Christmas in China

I was so focused on getting our Harbin trip on the blog that I forgot 

all about Christmas. The first sign of Christmas came shortly 

after Thanksgiving when this Christmas tree appeared in the 

lobby of the hotel where we go to attend church.

 

Soon stores and shopping malls started decorating and displaying 

merchandise.  We found decorations but no Christmas wrapping

 paper.  We eventually found some regular non-Christmas wrapping 

paper after looking for several weeks.

 

We were even able to buy a Santa suit for our English

 corner Christmas party - $3.50.  This next Christmas tree

at a big shopping mall is made of 2014 teddy bears!

 

Then other decorations began popping up outside malls and department stores.

We decorated a small tree in our apartment but really enjoyed the much nicer

ones all around us.  I especially liked going at night.

 

You could even visit Santa in his log cabin.  He was even there

 after Christmas until January 4th.

For our English corner Christmas party Libby made a bunch of

gingerbread houses and the students had a great time

decorating them.  You can see that they were very proud

of their creations.  Santa even made an appearance.

 

The girl on the right is Lulu, a medical student from South Africa

that is a member of our Branch. We really enjoy having her in 

our group at church.  

For Christmas Eve our BYU China Teachers

group was invited to sing at a local Protestant Church.  The other

choirs and groups looked much better than us us but we were

glad they invited us.  We even got to sing the Hallelujah  Chorus

with the choir and congregation.

 Even though we missed our family and

friends at home we still had a very nice Christmas celebration

with all our good friends in our Branch.  We had to teach on Christmas 

day but we were able to have a wonderful Christmas dinner after

church on the Sunday after Christmas.