Christmas is coming!!!

After the first snow, we realised that winter was upon us. Being late November, Liam was now wetting himself with excitement about Christmas, and we decided to give us a happy Christmas atmosphere we would make advent calendars. I made Liam a fireplace with stockings as the things to open, and Liam and I made Catherine a Christmas Pudding with little black boxes to open. We made the boxes out of white card and painted them black, but the paint rubbed off very easily so every time Catherine opened a box she'd get covered in black smudges! Later we discovered that they do in fact sell black card. D'oh. In turn, Liam and Catherine made me a bright red and white stocking calendar. Making the calendars was stupidly good fun. We bought all the stuff we needed (crepe paper, card, paint, glue and so on) at a poundsaver style shop opposite our university and then filled the boxes with Chinese pick and mix from Jiajiale, the big supermarket up our road. Sadly Chinese pick and mix is a bit hit and miss, so on some days the sweets were genuinely not edible. I was lucky (or Liam very skilful at picking sweets) for almost all of mine were tasty, though I tried some of the ones we put in Catherine and Liam's calendars and they tasted like vomit. Like, actually. Oh, while I'm on the subject, if you come to China, never eat Lovelytime chocolate. It comes in three flavours. The first tastes like cheese. Another tastes like body odour and rotten food, if I remember rightly. Then the final one tastes like sick and bile. Not long after I was tasting sick and bile for real; I threw up it was so bad. And if you value your tastebuds, never try their chewy corn-on-the-cob sweets. Ick.
We also put a few non-food items in the boxes, and it made the run-up to Christmas very satisfying in a childlike way. Oh, and gave me a reason to get out of bed of a morning : )
Decorationswise, we found a teeny weeny Christmas tree and a couple of random polystyrene Christmas-style items. We hung a wreath off our light fixture (from the door was just not going to work) and put our cards, sent from home (they don't sell them in China) on the fridge. Catherine entered into the creative spirit and made everyone Christmas cards, which was a lovely surprise. We also found a vile mouse creation thing in a random shop on the way home from buying creative calendar and card supplies. It only had one eye. It had a Christmas hat. It sang a song, and it was not a Christmas song for that matter. But it made our lives just that little bit better, perched jauntily atop our television. Catherine also found us Santa phone charms, so everything was getting very Christmassy down Urumqi way.
Christmas in China is definitely not the same as in the west. Very few people here actually celebrate it, though some of the bigger establishments put up Christmas trees and window decorations. What amused me was that they put them all up a week or two before the date, and some of them still haven't taken them down in March. It's like the backwards of Britain!
To add to the winter excitement, it was now snowing fairly regularly. Catherine and I made snowmen outside our apartment, enlisting the help of some local children to do so. We were watched in bemusement by the security guards. Hours later, after returning home from a Japanese restaurant, we were glum to find that our works of art had been viciously knocked down. They paled into comparison, though, next to the amazing snowman we found in the street. The sculptor was the owner of a Xerox copy place and made the snowman just outside his shop. Either he's an artistic genius, or he has too much time on his hands. Kinda looks like Napoleon.
I spent a day out with my Mongolian buddies looking at some of the ice sculptures they were starting to build in People's Square. I saw how they create outdoor ice rinks in this country: they make walls out of packed-up snow, and then they spray water onto the floor - it's so cold it just freezes, and hey presto! One ice rink. After seeing the ice sculptures and eating some yummy pilau and kebabs we went to a roller disco... an experience I haven't repeated but that I am dying to do soon as I can!
Catherine and I were also enjoying our snowball fights... winter was at this point not too cold for comfort and we were loving it! Catherine also treated us to our Christmas presents before we went away, and they were stockngs full of loads of cute little presents. : ) But there was one thing we weren't overly happy about, and that was the upcoming university exams.

My stocking advent calendar, made by Liam and Catherine.

Catherine opening her Christmas Pudding advent calendar, made by Liam and myself.


Our Christmas tree. Teeny weeny but enough to bring Christmas to the house! We've packed it away now but how our landlady loves to take it back out.



Cuthbert the Mouse. One-eyed and plays a mysterious tinny tune. What better decoration can one get?

The kiddywinks that helped us build our snowmen. And Catherine's 'snowman'. Looks like a heap in the ground to me... but whatever.

The most amazing snowman I have ever seen. It looks kind of like Napoleon. His sign wishes us all a Happy Christmas.

Catherine was not too impressed that they knocked our snowmen down!

Me eating sushi at the Japanese restaurant.

Liangliang (Batur, however that's spelt) and Bayin with the beginnings of the ice sculptures.

Me with my presents!