Who Needs Fire?

This weekend was the Christmas Party Weekend! It was incredible! I never expected to have such an amazing weekend. I had two different Christmas Parties. The first one was on Saturday night; this party was for teachers and friends. Sunday afternoon I had a party for my students. There was a lot of preparation involved, but we had a great time. Saturday night I was expecting about 40-50 people, but at least 70 people showed up. Most of them were my friends from various universities. We also had people from Germany and England. It was quite the international exchange. The party was a flurry of activity. People were talking, playing games, singing, taking pictures, exchanging gifts, and hugging. I was running around trying to talk to everyone in addition to trying to keep the food levels up. The party started at six, but at nine everyone left so they could catch their buses home. Three of my friends stayed, and we talked for a few more hours. It was so much fun. I went to bed, and slept

Wow, this year is going so fast. The holiday’s really snuck up on me. The last four months have seemed like an endless flurry of events. I really feel as if my feet have not yet touched the ground since I arrived here in August. I do know that Christmas is one of the most important holidays in my country, and each year it is my greatest hope that I can communicate the true meaning of Christmas with my students, friends, and everyone else in my life here. Each year I take one class period and explain the culture of Christmas to all of my students. Many of them know things about Christmas. Usually, their knowledge is limited to Santa Claus, gifts, and Christmas trees. In addition to explaining those things, I try to explain to them that Christmas is much more than that. I tell them the reason that we give gifts and why we started to do that some two thousand years ago. It is always so amazing to see the wonder in their eyes when they begin to understand the true meaning of Christmas. The

Last Sunday night I had a rather unique opportunity. One of my friends was given tickets to a concert. She asked me if I wanted to go. I thought about it for a while, and I decided to go. It’s not too often that famous pop stars make it all the way to Changzhou, so I had to check it out. The concert was held in a small sports stadium that was built within the last year and modeled after the bird’s nest in Olympic park in Beijing. I would guess that there were about 20,000 people there. One thing that I noticed immediately was that although the tickets had seat assignments, very few people sat in their seats. This was nice because my friend Dorty was able to sit by me. The tickets that we had were for seats that were not near each other. Ironically, I also saw my friend Andrew there, so he also sat by us. The stage was an explosion of dancing lights. The setup was very elaborate. The concert was not at all what I was expecting. The headline name for the concert was Pan Wei Bo (a famous

Okay. This is my first blog entry. I am starting this blog to let everyone know some of the cool stuff that is happening here. I only have time to share some of the quick highlights in newsletters. This blog will hopefully let you all know what is happening here in more detail and more frequently. I'll try to update at least every week and hopefully more often than that. I hope you have fun reading it! I'll start with an interesting thing that I witnessed today. Tonight I went to one of my favorite Sichuan Restaurants with a few friends. We were in the middle of eating when we heard an argument erupt at the cash register. One man was yelling at the manager (who happens to be a very small lady in her early fifties, also very sweet). There were also four other people in his party - three young girls in their twenties and another man in his late thirties. They were standing there and not saying a word. From our table I could hear the argument quite well, but I could not understand