My Christmas in China

Following up to Christmas, I confess, I wasn’t that excited. To be fair, there were decorations everywhere here. The Chinese love to decorate for Christmas so it wasn’t as though Christmas was totally ignored here. But I lacked enthusiasm because this was my first ever Christmas away from my home and my family.

I bought a few decorations I found in a supermarket and decorated my apartment with lights and little snow men.

I spent the morning of Christmas eve at a normal school. The private school I work for gives other schools a taster of English lessons by foreign teachers sometimes to encourage  parents to pay for extra English lessons for them.

It was a fun morning, there were 70 children between the ages of six and nine in each class and I had three classes that morning! So in one morning, I was in the company of 210 children!

Luckily I was accompanied by Daniel, a very experienced teacher who has been here for nine years and is used to teaching big groups of children. So I was more of a teaching assistant during the morning, choosing children from the crowd to participate in games, I handed out sweets to the winners and cheered them on.

I was so impressed by the children. They had memorised Christmas songs, they sang ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’ and had a dance routine for it. At the end of each class, a crowd of children would come running at me and Daniel. The first time, I didn’t know what to do. A crowd of 70 children running at you can be quite scary! But they threw gifts at us, offered us sweets, they gave us Christmas cards that they had made.

I was so happy when I left the school with a bag full of gifts. The gifts I had included some very thoughtful presents like sweets, a stocking, a ring, a snow globe and a mask. Some less thoughtful gifts included some half eaten packs of crisps and a few individual biscuits and crisps. But it’s the thought that counts of course!

During the evening of Christmas eve, I had hoped to go for some cocktails with Natasha to help me distract myself from the thought of being away from home for Christmas. Unfortunately, she worked late that night and then wanted to prepare for the TESOL exam that we had on Thursday morning. Therefore, I was on my own on Christmas eve.

I’m not going to lie that I didn’t feel lonely. I watched ‘Home Alone 2’ and ‘The First Snow of Winter’ to try and get into the Christmas spirit but I did feel sad.

On Christmas Day however, I felt my usual self again despite feeling a little unwell and me and Natasha went shopping in a big shopping centre. I asked a few Chinese I met what they do at Christmas and they told me that they go shopping! Christmas music was played in many shops and the decorations were lovely.

We went for lunch at a Japanese restaurant and then went home. I spoke to my family on Skype, which was such a great delight! Whoever invented Skype, I want to thank them so much for inventing such an amazing thing!

In the evening we went for a meal at an Italian restaurant with other teachers and their friends. I was the last to order and the first to get my meal! That never happens to me! By the time I had finished my pizza, Natasha waited another hour to get her lasagne! Poor girl! She had filled herself up with garlic bread and chips by the time it arrived!

On Boxing day, I was up at 6.10am!!! I had a TESOL exam and it took all morning! My cold had gotten worse and all I wanted to do was go to bed! Luckily, the exam went fine, I picked up a parcel that my family had sent me from home and I went home. Natasha (who speaks perfect Chinese) helped me buy vitamins and Chinese medicine from the Pharmacy. Without her help, I don’t know what I would do!

My parcel actually arrived on time, on Christmas eve, but I could only pick it up on Boxing day. I was expecting the parcel but what was in it was a surprise. My family had sent me Christmas cards and had wrapped up the gifts in gold wrapping paper. I felt so excited and I feel so happy and lucky to have such a wonderful and caring family. The parcel included things like; peanut butter, sweets, Chocolate Orange, Christmas cake, Christmas tree glasses that light up, gloves and Percy Pigs!

Christmas here in China was strange but it was an experience. I sometimes forgot that it was Christmas day and had to apologise when I forgot to say ‘Merry Christmas’ to another teacher. It has been strange teaching children about Christmas but not being able to tell them about any of the religious aspects of the occasion! So when the children think of Christmas, they must literally think only about Santa, presents and Christmas trees. They know who Justin Bieber, One Direction and Taylor Swift are but they don’t know who Jesus is!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! As usual, Christmas day has come and gone so quickly and now it’s nearly New Year’s Eve! I don’t know what I’m doing yet. No doubt I’ll be writing a new blog post on it soon!