Holiday Parties!

Happy Holidays everybody! Nothing like the season for parties, something that doesn't even go uncelebrated here in China. Last night Tiff and Susan (our American friend) hosted a Christmas party for all of the teaching partners at the school. It was a good time to hang out, play games, make a craft, eat food, and again explain the real Christmas story. They really seemed to enjoy the time. The craft, thanks to Susan, was a sock snowman. It was supposed to be a simple project where you glue on puff balls or buttons for eyes, mouths, etc., but these women decided that puff balls and buttons simply weren't enough! They pulled out the sewing needles and added hair, scarves, and whatever else they could think of. As you can see from the picture it turned out to be very cute.

Tiff introduced a new game to the ladies with the grand prize being nothing less than a much-coveted deck of UNO cards. After wrapping the deck in over 9 different boxes multiple times, the women took turns rolling the dice. Each time the die rolled 6 it's roller would grab the package and begin to unwrap until another 6 was rolled. Again, the picture best explains the mayhem that followed. Quite a few ladies were disappointed at not winning the cards - UNO is quite the popular game in our circles (you can't buy the game here).

We told you last week that it has been snowing, but ever since then the snow just hasn't stopped. The roads are so slick that city buses don't come to a stop, they literally slide to a stop. Scary, yet somehow completely safe. Anyway, we took a few pictures of us in the snow and we thought you might enjoy this one. If you want to see more we just put up a new slide show on the website. Click on any picture to see a bigger version.

Final thing before we sign off for today. We'll probably be posting one more blog early this next week to put up some pictures of the basketball tournament Josh is playing in on Sunday. He's been playing with a bunch of older guys that he talked about in the previous blog and on Monday of last week they invited him to play on their team for the upcoming city-wide tournament. There are 6 teams from different companies throughout the city and Josh will be playing on the local college staffers team. It should be exciting and we have plenty of people coming to watch the games. We'll keep you posted!

Until then we hope you get all your shopping done and enjoy any more parties you may have this next week. Take care!