Happy Winter Solstace! And Merry Christmas! I'm saying that now because I'm being realistic. I doubt I'll have time to update my website between now and the big day. School's out tomorrow and I think I may be more excited about that now that I'm a teacher than I ever was as a student. I'm just so happy for the holiday, I can't wait to have 12 days of carefree living! No lesson plans, no marking, no classroom management; just me, my bed, and a couple days of mountain climbing. I'm pumped! So here's the run down on what Christmas in China is/has/will be for me. Last Saturday (December 16th) was our Christmas Open House at school. This included but was not limited to the traditional Christmas concert as seen in schools back home. In addition to the lovely carol singing, the science and english departments were on display. So this meant as teachers we had to prep our students to do presentations for their parents and other students on what we've been doing in class so far this year. It's a chance for the parents to evaluate us as teachers and give feedback to the administration if they don't like what they see. Just a little bit of pressure! I asked for one bulletin board to do a display and got handed three instead (on two days notice). I was also heavily involved in the set up and clean up of the concert portion of the day and I'm quite good friends the the music teacher and can you believe this, the school actually expected him to do EVERYTHING himself. I'm talking making and setting up the decorations in the gym, arranging the stage, bringing all the instruments down 3 flights of stairs and across the quad into a different building, rehersing with the students, putting on the concert and then cleaning up everything from the gym immediately after the concert. I was shocked, appalled and slightly skeptical (it is my nature) that they really expected all that. But they did. So on Thursday already I started helping do the decorating. We had a 6 metre high tree we had to decorate with lights and garland. In the school's defence they did have two Chinese maintence guys to help put the lights on, but it was a disaster. I wasn't there yet and what they did was cut the plugs off all but one string of lights and they wired all 6 strings together on one plug. Then they put the plug at the top of the tree and had all 6 strings hanging down from the top of the tree. But the strings were too long, so they started looping them back up at the bottom, and when I walked in and saw what they had done, I almost passed out it was so nasty! The killer was that Anthony had bought those lights himself, they didn't belong to the school, and now these guys had practically ruined them by cutting the plugs off. Fortunately I'm a science teacher and I have a smart father who has vicarilously (spelling?) taught me how to be a bit handy. So using my rudimentary knowledge of wiring and electricity, I managed to salvage five of the six strings of lights. That's right folks, I rewired the plugs back on the lights. (Applause, cheers, the crowd goes wild!) They said it couldn't be done. They said, "Monica, you're crazy, you're going to kill yourself." I just smiled and said, "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." And clearly I did, because I made those lights work baby. Me, it was all me. Okay, I'm just bragging now. But it was a highlight moment for me when I plugged the first one in and it lit up and nothing exploded and it was perfect! The one casulty was when another teacher tried to wire one of the plugs while I wasn't there and the two nodes touched while it was plugged in and it electricuted her and blew the bulbs on the lights. Then we had to string the lights ourselves, as well as the garland, so me and one of the other female teachers were up on the 10 foot ladder. All the Chinese TA's were just staring at us like we were crazy, I mean, no self-respecting Chinese girl would ever climb a ladder like that! So we decorated for two days, garland, santa heads, balls, tinsle, lights, the works. This was before I knew we had to clean it all up too. So the concert went well, my students did a good job of their presentations, I got the bulletin boards finished and looking good. Then at noon, when it was all over and there was this feeling of peace and contentment that it was all over and everyone went home, I walked back into the gym to take Anthony out for lunch to celebrate and he was like "uh, no I have to clean this all up now." And I was like, "Are you kidding me?" And he was like, "No, all the decorations, all the instruments, everything has to be cleaned up now." And I was like, "Well who's going to help?" And he was like "No one, I always have to do it myself." And I nearly cried. We're talking two days of non-stop taping and drapping and ladders and poles and now the two of us had to rip it all down. I mean, obviously I could have left him to it himself, but that would have just been inhumane! And to think that he didn't even get to enjoy the feeling of success and relief after the awesome concert he did with the kids. No, his reward for four months of prep was that he got to clean up the gym. It made me mad, can you tell? So we worked like dogs and after two hours we said it was good enough and we went for lunch. But we still didn't have much time to savour the moment of completion because I was having all the new Winnipeg