Christmas in China

你好 Primary 7,

怎么样? I have had another amazing month in Tianjin. I have been preparing for exams but the biggest thing this month has been preparing for the first Christmas and New Year away from my family and friends. December obviously starts off with your own Christmas advent calendar however considering that China doesn’t celebrate Christmas there wasn’t many advent calendars on sale in the supermarkets so I had to go to a shop that had international food and drink on sale. Luckily for the other Scottish scholars and I, we were in luck as this shop had advent calendars but at a price. They were a little bit more expensive than back home but at least we had one to open on the 1^st of December.

A little further into the month and we all got together in the corridor of our floor to make decorations for the 7^th floor of our accommodation building. These decorations included paper chains and snowflakes out of paper. Some of the scholars were lucky enough to even have decorations sent over by their families for their rooms. We spent a whole Saturday in the festive spirit with Christmas songs playing and Santa hats on.

What did you all do for Christmas? Did you get all the presents you wanted?

Hogmanay was the first away from home as well. However, it was one to remember as most of the Scots went to a ski festival beside the Great Wall of China. We got to the Great Wall on New Year’s Eve at 4pm, skied from 6pm to 9pm before having a massive party at the top of the mountain to bring in the bells. It was a rather unique way to start a year but it was incredibly fitting as it make my first experience of Hogmanay away from my family a memorable one.

Aside from all the festivities we also had a world famous DJ called Steve Aoki come to Tianjin. He’s famous for songs like “Just hold on” featuring Louis Tomlinson of One Direction and he is also famous for throwing cakes at the crowd during his performances. He came to a club called Dr Oscar to DJ which was an amazing night. Not only because of the music and partying but also because I was one of the fortunate ones to have cake thrown in my face. He threw several cakes with the first one hitting me and other ones hitting other Scottish students and many more people.

It may have been fun at the time being lifted onto Calum's shoulders and being hit by flying cake however it did mean that I had to have a shower when I got home. The bad thing about that was that my shower was freezing cold but all in all it was definitely one of the highlights of December and I ended up making it onto his Instagram page.

Going into the start of 2018 and I had end of term exams to deal with, which went well in the end, and then it was time to say my goodbyes to everyone who would be leaving soon. It’s hard to express how amazing my first semester here has been but it has been unforgettable. From the people I’ve met to the places I’ve been, it’s been brilliant and I can’t wait for the next two months as I will be travelling across Asia and updating you in my next blog.

再见for this year Primary 7, see you in 2018!