering together. Oliver came to help us explain what was going on, and he and the class teachers had all the students singing us songs and chanting "Merry Christmas" as a thankyou. Oliver also took some photos for us, although he made the rookie mistake of asking students if they wanted to be in the photo too. The first few seconds were alright, as only the fastest kids made it to us. Then everyone else began to catch on and catch up, and we were besieged by a stampede of small children leaping about, jostling and waving peace signs around. I nearly fell off the little stage at the front of the classroom and we're both pretty much hidden in all of the photos - I'll be putting them in the "Teaching" folder soon - but it was very funny.
We arrived back at our house for the final stages of the Christmas dinner cooking. Beth and Cat were cooking the pork and trying to make pigs in blankets, Rob and Matt were on potato-mashing duty and Dan was laying the table with crackers and snowflake coasters. I tried to help out a little with the table-laying and took some photos, but the others had it pretty much covered so I went off to open my parcel from Livi, which was full of cool stuff. When we all sat down to dinner, we pulled our crackers, toasted the chefs and tucked in with a variety of forks and chopsticks. Everything was really good, especially the Bisto onion gravy Cat had made! Nicole and I took responsibility for the clean-up operation, although I have to say she did the lion's share of this, and then we joined everyone else in my bedroom to laze about until the food coma receded and we went back downstairs to celebrate the occasion with baiju and more beer.
On the 25th, our Boxing Day and the real world's Christmas Day, we all woke up only in time to say goodbye to Rob and Dan, who had to travel back to their project - although not before Dan had shot me in the bum with the BB gun Rob got for Christmas. Ow. Thus began a lazy day of snacking, reading and Skyping family. Beth and I headed out for a very brief walk round the lake, where we caught a glimpse of how the Chinese celebrate Christmas. Well, it might not have been very accurate. There were lots of performances going on in the public spaces between the lake and the street, mainly skits with women in OTT traditional costumes arguing with old men in matching costumes. My favourite was the Christian dance group: they wore matching purple polo-shirts embroidered with the cross and they were doing the conga. Later they even whipped out a set of pom-poms and began prancing about with those. Brilliant. That evening, Beth, Cat, Nicole and I caught a taxi to the university to meet another foreign teacher, Mark, for dinner. He introduced us to a tiny pizza restaurant, which was so full with people trying to celebrate Christmas by eating Western food that we couldn't fit into the main dining room. Instead, they repurposed the entrance for us with a couple of console tables and some wooden stools, and we sat down to eat there. The pizza was actually really good (although the Chinese custom of bringing each dish as it is ready, and not all dishes together, was taken so much to the extreme that most of the others had finished by the time my pizza had arrived) and we had a nice, friendly - and defiantly untraditional - meal together. The restaurant also turned out to be good for Westerner-spotting, one of our new favourite hobbies, which was a bonus! Post-pizza, we went to explore the shopping complex where the restaurant was. Beth and Cat were hunting for some fake glasses to wear whilst they study Chinese, so we tried on a good few suitably weird pairs in one small shop. One pair, which Mark came close to buying, were decorated with a charming variety of swastikas, skulls and bones. I invested in a woolly hat with a huge pom-pom and some new socks (I'm getting very middle-aged over here in China. I talk about the weather all the time and I've started admiring scenery and stuff. It's worrying) and we made a few other small purchases, but then it was back to our house to join Matt, Ned and Salome for festive tequila slammers and a group viewing of the video they'd taken of themselves exploring Jiujiang's underground meat market. (Blood on the floors, cages of dogs and puppies... y'know, the usual.) After staying up late just talking and dissecting our China experiences so far, the night ended with me, Beth and Cat sat up in bed watching the Made in Chelsea Christmas special together on 4OD. The internet is a wonderful thing!
The remaining volunteers left the next morning, leaving Nicole and me a day to tidy it up for her parents, who arrived on Thursday afternoon. We'll be climbing Mount Lu together tomorrow, so there should be another blog about that coming very soon!
Thanks again for all of the Christmas cards, gifts and messages,
Ella xxxx
- comments
Auntie Clare Lovely, you really bring it to life - glad you're not missing us too much!!
Dad Tequila slammers! Since when was that part of Christmas? Glad to hear that you're becoming innured to the Chinese way with animals otherwise you could get very upset. I'm not sure your puppy-loving Auntie has seen that bit. Glad to hear that you're joining us middle aged folk in wrapping up warm and enjoying landscapes. You'll be rambling soon.