An International Christmas

'Tis the season.

I remember a few years ago my family had a very international Christmas.  We had presents under the tree from the "Japanese Santa," the "Hong Kong Santa," the "Malaysian Santa," etc.  (Funny how all the Santas represented under our tree corresponded to places my dad had been that year.)  But this year I'm having another sort of international Christmas. 

Today was our Christmas service at my fellowship.  It was marvelous!  I was blessed to be able to join the choir, and have had a great time in the last three weeks going to choir practice and getting to know many others in the fellowship from the other schools.  But let me give you a picture of how international this Christmas service was...

We started with a bunch of carols.  That wasn't particularly international compared to usual here, but the praise team still consisted of people from at least 6 countries.

For the message, we had four people each speak about five minutes.  Of those four, two were American and two were African.  I was actually honored to be asked to be one of those speakers, so I talked about Luke 2:17-20.  Specifically, I talked about Mary's reaction (as compared with the shepherds') and asked if we are each pondering the meaning of this season.

After the message(s), we got into the "program" that had been put together just for today.  A Sri Lankan dance. The Sunday school choir.  A Filipino Joseph, a Nigerian Mary, and an Indian wise man.  An African dance.  And a choir full of Africans, Indians... and one white girl. 

It was marvelous! 

And I really enjoyed singing Silent Night with a beat.  I guess that's what happens when the choir director is from Guinea Bassu.

Since I'm not entirely sure what my plans are for the rest of the Christmas season (i.e. for Christmas day itself), I'll refrain from telling you about that until after the 25th.  But in the meantime, it was such a blessing to be able to celebrate the season with brothers and sisters from around the world today. 

Class

Imagine you are sitting in your college class one day when your teacher asks "Who is planning to take the final exam?"  Now imagine that class is a foreign language class, and the question was not asked in English, causing you to question whether you actually understood the teacher at all.  What? Why would the teacher ask who is going to take the final?  Doesn't everyone take it?

 

Apparently not if it's a Chinese language class in China.  Turns out since I'm simply taking these classes for my own benefit (and to pass the language exam I will have next year in the U.S.), there is no compelling reason for me to take the exam.  In fact, the teachers are encouraging us to NOT take the exam if you don't need to.  Strange.

 

So I will not be taking any exams this semester.  What a great way to study!  Study for myself and not for a test.

 

The nice thing about not taking the finals is that I have an entire extra week off for the winter break.  Classes will run through December 31 (with no days off for Christmas...), the first and second will be off for the holiday, and then exams will run the following week.  But I will simply be done on the 31st.  And when do classes start up again, you ask?  March.  Yes, I literally have two months off.  How sweet is that?! 

 

Before you all start thinking that the Chinese have such an easy educational system, though, let me explain.  In the U.S. schools usually have 2 (or 3) weeks off for Christmas/winter, and maybe 10 weeks for the summer.  In China, the winter and the summer breaks are both 6 weeks long.  So after I start classes in March, I will be in class straight through until July (with exams, which I won't take, finishing around the 15th of July).  So it's just a different schedule, not necessarily an easier one.

 

So enough about the academic schedule.  What about my classes themselves?  I have had several very entertaining classes recently.  In fact, I can say that I'm enjoying my Chinese classes now more than ever.  We've gotten comfortable with the teachers, and the students who don't really care are no longer coming.  Which does mean that my class of 15-20 is often only a class of 5-8 now, but I'm okay with that.  In fact, Friday we only had four.  Just more chance to practice and learn! 

 

In my listening class the other day, we had an incredibly entertaining conversation about zoos.  Our teacher is approximately my age, still a masters student here, and she was saying that all zoos are essentially the same.  So my Czech friend and I tried explaining to her how zoos in different countries can actually be incredibly different.  We were hysterical over the truth of dog petting zoos in China and our experiences of goats eating our maps in the petting zoos elsewhere.  But I think the most hilarious was when my Czech friend didn't know how to say "ape" so she simply explained what she meant... "almost-a-person monkey."

 

In my reading class recently, we learned that there actually is grammar in Chinese.  I've spent four years studying Chinese already, but it wasn't until last week that any of my teachers actually admitted that there is grammar and a set of structures to the language.  It really would have been nice, though, for my first few teachers to have explained such things.  They could have used English to help us understand!  It's not easy to learn Chinese grammar using only the Chinese language to explain it. 

 

My speaking class is the "worst" of my classes, in the sense that our teacher doesn't actually understand that he should have us speak in class.  But now that we usually start the class with only me and the Czech girl there, it's getting better.  And we had fun learning all sorts of computer terms the other day.  Again, a little bit difficult, since some of the terms I don't even understand if I hear them in English!

 

Finally, my jingdu class is great.  (Jingdu is a term for critical reading, but the class functions as the basic grammar class.  This is the class we have most often, and the jingdu teacher is our primary teacher.)  Last week, our teacher was telling us that since she has been teaching Chinese to foreigners for 12 years, her Chinese has deteriorated.  I could totally relate!  (What can I say, my English has... lowered.)  Her stories about hanging out with her friends and using very basic Chinese were hilarious and all too familiar.  But the even more hilarious story she told us a week ago was about how she had gone out the night before with her friend and had 6 beers, without eating anything except one peanut.  It's not every teacher who will admit to her class that she still has a hangover!  But we were sympathetic... we told her we should just end class early. :)

 

 

The holiday season

It's the holiday season!  One of my favorite things to do around the holidays is to think back on all the previous years and how I have celebrated in the past.  For example, every Thanksgiving I remember that one year my family celebrated Thanksgiving in a castle, the year we ate a free turkey-less Thanksgiving dinner in Key West, and the year my mom spilled the turkey grease all over the floor of the kitchen.  (Sorry Mom.)  Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now I have one more in the books to look back on: Peking Duck in Shenyang with 130 people.  This was certainly the largest T-day dinner I've ever participated in!

