Christmas Party & Around Jinan

The days leading up to Christmas there was a huge crowd in the middle of the mall (look at the crowd of people on the 2nd and 3rd floor!)

There was a DJ on stage and were having a "dance off" 

It was actually really entertaining

On Monday this week we had our Christmas party for all of the students

Since there were so many kids (about 50 from S1, S2, and S3), we divided it up into stations--they had musical chairs, xmas pictionary, and xmas trivia

I collected their baby pictures and put together a "guess who" game for them to do while they were getting food--this took FOREVER. But it was fun :) 

I asked all the students to send me a picture by FRIDAY so I could have the weekend to print them and do the posters. 

Naturally I received about 1/3 of the pictures Saturday and Sunday. Monday during the day some students emailed me and asked if I could put their picture in the game (if only we had a color printer!) 

Some hula hooping going on…

At the end we got everyone back into the library and sang a few christmas carols

The A Cappella kids put on a performance of rudolph the red nosed reindeer 

Super cute!

For some reason people in china give out apples on Christmas. I received a handful of apples in cute little boxes that said merry christmas. (a lot healthier than western traditions!)

I thought this teddy bear christmas tree was adorable

And finally…the foreign teachers got Christmas off (which was a little weird because we live on campus and other chiense teachers had to "cover" our classes)  I saw a number of my students after school at the mall. When I see them outside of school its like their switch to speak english turns off and they really struggle to communicate. 

Anyways, I was going to return some shoes and get my hair cut. They asked me how I would do this and I motioned scissors with my hands. They thought it was hilarious--and followed me to the shoe store and the hair salon to tell the people what I wanted in Chinese. If it wasn't for their help I don't think the shoe store would have returned my shoes. 

The guy cutting my hair was super cute, and was really patient with me trying to speak chinese with me. But I'm pretty sure he told me he came to Jinan because of his nan peng you 男朋友, (boyfriend) but then proceeded to ask me a few times if I was single. 

My hair cut was only 50 RMB ($7.50) so I asked him if I could give him a tip (by saying can I give you extra money) for some people, this causes them to lose face but he accepted my tip :) 

It didn't snow here but the pollution and smog went off the charts--it was almost a white christmas! 

Yuck. I hate thinking this probably has serious affects on my health (and my skin!) eek