Christmas in China

I don't really know where to begin actually but I guess it is, as they always say, to begin at the beginning. But if the beginning is Christmas itself I want to begin a bit earlier, on what we in Sweden call, dan före dopparedan (the day before Christmas eve):

Christmas spirit and feeling is something that is very alien to Chinese people, not in a way that they don't understand the feeling, because I assume this is almost the exact feeling they have for the Chinese New Year, but because they don't seem to associate it with Christmas at all, which is quite natural since they don't really have Christmas except in McDonald's, which is by the way the place you should go to if you want any Christmas feeling. A lot of places have Christmas decorations, including McDonald's, but it's less than one in twenty stores and usually only the hotels. I didn't come here to celebrate Christmas though and didn't have any expectations, but all this almost and close to attempts to create Christmas here just made me feel worse; so on the night before Christmas eve I was feeling really really low, with the only thing to look forward to for Christmas was work and not even a little; I was out from home for work from 7.30am to 7.30pm on Christmas eve and 8.15am to 4pm on Christmas day, and a long day on the day after too.

So to get my mind off too much Christmas things I had agreed to go to some kind of estate party that my friend Bella was helping her friend with, apparently it was some kind of scam where the estate owners wanted the estate to seem better so they hired foreigners to join the party to seem they lived there, not that I get why that would make it better, perhaps it's something about foreigners having more money, and they would have paid around 300 yuan for dancing for 30 minutes. When I was going there though, with no clue of where it was and my only way to get there was to have Bella talk to the taxi driver, her phone died and I couldn't contact her. It wasn't so bad though, I went over to see my American friends instead and had dinner with them for about an hour or two, then I went home to call home, which was really nice.

I did get loads of invitations though, people here party on Christmas and just everybody I know here called or messaged me to join them, with work and no mood at all to party away a non-existing Christmas I turned them all down.

On Christmas day I went to see my American friends again, this time according to plan even, but because they had stayed up all night drinking and had a really late breakfast they were just not up for dinner until around 10pm, by then I was pretty much starving and the place we went to Carol's, which is basically a bar/club/restaurant, managed to forget to tell us that the chef had left before we ordered our food, so we sat there waiting for about half an hour until someone braved up and told us, one of the waitresses nearly started crying over it.

So instead we went to another bar/club/restaurant not far from there and I had my life's first Christmas burger, two actually. For some reason we stayed there, probably because we had already started drinking and it is hard to stop once you have started, and we befriended the sister of the owner of the place and she hooked us up with wine and drinks and stuff. So even though we didn't really do anything I still didn't get back home until after 2am, and of course I had to get up by 8am the morning.

Christmas gifts:
A machete and a deck of cards with Chinese patriotic motifs from Aaron.
A tiny (lightest ever, like the one dad has I guess) Helicopter from Jane, because she is still feeling bad over the big helicopter accident.
The big helicopter from dad, which is still broken but will be replaced soon (more about that in another post).
A Swedish cook book from my little cousins, it is really nice and Jane has already drawled on half the pages.
Money from grandma, uncle Pär and aunt Gordana and from my parents too, that will be spent on travel quite soon (I'm pretty much buying my flight tickets today).
I am expecting gifts from two other friends as well and a package from my family, I don't know what anything is though.
I bought myself a set of magnets like the one I sent with dad for my siblings and cousins too, a bigger box for me, hehe, 520 pieces, more about that in another post too.

I gave Jane the lovika mittens and the bag with a green Julbock and I bought a bottle of Chilean Carmeniere for Aaron. Except for that I didn't give much, well except the magnets stuff for my siblings and cousins, but I wasn't really there to give them and I gave Kelly some Chocolate.