Christmas week was crazy busy for me. Belle and I hosted two parties the week of Christmas. So a lot of are time went into preparing and planning for these parties. At one of these parties we played Christmas themed pictionary, made more snow flakes and showed a video of the nativity story (we got the video from Asian leaders of another group. Fun fact.) We really took this time to show and tell our friends what Christmas means to us.
Then on Christmas Eve, we had planed a party at our house but as I was going to meet are Asian friends on campus to lead them back to our place, I was getting text after text telling me why people couldn’t come. Until in the end we only had are friend Grace show up. It didn’t seem like much of a party with just the three of us. So we got creative and made paper Santa hats, and taught her some Christmas songs in their language and English, and we went Christmas caroling. We had a lot of fun just being silly, walking the street of the city, with paper Santa hats (as if I didn’t get stared at enough as it is 🙂 Spreading Christmas cheer as we went, we where a jolly little trio.
Christmas day I spent with my American friends. It was very different for me, being that this was my first Christmas away from home. But being with such a tight knit group of friends from state side, made my first Christmas away from home very special.
Even better than Christmas day, was the day after. As a special Christmas surprise, our leaders rented a bus that took us out of the city and to the mountains for the day. When we got off the bus, the mountain was so high around me that I couldn’t see the top through the clouds. It was a wonderful escape from the city. We hiked on the mountain for several hours. To describe it in a few words; there was snow, ice sickles, spontaneous snowball fights, monkeys, and magnificence all around.