Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! In honor of Christmas, I took a picture of one of the holly bushes that grows outside our apartment:

They don’t really celebrate Christmas here even though they pretend like they do by plastering Santa’s face on every storefront. But the company wanted to make us feel at home so they decided to throw us a Christmas party. The party was to begin with playing pool at a pool hall, then dinner, and then singing karaoke at a KTV. But before that, I had to go buy new jeans because my jeans recently got a hole in them. There’s an intern who just started working with us a couple of weeks ago named Dreamer and she’s really cool. She speaks good English and she said she wanted to help me shop, which was a life saver. So we met at the outdoor mall, and the first store we go to, I found some jeans I really like. I never get this lucky! And I got to have them hemmed for free at this quaint little tailoring outpost:

I was technically done with my shopping at that point but I felt like I was in the zone so we continued. Dreamer kept linking arms with me, which I thought was cute. When we first got to China, we saw girls walking down the street linking arms and we wondered if it was an indication of a lesbian relationship but then we saw so many more girls doing the same thing, we figured there can’t be THAT many lesbians in China. And now I know for sure, it’s just a thing friends do. Haha. Anyways, I smelled something really good in the air and Dreamer told me it was these nut things so we got some. I’d never seen them before but you know what? They were chestnuts! Like “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” chestnuts. Something I’d heard about all my life, I was now trying them for the first time in China. They were fantastic.

Well, we didn’t find anything else, so I went home and got ready for the party. Mr. Lu picked us up and took us to the pool hall, which is not that far away from the Carrefour! Here is a picture:

And here is a picture of Dreamer and Mandy, my two best friends (Mandy is KeKe’s English name, in case you’re trying to keep track of all the Chinese people):

Here’s me and Adam wearing our panda hats, which were a Christmas gift from Anna (a girl from HR):
When we first got there, we had quite a few people come over to watch us play. They probably expected us to be good… but we weren’t. We were terrible. The only game we won, happened because the other team scratched on the 8 ball. Also, they had employees there that literally just stood around waiting to rack the balls for you after your game. That’s all they did. How is that a job? Adam said they didn’t even rack very well.

So then we had dinner, which was delicious. At the end, they ordered apple pie because I think they think all Americans like apple pie. But I don't so Adam ate on my behalf. After that, we went to a KTV, which was nothing like I expected. I thought it would be like a regular bar with one big room and that we’d be singing in front of random people like in the US. But it turns out, your party gets a private room, and you’re just singing in front of people you know. And some people can sing well, others not so much. Here are some photos:

On our way home, we saw these two santa girls:

And to illustrate my point about men spitting everywhere, here is a picture of a spit can, which pretty much all taxis have in them, for your convenience:

When we got home, we found this note stuck in our door jam:

It reads: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, From; a Chinese Family 2011, 12, 24

An anonymous Christmas note!! How sweet! I have a feeling it’s from our next door neighbors.

This one goes out to Vicki and Ed, our petsitters in PA. A big hug from Smudgie!