Oh, Come All Ye Spenders!

The message of commercial Christmas has once again landed here in China. Every shop and restaurant is full of all sorts of Christmas junk, and the staff in the supermarkets are wearing Christmas costumes. People are rushing from shop to shop in a way that very much reminds me of Europe.

But despite the materialism, it still brings a feeling of something special, a little festivity to the season :) And in my bag I have a bunch of Christmas cards from the little kids at the primary school where I have been teaching a few times in the past weeks, with nice wishes scribbled inside. Maybe the one that made me smile the most was a little piece of paper, on which this girl had written in big, shaky letters: "Merry Christmas, Mom". Hehe :)

As for something else, I must tell you that the lampposts here in Beibei are terrible at singing. The other day, as I walked through the centre, each of them was singing a karaoke number well off-key. Hmmm.....

Merry Christmas :)

As Christmas and the end of the year are getting closer, things are getting busy. At school, we are beginning to prepare for the exams and everyone's mind is on their holiday plans. I will only have a couple of more days o0f school, after which I will take a week off to have a little holiday with my friends who are coming over alll the way from Finland :) They will bring Christmas with them :)

And after the exams are over in early January, I will head for another holiday. This time I will get on the plane myself, and fly back home for a little break. So, to all of you in Finland, I hope to see you in January :)

And when I come back here in the beginning of February, I will be bringing a brand new laptop with me. And for sure, this will mean more blogging and emailing, as I will no more have to drag myself to a crowded internet cafe. So, be prepared for an information flood in 2006. For now, I apologise to those whose emails I haven't answered in the past weeks, I have not spent much time on the internet lately and have not have the time to write all the emails I wanted to. You are, however, on my mind.

But for now, I am wishing each and every one of you a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. It's great to know that you out there are reading these words :)

Another weather report

"Sichuan dogs bark at the sun."
This is a Chinese proverb that very well describes the climate conditions here. The meaning of it is that as the sun is so rarely seen here (Chongqing was a part of Sichuan until the early 1990s) that when it comes out, the dogs will bark at the strange phenomenon.

It's not without reason that ChongQing is called the "Capital of Mist". In practice, the sun is very rarely seen in the winter months as everything is covered in thick white fluff. Living on the 18th floor, I wake up some mornings to find that there is nothing but absolute whiteness outside the window. This is partly due to the natural conditions and partly to pollution.

These days I have become very good friends with Harold, a teddy bear with a hot water bottle inside. It's because of this furry friend that I get through the cold nights without freezing through :)

Gas trouble

Not much of interest has been goingon in Beibei over the past days. But yesterday there was a little something: for some reason there was no gas available at the stations. And this caused many of the buses and taxis to stop service. The funny past of it was that most of them were parked right next to where we live! We have a gas station next to our building complex, so the queues started forming late morning and by the evening the whole street was pretty much blocked.

Other than that, I've promised to play a part in a local primary school's Christmas play, for which we are now rehearsing with the kids and three other foreign students from my university. The story is based (loosely) on "The Little Match Girl", and I play a part of a school teacher. The funny thing about it is that we just found out yesterday that the venue for the play is not at the school, but at the square in the middle of the town. I even get to do a dance for the whole town, as it's in my part ;) A different kind of Christmas...