Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone and a late Merry Christmas! 大家好， 圣诞快乐！

You could say that December was a bit of a funny month for me this year. I spent a lot of time studying for our upcoming finals (which went pretty well *fingers crossed*)  and although there were a few Christmassy things for sale in our local supermarket, there wasn’t much festive spirit outside which was strange as everyone was trying to get excited to spend Christmas together in Tianjin. Despite not being Christmassy outside, all the scholars made sure to make this Christmas was one to remember by having our own little secret Santa and having dinner together in our dorms. We set a time, not too early, in the morning on Christmas Day for everyone to come out and open their secret Santa gifts and spend some time together before we went off to phone home.

I was lucky enough to have a few parcels sent over from home to open up and one had also arrived on Christmas Day so after a bit of confusion as to where it actually was, I made my way to the post office and finally got my parcel. I went back to my dorm to open all the lovely gifts my family had sent over from Scotland and I’m not going to lie, I may have shed a few tears... but they were happy tears! I didn’t expect so much from home and I was incredibly grateful for the thought everyone put into the gifts and reading all the Christmas cards was really great. Not long after that, my parents had woken up back in Scotland so of course I phoned and wished them a Merry Christmas and asked about all the plans they had for the day.

After speaking to my parents and spending some time getting in the festive spirit, everyone then got ready to have dinner together. We all got dressed up and ordered or went out to grab our favourite foods so we could come together and eat. Another scholar Kayleigh was amazing and decorated our little common area with loads of decorations and it looked amazing and I’d say that even though we were so far away from home, it didn’t feel so bad being surrounded by all of the scholars, it felt like we were spending Christmas together as a new little family. We spend the rest of the day chatting and spending time together and I’d say that it was a pretty amazing Christmas spend with amazing people.

After Christmas around 14 of the scholars actually had a couple performances to do for the university. We had been practicing in the weeks leading up to it and on the 26th and 28th it was time to actually perform them in front of an audience. Both performances ended up going pretty smoothly compared to some of our rehearsals! And it was good fun getting to do something a bit different and to show some Scottish pride by doing some ceilidh dancing and singing a part of Auld Lang Syne. Although December wasn’t filled with loads of activities it was definitely a hectic month with studying and going to rehearsals for our performance and it all turned out pretty well in the end.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas back in Scotland and next month’s blog will definitely be interesting as I’m going off travelling through China for nearly a while month! I can’t wait to share all the (hopefully) amazing pictures and memories with you!

Alyssa.