Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

We've had an exciting couple of days here. It's really hard to think about Christmas when we are so far away from everyone but we tried to get into the spirit for the students' sakes. So we put up a few decorations and twinkling light for them to see. So it was a nice treat then for the school to invite us out on Christmas Eve. We were taken out to dinner by the President and Vice-president of the college along with the Dean of the Foreign Language Department (our direct boss) and a few of the English speaking Chinese teachers. We had a delicious dinner then followed up with karaoke with the gang. We found out how seriously they took their singing! We (Don, Jackie, Gord and I) quickly came to the realization that we shouldn't give up our day jobs :) We had an enjoyable evening out and appreciated their kindness. You see we don't get out much. No, seriously, the public transportation out here stops early in the evening so seeing Shantou by night is a real treat!

We followed up that late evening with another one last night. One of the students we all know sings in a bar and she invited us to go and watch her. We took the last, very crowded, bus into town to have dinner before we headed to the bar. It was a miracle but we actually had turkey! We found a Christmas buffet of Western food at a revolving restaurant at the top of a hotel. We were the only foreigners there but enjoyed an interesting variety of food along with English Christmas music. We even won a night in a VIP room. That was another miracle since the raffle was, of course, held in Mandarin, and I had to really listen to hear the winning numbers. We thought we might have to use it last night if we couldn't find a taxi to get us home. Luckily, that wasn't a problem.

The show at the Soho bar was great. For Christmas, they must have brought in all of their singers so we enjoyed numerous live songs in different styles and languages. Swan, the student, did an amazing job. We are happy to report that we were able to stay up late for a second night in a row, ha ha.

Had a nice chat with family to start our morning while enjoying Starbuck's instant coffee (thanks so much to Glen and Susan), sent some emails and now are going to recuperate for the rest of the day... translation, nap time!

We did a bit of traveling a couple of weeks ago, visiting my parents in Guangzhou. It was a few days full of food and shopping. We are now busy finishing the semester in the next couple of weeks and will be giving oral exams to our hundreds of students. Then we plan on joining my parents again in Hong Kong for a week. After that we will enjoy a nice long vacation and will return to school on March 2nd.

As the students would say, "Thank you, that's all." J xo

p.s. I'll add a link to pics when more of the coffee kicks in.