Tina in China: We Wish You a Merry Christmas- From China!

On Friday we had a wonderful Christmas party. It was focused on bringing the Christmas spirit to the Chinese people. It was so fun. Friday morning our school brought us a beautiful Christmas tree. It was so so so kind of them. So for the party we decorated it! That was our first activity of the night. Then we played a game with the kids where they had to scoop candy onto a spoon and run and fill a Santa hat without dropping it and whatever team filled it first won. Then Sara taught everyone how to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Then while they were singing that I walked through the door with Santa Claus and his elf! The kids and some of the adults lined up to sit on Santa’s lap. After that we had a performance. My Yangzhong sisters and I did a dance that we choreographed to Jingle Bell Rock. All throughout the party we had a video set up in Sara’s room. The video was short clips we put together of Christmas lights in America (the lights on temple square and a couple pictures of the cool houses with blinking lights to music), Justin Bieber’s music video to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, and the nativity scene from the First Presidency that they showed at the Christmas Devotional. So after the performance a lot of people watched that and the party basically started dying down. It was such a fun party. One of the best things about the whole party though was the decorations that we have been working on since Thanksgiving. It really is a winter wonderland in our apartment! J

Ben and Josef (our home teachers) came down to play Santa and his Elf for us. They are in the Flagship Program and served Chinese speaking missions so they speak really well. Our friend Johnathen also came with them. It is so cool how they can speak Chinese. At the beginning of the party when all of the kids were decorating a lot of them kept trying to talk to me in Chinese and ask me questions and stuff, so I kept calling Ben over to help translate. It was adorable to see him come up and start speaking to them and their faces light up as they talked to him. Everyone loved decorating the Christmas Tree. My favorite part of the decorating was when Rosie’s daughter was putting her ornament on the tree and she would start to put it somewhere and then change her mind and walk to the other side of the tree and start to put it on there and then would change her mind again and walk back to the other side and that continued until she found the “perfect spot”. Hahaha It was the cutest thing!

The game was so much fun. All of the little kids played and all of the adults were cheering for them. It was so adorable! Josef helped translate the game for me which again, was adorable. After the game we pushed everyone into the living room area and Sara sat on a chair and taught them the song. I wasn’t there for much of that because I was helping Santa but I couldn’t see anyway because she was completely surrounded and there were SO many people.

Now for the best part of the party… Everyone is singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas and I walk through the kitchen door and yell, “Look who came to see us!” and HO HO HO in walks Santa and the cutest Elf you ever did see. We had a chair set up for Santa to sit in at the front of the room by the Christmas Tree but Immediately as we walked through the door the Chinese people surrounded Santa and he had quite a hard time getting to the front but somehow managed. Josef the Elf and I were stuck behind the crowd and somehow (I seriously don’t remember how) Josef and I managed to make it to the front. We got a line formed (which again, I don’t know how) for the kids to wait in to see Santa. The room was packed full and as soon as Josef and I got to the front by Santa Claus there was no moving. Santa was adorable. He would ask them questions in English and then translate it into Chinese. Josef the Elf handed Santa little cards out of Santa’s bag to give the children as presents. They loved it. My favorite part was when a little itty bitty girl got on Santa’s lap and Santa asked her in Chinese what she wanted for Christmas and she answered and Santa picks her up off his lap and pats her back and says in English, “Alright well good luck with that!” Josef was laughing and I asked him what she had said and he said that she told Santa she wanted a camera. It was so cute! Another little girl asked for a doll and Santa said, “Well that’s very original!” hahaha It was all just so much fun.

After the whole Santa Claus scene eventually started dying down a bit the Yangzhong girls started getting ready for our performance. We had a “stage” set up in the hallway and everyone stood around. We did our silly little dance and they went nuts over it. It was hilarious. I was glad they liked it so much. Before the dance I handed my camera to Jonathen and told him to stand on a chair or do whatever he could to somehow get the performance on the camera. He just held it up over his head in the back and did a really good job getting it all! Haha There were so many people. It was so much fun!

After our performance we had a few other people do some acts but I went in to sit down and watch the video we had set up and a lot of people followed me in to watch it as well. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the night. After the party died down us Americans played games basically all night long. It is so fun when we are all together like that and play a million games and just have fun. I love my friends here and am going to miss them all so much.

The next morning we made French toast for breakfast and then talked for hours until the boys needed to start heading back. They got all of their stuff together and while they were doing that us girls turned on the song Mistletoe by Justin Bieber and stood arm in arm under the mistletoe (that I made out of paper because of course we needed mistletoe!) waiting for them to come back in the room. Ben came back first and walked through the door and his face was literally priceless. He was smiling until he realized what was happening and didn’t know what to do and awkwardly stepped inside the kitchen area and then in walked Josef who did the exact same thing. Right behind him came Jonathen and they were all standing there awkwardly unsure what to do, watching us as we sang along to Justin Bieber. They seriously didn’t know what to do so I motioned for them to come here. They immediately all took a huge step forward and immediately we all took a step back out from underneath the mistletoe. Hahaha It was all of our natural instinct to back away, we hadn’t actually talked about what we would do. It was the funniest thing ever. As soon as I motioned for them to come here everyone in the room shifted as the boys stepped forward and the girls stepped backwards It was so hilarious! I still can’t stop laughing every time I think about it.

Anyway, it was such a good party. My Yangzhong sisters and I went out to eat that night then we came back and watched a movie. Sara moved her bed into my room so we could use her room for the party and it is so fun that we are going to keep it that way! So we woke up Sunday morning and literally didn’t move out of our beds all day long. She read Jubilee Trail (YAY! She loves it too!) and I read The Scarlet Pimpernel, and we ate no bake cookies that Josef brought the stuff for us to make them and we had a lazy day and it was so much fun because I was with Sara! J She is the best. All day long I kept saying to her, “Sara lets just stay here and not go back to America.” And then we would plan what our Valentines party would be like and how we would try to get Jacob to move us closer to Shanghai and we would plan and plan. However, I am coming home next week! J

It was a really good weekend.