teachers over for Christmas dinner that evening. So we ate quickly, raced around did some grocery shopping and booked it back to my place to clean and cook. I made four chickens, stuffing and apple crisp. Other teachers brought the potatos, salads, cheesecake, drinks and snacks. It was a feast to be sure! We had so much leftover I'm still have some left in my fridge. We did a secret santa and a chinese gift exchange (that's just the name for the game where everyone brings a gift and you throw them in the middle and pick numbers and steal and all that good stuff. I didn't want there to be any confusion that maybe it was something particularly Chinese, because it's not.) So I ended up with a cute cream coloured poncho from my secret santa and a black fuzzy hat and a chinese mug from the gift exchange. All in all a very successful evening. I of course was sick though. See I have this thing with stress, that I tend to get a cold when I'm stressed. So on Friday, at the climax of feeling like I couldn't get everything done, I started to get a sore throat. And by 10pm on Saturday I was congested, tired and aching. So I went to bed and let the party continue in the living room. We managed to fit 16 people in my living room quite comfortably, I was impressed! The only thing that broke was my vase from IKEA, not back considering how little elbow room we had. Since Saturday, I tried to fight off the cold as best as I could, I was popping pills like crazy, but it caught up with me, and on Wednesday I lost my voice and there was no denying that I couldn't teach. So I took the afternoon off and I slept from 12:30 until 5:00. It wouldn't have been so bad that I was sick, expect Wednesday night happened to be the night of my piano recital with my piano students. So I had to get up, shower and not look half dead and then I had to perform. I did amazingly well considering my physical condition. This is not to say that I did bad, I actually think I played very well on my first song, Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique movement #2. It was only during my Carol of the Bells that I messed up, and it wasn't disasterous, but it was noticable and that ticked me off. But with all the insanity of Open House I just hadn't had time to practice in the last week, so I was very underprepared on that song. The kids all did very well. We had a good size audience too. I like that about China. People come and support their friends for things that no one would ever think of going to back home. I mean, Chinese people I barely know came and brought their friends whom I have never met. Tons of teachers came, we had a probably close to 30 people there to watch me and three of my students. One of my students had to go home to Australia early so he couldn't preform. So anyways, and second successful Christmas concert. And now I'm waiting for all the parties in class tomorrow. Oh yeah, I took this afternoon off too and came home and slept again for 4 hours. I think I should have this cold kicked by Saturday. Tomorrow night there's a big party at Anthony's because he's moving out of his house so he wants to have one last party to piss off the neighbours, not a good motivation, but I'll go because school's out and celebrate that instead. Then Saturday I'm going shopping to get winter clothes because believe it or not, it's getting cold here. It's much colder inside than outside. So I need to buy some sweaters and boots and just more clothes in general. I don't fit into most of the clothes I brought with me now. And I mean I don't fit in a good way. China is like the best weight-loss plan I can think of. The food is primarily vegetable based and you have to walk everywhere so between the food and the exercise I've gotten to the point where a whole new wardrobe is in order. So that'll be Saturday. Then Sunday I'm heading into Guangzhou with Anthony to spend Christmas with his old orchestra buddies. There's a group of people from the Guangzhou orchestra where Anthony used to work that get together every Christmas and spend Christmas Eve watching Christmas movies and stuff. So we're going to do that and then hang out in Guangzhou on Christmas or something and come back to Clifford in the evening. Tuesday and Wednesday will be largely spend sleeping in my warm, comfy bed and maybe watching some movies. I'm pretty excited to sleep a few days away! On the 28th Anthony and I are heading up to the mountainous region north of Guangzhou. It's a 7 hour bus ride or something but apparently it's just gorgeous and a must see. So we'll do some biking and mountain climbing or whatever. I like this, he's a planner and I'm so happy to finally go on a trip where I don't need to worry about booking transportation, or hotels or plan activities. He's doing everything and I'm just going along for the ride. It's going to be great! Then we'll get back on January 2nd or so and we go back to school for a PD day on the 3rd. The students come back on the 4th. It'll be a pointless two days of class as half the kids won't be there, but whatever, I'll show movies and stuff, it'll be good. So that's my Christmas in a pretty big nutshell. I wrote so much because I feel bad that I haven't updated in so long and I'm realizing that I probably won't have time to write more until I get back from my trip. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and good New Year's!