Christmas and New Year
你好everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas and got lots of nice prezzies! My Christmas and New Year was a little different from previous years. December was a very busy month with exams and of course Christmas and New Year.
Christmas isn’t celebrated in China so we weren’t sure what to expect or what we were going to do for the day. The university didn’t let us have the day off as it’s not a Chinese holiday so we went to class in the morning then went for lunch in the afternoon. Some of us wanted to do something that would make us feel at home. We decided to book out a Czech restaurant with some of our foreign friends from the uni. The meal consisted of fish to start along with a caesar salad. For our main course we didn’t manage to get a turkey but we got a cooked ham instead with Yorkshire pudding and pigs and blankets on the side which was delicious. For our dessert we had a chocolate cake. The food was amazing and it was really nice to feel like we were back home for the day. In the evening we went to our local bar called Helen’s with some of our Chinese friends. Helen’s was packed with people from the uni and we all had a great night. Although I didn’t get to spend Christmas with my family this year I had an amazing day with amazing people. My family sent over a parcel for me with some bits and bobs that I missed from home. Especially Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate!
Between Christmas and New Year we had our final end of term exams. I was lucky because I didn’t have any of my exams on Christmas Day. However, quite a lot of other students had exams on Christmas Day which was quite tough going. I managed to pass all my exams which is good as it means I won’t have to re-do the same class again next semester.
This was a Christmas gift that one of our Korean friends gave us! Its some socks and a wee message in Korean!
For New Year one of the scholars managed to find a ski festival beside the Great Wall in Beijing. The festival was so fun and it was an exciting way to bring in the New Year. However, after the festival finished we arrived at the train station to find that it didn’t open for another two hours. We had nowhere to go so we ended up all huddling together outside in the freezing cold to try and keep ourselves warm! It was certainly an experience!
This is a group of us on Boxing Day having a traditional Chinese meal. 好吃！
Uni is finished now for this semester which meant that a lot of the friends that we’ve made this semester have left or are leaving shortly which is sad but we’ve all promised to meet up again in the future. I’m excited to meet the new people arriving next semester and for my parents visiting during the holidays.
再见for now!