Christmas in China

Drinking a tasty cup of hot chocolate while watching the first snowfall of winter pile up outside my window seems like the perfect time to tell you all about our first Christmas together in China. So let's get to it!

I snapped this shot the morning of Christmas Eve. I was so eager for the festivities to begin. We went to work that day like any other Monday and came home to our freezing apartment to celebrate. I prepared our family home evening lesson on the birth of Christ where we watched this video. Afterward, we agreed to open our presents that night. I've never opened my presents on Christmas Eve so it was another first for me in China. We took another vote on whether we should stay in the freezing cold living room where the presents and tree were or move them into our bedroom where there is a small wall heater. It was unanimous. 

I'm sure you can agree that the best part about giving gifts is watching how happy it makes people. We definitely had a lot of laughs and smiles. It was a Christmas to remember filled with lots of chocolate, doritos, winter clothes, lasers, gundams, workout bands, books for artistic inspiration, and a dragon necklace that I will keep forever (I was born in the year of the dragon). We ended the night by drinking hot chocolate and watching the movie "Elf". 

Even though we weren't surrounded by our entire families in the comfort of a familiar home we were surrounded by the best of friends in one of the coolest places on the planet.

Christmas Eve sunrise

On Christmas day we went to work again like usual and celebrated the day with our students. You can read about that here. Even after work it still didn't feel like Christmas because if I'm being honest, I hadn't stuffed my face with delicious food yet. I didn't think I would have this luxury here in China but then our bosses surprised us with the best gift they could have given us. We were told that we could choose to eat anywhere for dinner and they would pay for it. After doing some research we found what seemed like the best foreign restaurant in town. This place was fancy. We were "ooing" and "awing" the entire time we read the menu. We wanted to get everything but settled on steaks, chicken salad, rack of lamb, pasta carbonara, and duck breast. Basically, lots of meat. It may be the fact that we've been living in China for 4 months or the chefs really are incredible but either way this food was on new levels of deliciousness that have never been experienced by us. I'm still salivating looking at these pictures. If it wasn't so expensive then I'd probably go there more often. The bill was about $160 USD. We usually feed the four of us for the price of the chicken salad alone. Pricey but oh so good. 

Well the snow has slowed down outside and my hot chocolate is all gone. I hope you're staying warm this winter. It was a perfect Christmas in China And we hope you all enjoyed your holiday this year! Can you believe 2013 is right around the corner? Crazy.