Catching up-Holidays

Wow, it's been a long time since I have posted.  I don't really have an excuse, except while the Chinese 18th Party Congress was going on, because doing anything remotely interesting on the internet was impossible.  Now that Chinese Congress "elected" their next Communist leader, we can all continue with our normal governmentally- regulated internet lives.

Here's how I'm going to break this down.  I'm going to do a couple of blog posts.  One will be holiday stuff and the other will be random crap that I have found funny and/or interesting about my life in China since the last time I posted.  You, dear reader, can decide what you want to read.  I'm all about choice here, people.

Halloween

Halloween turned out quite a bit more festive than I thought it would.  It's sort of catching on with the younger generation that has kids around here.  We went to a Beijing-Kids (expat group) Halloween party, which was really fun.  Here are some pics:

Pumpkin bowling

We also went trick or treating.  There is an expat compound across the street from us called Central Park in which all the shops are open for trick or treat.  It was pretty good, although some of the treats were a little weird (like, croutons, no joke), but that was ok, it was still trick or treat.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was very nice.  It was actually the first Thanksgiving as an adult that I was not totally stressed out by cleaning, food or family.  We ate at a restaurant called Tim's Texas BBQ and it was great.  Perfect traditional Thanksgiving and all the patrons that day were American.  It was delicious, cozy and quiet.  No one knew each other but we were all sharing this unique experience of celebrating a US-only holiday in China.  There was football on TV and seasonal decorations.  Lots of ND football talk-GO IRISH (sorry, had to put that in there). Very special.  Then we came home and decorated our apartment for Christmas and put up our 4 ft Christmas tree that I found at IKEA.

Thanksgiving Beijing-style.  I don't know why the alcohol seems to be the  focus of the picture.  What? You don't need to drink on Thanksgiving????

All the Christmas decorating photos are on Steve's phone so I can't publish them here. We were using my phone to listen to the excellent Christmas playlist I put together in what I feel was a very productive use of my spare time no matter what Steve says.

Christmas

The Christmas season is turning out to be quite lovely here.  Our apartment is very festive, and there is Christmas music and holiday decorations in all the apartment and major business buildings.  It's actually quite nice as everything just started this weekend, rather than the U.S. cram-Christmas-down-your-throat-until-you-vomit-up-tinsel-and-twinkle lights-style of celebration/capitalism.

All the international schools have Christmas bazaars and they have been really nice.  They usually have a lot of little Beijing-based expat businesses selling their really unique wares plus great expat food from every country.  There is always a charity twist as well which is fantastic.  I've picked up quite a few interesting items, including a homemade bottle of Finnish Glogg (made by the Finnish mom contingent at Oleg's school).

Anyway, Christmas has been much simpler here than the month long stress extravaganza that it can be in the US and although I miss a lot of things it has been nice in it's own way so far.  Don't get me wrong, I CANNOT WAIT to get back to the U.S. on December 15th to celebrate with friends and family, but I'm really enjoying the quiet here.

My Christmas table

Our tiny tree