Christmas Miracles and Decorations

First off, we hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We're happy to report that Santa Claus does in fact deliver to China. Thank you to all our friends and family who sent us Christmas cards and packages. Its wonderful to receive mail from home! We also received gifts of chocolate and wine from the administration and gifts from our students including but not limited to chocolate, tea, and Chinese silk scarves. The favorite gift to give in China is fruit. So we were bombarded with students giving us brightly cellophane-wrapped oranges, apples, and bananas. Let's just say there's a lot of fruit salad to be made!

Christmas miracles even happen in China. For example, remember that typhoon that hit our area way, way, back? Since then, our local Pizza Hut has been closed. Eventually, we all gave up hope that it would ever reopen. A few days ago, Kendall was in a taxi driving past the restaurant when he noticed lights and his head jerked to look in jubilation. It was a glorious scene that can only compare to the Who's getting ready for Christmas day in Whoville. He swears that he even heard the singing...Fah who for-aze, dah who dor-aze! Welcome Christmas, Come this way... A beautiful sight indeed. We decided what better way to spend Christmas Eve than at Pizza Hut with the other foreign teachers. We were pleased to see all the serving staff dressed in Santa outfits, and some fine decorations to boot. The restaurant even had a special "Christmas Party Pizza" with a special crust that is supposed to be like pigs-in-a-blanket, but came off looking more like the popular dog treats, "snausages". Needless to say, we politely refused the offer, and insisted that we wanted a regular American pizza. To appeal to the Chinese, Pizza Hut has developed some pretty strange pizzas. Therefore, usually at some point during our order our server will say, "You know that if you take the melon, octopus, and mayonnaise off the pizza it won't taste the same." Yeah...we know.

Before the holiday season has passed by, we wanted to share some holiday sights from around Huangdao. We think many of you would be surprised at the amount of decoration that goes on here around Christmas time. Granted, most of the decorations can be found in the shopping centers and hotels, but it's the thought that counts, right? The most impressive Christmas by far was in our local shopping center, Jusco. You can enjoy the picture below, and also catch it in the video below. Children would write wishes on the red and green snowflakes, and they would hang them on the tree. It is a little odd that they hung all the lights vertically, but it works (and it's probably faster).

Even Jusco's employees had the Christmas spirit as each worker was wearing a Santa hat. It went well with the continuous loop of Christmas music they played everyday. Many places played Christmas music. The problem was, their selections usually weren't too large. One of our favorite restaurants was the worst. We ate a meal while being serenaded by Jingle Bells over and over, which is probably one of the more annoying songs to hear in repeat. Jusco, however, never let us down. Kendall being the music lover was impressed at their selection. He remembers one time while walking past the larvae section (right next to the sushi) he found himself humming along to I'll be Home for Christmas. Jusco had a lot of Christmas spirit, you can learn a little more about it in the videos below.

A few nights before Christmas, Mr. Li (our waiban) from the Foreign Affairs Office took all the teachers out to dinner. Surprisingly, it wasn't a Chinese banquet dinner, but instead a Western-style buffet dinner. Huangdao has one outstanding hotel, the Golden Marina (although it is not on a marina). The hotel has several great restaurants, and we were all pleased to be eating in such a nice place. At first the sound of a buffet was not to appetizing but this had a great selection. Kendall had a roast beef sandwich for the first time in months, and we both had steak (grilled while you wait)! To top everything off, the desserts were really good. Sadly, Chinese desserts are either non-existent, or worse, appear ordinary but taste awful. This is especially the case for ice cream, which usually just contains ice shavings, sugar, and maybe some flavoring. Thankfully, the ice cream, while not perfect, was the best Chinese ice cream we've had. They even had tiny slices of pecan pie which reminded us of home. The Golden Marina had its own share of Christmas decorations. Inside the lobby was a little Christmas cottage. There is snow on the roof and deer in the yard, and if you look closely at the picture above, you can see the Olympic Friendlies playing in the snow. That's HuanHuan over Darbie's shoulder. Golden Marina's outdoor Christmas display was second to none. It featured many lights, and most impressively, the tall blue light tree.

In the last video Kendall will tell you about a popular game that took place in Jusco during the holiday season.

The week before Christmas they also started offering peanut oil as a prize. Large jugs of peanut oil can be found in every grocery in China. According to CCTV9 (the only English language channel), there is not only an oil shortage, but also a cooking oil shortage. The price has been going up, so the oil was a hot prize item because of the massive amount of cooking for the massive amount of people that migrating all over China in a little over a month - Chinese New Year!

Have a Happy (Western) New Year!

DB & KM