The 12 Days of Christmas...with Chinese Characteristics

On the twelve days of Christmas my true love gave to me...

-100+ cups of spice tea (made and distributed at Christmas parties)
-70 degree (sunny!) weather
-60 some apples and oranges (from my sweet freshmen class)
-53 Christmas text messages from friends and students all over China (yes..I was once again told to "marry christmas")
-27 packs of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Ugly Face cookies bought and consumed at parties
-18 days for my package of letters to go from Mengzi to Galesburg
-10 Christmas Eve gift wrapped apples received ("Christmas Eve" in Chinese, "ping an ye," sounds a little like the word for "apple" which is "ping guo" so it's recently become a popular tradition (and marketing ploy) to buy and give your friends a gift wrapped "ping guo" on "ping an ye."
-9 Christmas parties (one of the student parties turned into a candle light service when the power went out as we were singing carols!)
-5 times of celebrating Christmas in China
-3 trips of riding my bike to the local post offices before successfully mailing the above mentioned package of letters
-countless phone calls, packages and cards from dear friends around the world (a big thank you to my family for sending packages and calling and attempting to webcam and then sending funny pictures to make me laugh and happy again after webcam did NOT work...love you!)
-lots of fun gifts , amazing food and fellowship at the Rice's
-and a big stuffed animal dolphin!! (also a gift from the freshmen class :) )

Here are a few pictures from this year's Christmas season. Hope you all had a blessed Christmas too!

My "lao xiang" helped me decorate my tree this year. We all became fast friends when we realized that we're all from Hubei province. They're from Wuhan and I'm now from Yichang. :)