2008 - Year of the Olympics

Happy New Year! The holiday season is coming to a close, and as most of you are preparing to go back to work or school, we are both counting the days until we get our mid-year break and a trip to Beijing! Our holiday season has been marked with several banquets, good time off from school, and most importantly (drum roll, please...) a white Christmas!! We've had snow on the ground on Christmas before but this was definitely the first time that we have had snow falling - and it was no light snow - on Christmas day. Quite exciting.

The banquets have been very nice. A banquet here is about the social equivalent to a party in America. They don't do parties here - just these big dinners. So in keeping with this Chinese tradition we decided to hold our own banquet and invite only foreigners. There were thirteen people in all (one left before we took this photo) representing three different countries other than China. Three South Africans, six Filipinos and four Americans. Quite a mix, wouldn't you say? In case you were wondering, most of the guests were teachers from other parts of this province who had come in to visit friends. After the dinner we had what can only be described as one of the most interesting yet fun Christmas caroling experiences ever. On the sixth floor of our building all seated around the living room with hot chocolate and santa hats we spent 3 full hours singing every single Christmas song that we could think of including those not in the English language. At midnight we cheered the arrival of Christmas day much like you would New Years eating cake and singing "Happy Birthday". For your enjoyment we have put up a short clip of our caroling time together at the bottom.

The next morning we woke up bright and late and opened our gifts. Thankfully all packages had made it to Karamay before Christmas Day so we were able to enjoy the much that we were graciously given. Thanks to everybody who spent the time and effort to get us a package or letter before Christmas - it really does mean a lot to us. We received many books which we are in the process of enjoying as well as many other little (and not so little) things. Tiff received a watch and an iPod so we both now have our own players and Josh received some computer games and a basketball jump program. I know it may sound dumb to some of you, but I have made it my goal to dunk on a Chinese player before the end of this year. It's a noble goal, I know. Another great gift was a set of NFL football games copied by the Gerbers onto DVD - you can see the three of us (Elana, Josh, & Kyle) mesmerized by this contact sport which we do not receive on our televisions here. The most contact you can see on TV channels here is two ping-pong players bumping into each other while going to sit down between matches.

So that about sums up Christmas. We spent New Years again on the 6th floor, this time watching the city fireworks display. It truly is amazing to see how much we've been blessed in the passing of just a single year. Our life here has become a web of relationships that will eventually be very difficult to tear ourselves away from. Our only regret comes from not being able to spent this time with family but we are excited for this coming month when we will get to visit with at least some of them. We both hope that you and yours had a wonderful holiday season full of relationships, love, and lots of good Christmas cookies. On behalf of both of us and our cat Romeo we wish all of you a Happy New Year - the year of the Beijing Olympics!