Christmas in China

The school Christmas party.

Legos from Santa.

She went up to Santa all by herself.

Decorating the tree.

The dollhouse extraordinaire.

This was just a few weeks ago. Now, we are finally in sweaters and light jackets.

While Christmas is not really celebrated in China, it's made its way in. You see places like McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart (as expected) decorated for the season. Joe commented that he saw several Chinese people buying Christmas decorations at Walmart as well. We're getting into the spirit by watching pirated movies like Fred Claus, decorating our little tree, and going to Christmas parties at school. We had our staff adults-only Christmas party on Friday night at a German restaurant. Then, on Saturday there was a Christmas party for the staff's kids. We went to Sophia's school and she did things like decorating cookies and Christmas bags. She got a tattoo and even got to see Santa.

We really weren't sure if she was going to walk up to Santa, but she did, very slowly. I think she went because she had spotted her gift in his hands. It was pretty nice because the school reimbursed everyone for a $10 gift for their children.

We also decided that Saturday was the day for Santa to visit China in general, so he came to our house in the morning. Sophia got her dollhouse/bookshelf which the building manager of our school built for us. Joe spent all week painting it with the utmost care, and it has been an adorable addition to Sophia's little room.

Of course, in typical tw0-year-old style, Sophia wasn't most excited about the big gift, but about the Mickey Mouse window stickers I stuck in her stocking. She spent all morning sticking them on the windows.

Sophia's modeling job went pretty well, too. I had to lay down the law the second time, though, as they wanted to work her to death. I had to stop them after awhile and say, "Okay, that's enough." No child labor laws in China, I guess. It will be fun to get the catalogue in a few months. There were several kids from school there, too. I guess it's a popular thing for the Western blond-haired kids in China.

Just a few days until we start home. We'll be in freezing ol' Iowa in no time. We'll have to buy coats right away!