Christmas in Shanghai

While it's definitly been strange not being around friends and family for Christmas, I'd say that our first Christmas in Shanghai has been a good one. We spent Christmas Eve at our home with friends. Erik and I threw our first party in our apartment. It was definitly a little cramped, but we had a good time. A lot of our friends came. We have a Christmas tree and other decorations, so it felt pretty Christmasy. I made egg nog from scratch, which to my surprise turned out delicious and attempted to make puppy chow which Erik subsequently had to salvage but turned out all right in the end. Additionally, we lost our electricity about one hour before the party, so that caused a little panic. But thankfully someone came and fixed it so everything was fine. So we had a good time. There was a lot of food and Erik ordered pizza for all our guests, so it was fun.

Christmas day was fun too. Erik went to Chinese class in the morning (can you believe him? I wouldn't have gone) and then in the afternoon we made Christmas cookies with some friends at our friend's restuarant. He let us use his oven, so nice. Later we went to a Christmas party that one of our friends threw. So the day was good.

Besides the surprise party Erik threw me, I had 2 other small get togethers. My friend Iris's birthday is also in December, so we went out together with the other teachers at work to celebrate. In Chinese tradition, Iris and I paid for everyone's dinner. Instead of friends taking the birthday person out for dinner, the birthday person takes everyone else out on their birthday. Interesting.

Of course, we went out for dinner on my birthday too. Indian food, my favorite. They were doing dancing up on stage and they dragged me up there. So embarrassing.