圣诞节快乐，新年快乐!

Christmas came and went, and Hogmanay! As China has no major Christian history, and with a small population of followers of the religion, it's not a followed occasion. That being said, it's not hard to get Chinese people into the Christmas spirit, given the already large culture of giving gifts constantly. Both of my language partners, 蠢蠢 chun3 chun3 (her 小名, or nickname, means wriggling or restless) and 爱梅 ài méi, both bought me wonderfully thoughtful gifts, and I bought them the most stereotypically Christmassy things I could find.

It's quite commercial here, much how Valentine's day is now treated, with local convenience stores playing Christmas music and little Christmas cut outs sold for our dorm windows.

Celebrating Christmas with the other scholars was the highlight - we spent hours decorating our hallway with handmade paper chains, organised a secret santa between the 22 of us to make sure everyone got presents. In the morning, we treated ourselves to McDonald's delivered to the university, and at night a few of us went to a traditional Christmas dinner, another few to hotpot, and the rest to an Indian restaurant.

It was easy to feel distant at times, like time back home had frozen while we were all enjoying ourselves. But I got presents from home, which I succeeded in not opening early!

Hogmanay meant counting down with other foreign students and waking up at 8 on a Sunday to phone home and count with them. We even had the day off for New Year's Day, but were treated to a week of exams starting the following day. Into the Spring!