 

But one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is that the Christmas season follows it.  I have recently been thinking back to the last time I spent a good portion of the Christmas season in China, that time in Beijing.  I remember that Christmas being very bizarre, because I had basically no "season" before the 25th.  If I hadn't had a calendar, I probably could have spent the whole season in Beijing without ever realizing it was Christmas!  Remembering how disappointed I was to miss out on the thrills of Advent, I've been much more particular this year about recognizing the season. 

 

Since the first week of Advent, the music in my room has been set to one thing: a certain oratorio by Handel that just seems to fit the season.  To make things even cheerier, though, I successfully decorated my dorm room yesterday.  I spent 30 kuai (about $5) on a 1 meter tall tree and all the decorations to go on it.  Seemed like a good deal to me, and with a room as small as mine, just a simple tree can effectively change the dynamics of the entire place.

 

I am also excited to have joined a choir for the Christmas service at my fellowship.  We've only practiced one song so far, but it's been fun to actually learn the alto line to Silent Night.  (Well, okay, it's not actually the traditional alto line for the hymn, since we're singing a jazzed up version.  But it's fun anyway.)  Saturday afternoon we have choir practice at the Medical University, and I'm looking forward to the hours of singing Christmas carols and spending time with many of my friends. 

 

The most touching part of the season thus far, though, was definitely receiving a package from my "family" in DC.  What a joy and blessing!  Not only are all the Dutch treats and hot chocolate ridiculously tasty and enjoyable, they also make great decorations under my tree.  And somehow they also seem to attract people to come hang out with me in my room. :)

 

Speaking of Dutch things, many of you might know of the Dutch holiday that precedes Christmas: Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas Day).  Certainly, growing up in a Dutch-American community meant I learned about Sinterklaas in school and occasionally "celebrated" that day.  This year, however, I happen to have a lot of Belgian friends who all celebrate Sinterklaas regularly!  It was terrific amounts of fun to be able to celebrate the holiday with them this year. 

 

For those of you who did not have the privilege to learn about Sinterklaas growing up, let me explain how one would celebrate the holiday.  Sinterklaas is remarkably similar to Christmas.  There's a guy named "Sinterklaas" (St. Nicholas) and his helper Black Pete.  They have a white horse.  The night before, children all across the Netherlands and Belgium place their shoes outside the door, and leave a carrot or something of the sort for the horse to eat.  During the night, Sinterklaas and Black Pete come through and leave presents (usually candy) in the shoes.  But if the children have been bad, they are taken away in Black Pete's bag.  That's certainly stronger motivation than simply not getting a gift from Santa Claus!

 

So how do three Belgians and two Americans celebrate Sinterklaas in China?  Wow, we had fun.  We decided to play a game: we all put our shoes outside our doors, and over the course of 36 hours everyone had to put something in everybody else's shoes.  The catch? You couldn't get caught.  The punishment for getting caught was having to make dinner for the group of us on the 18th (the night before the one girl will go back to Belgium... sad!). 

 

It was so much fun to go buy a few things and have to stealthily put them in everyone's shoes.  Especially since we don't all live in the dorm here.  It was also fun to randomly find bags of goodies outside my door!  (The best was definitely the packet of real American taco seasoning from the American guy! Apparently he's stockpiled but has to get rid of it before moving next month.)  The most hilarious part of the game, though, had to have been when someone actually got caught.  G was standing outside one girl's door to drop a present, but she hadn't put any shoes out.  So while standing there, he called her cell.  Since she was simply inside her room and could hear his voice on the other side of the door, she caught him red-handed. 

 

The down side?  Let's be honest, none of us really want to eat G's cooking.  So we told him he should just pay for our dinner at a restaurant instead. :)

 

So all told, I'm thoroughly enjoying my holiday season thus far.  I even had far more fun with Sinterklaas than usual.  Although I'll admit, Christmas day itself will probably be a little bit difficult...

 

 

 

More things to be thankful for...

8. I'm thankful for my own private western-style toilet.  Seriously.  On a day-to-day basis, I don't think I would mind too much not having it.  I mean, I'm pretty used to using the other variety.  But let me just say that spending all Sunday night in and out of my bathroom throwing up into a western-style toilet (and sitting on a relatively clean floor next to it) was a much more pleasant way to be sick than to have had to use the public squatties located down the hall.

 

9. I'm thankful for friends here studying at the Medical University who are relatively fluent in medical Chinese (since they do their studies entirely in Chinese).  It's comforting to know that if I ever do actually have to go to a Chinese hospital, these friends would be there in a heartbeat to help me, and they'd actually know what's going on. 

 

10. Finally, I'm thankful for the progress I'm already making in getting better, and for not having to go to a hospital anyway (even if I do have people to help me).  Seriously, don't be too worried.  My body just decided Sunday night to get rid of any possible hazards from within my system.  I don't know why.  But by now I'm eating small bits of basic foods (crackers, noodles, eggs, apples), and getting better.  I even attended all my classes today!  So by the end of the week, I'm sure I'll be back to normal entirely. :)