It's begining to look a lot like Christmas....

....But it feels like I'm living on the tundra at the moment. These past few days have been almost spectacularly chilly, to put it lightly. Unfortunately for us here in Jilin, the temperatures' only going to dip even lower this weekend, below -30 Farenheit. It definitely makes running errands, going to class, or really anything that requires leaving the relative warmth of one's apartment quite a major challenge.With weather like this, a trip to grab some eggs and bread feels more like an expedition to the North Pole.

Now please pardon me for what is without a doubt the worst self-photo ever taken, but I merely wish to illustrate the severity of the weather here. While it looks like I just splashed some water on my face, what you are looking at are in fact the teensy-tiny little icicles that form and freeze to my facial hair whenever I'm out for longer than about eight or ten minutes or so.

While the temepratures do seem punishingly cold, I will admit, at times they can create some scenery that's qutie appealing to the eye.

But don't let the beauty deceive you - it is chilly as chilly can be here. I honestly don't know if I can successfully describe it or not. However, I do believe that if one were to read Jack London's famous short story "To Build a Fire", then one would probably get a pretty good idea of what it's like here at times.

Ridiculously low temepratures aside, at least Christmas is finally around the corner! But I cannot lie - many a time over the past week or so, I have found myself completely forgetting this fact. My intense focus on work lately has definitely played a role in this lack of awareness of the holiday season. However, that's only part of the equation. I can't deny the obvious - the Maryknoll teachers here are overwhelmingly in the cultural minority, and then some. Sure, I have seen plenty of Christmas decorations and trees at various shops and establishments throughout the city. In spite of this, Christmas simply is not an important holiday for most folks here.

That doesn't mean however that we can't give it a try and inject some holiday spirit into this Demember, which we did with gusto this week when we made Christmas cookies.

I frankly had doubts that we would be able to sucessfully make sugar cookies. Thankfully, my doubts were totally in vain. Although we could not find vanilla extract (which doesn't exist in Jilin City, as far as we can tell), we were able to get flour, sugar, butter, milk, and baking soda with relative ease.

The result - dozens upon dozens of little cookies, all set for the oven! Of course, there were still some difficulties to be overcome. In this case, it was the fact that almost no one possesses large ovens, unlike almost everyone does back stateside. So, like with everything else, we had to make due with what we had. Thankfully we were able to procure two tiny ovens - one form Michael and Autumn, and one from Fr. Brian's office (Lord knows what it was doing there).

We set up one in the kitchen...

...and one in Kate's living room. Each could only cook a couple cookies a ta time, but thankfully, the cookies themselves required only about six to eight minutes before they were ready.

Oh, were our made-from-scratch creations so tasty! It didn't even matter that we never used the "frosting" we made for them. Actually, that decision was probably for the best. As we now know, there's a more than eprfetly good reason that frosting recipes call for confectionary sugar, and not the usual stuff that we dumped into the mix. I'm not saying that it wasn't tasty, but....hat we ended up with tasted a wee bit too rough...grainy.

We also decided not to do go ahead with frosting after our attempts to add food coloring went horribly awry. What looked like red food coloring actually ended up making one batch of frosting aggressively and painfull pink, almost like cotton candy. Meanwhile, the green dye we purchased from a nearby bakery ended up ensuring that our other bowl of frosting ended up resembling a heaping pile of low-quality guacamole.

Thankfully, like I said, the cookies were absolutely scrumptous despite the fact that we left the finished product rather plain. Plus, they came in such fun shapes!

There were teddy bears....

 

And....uh...hearts....

Er....whatever the heck this thing is supposed to be...

 

Well, there's a moon....maybe we can consider that Christmas-y because...because.....wait, gimmea  few moments to think about that one...

.....A clover? Oh God, I have no idea.

....And a diamond. Just a diamond.

Okay, so our cookies look like a collection of Lucky Charms rejects. As I said though, we had to make due with what we had, and I would consider us pretty lucky that we managed to get cookie cutters in the very first place.

Also thankfully, I managed to inejct just a wee bit of the Christmas spirit into the classroom this week. In writing class, for this week's assignment I told my students to pretend that Santa was real, and they had to write letters to ask for the two or three things that they desired the most.

Meanwhile, I used a similar theme in my oral English classes. After a Christmas Q&A session (they ask, and I answer then ask them a question right back), I had each student write down the one thing they wanted the most on a slip of paper. I then collected the slips, redistributed them around the room, and made my students run around and ask questions in English to try and find who had their presents. Then once allw as said and done, I made every student get up, report to me whose random gift they ended up with, and what he or she wanted.

Some of the answers were pretty standard, like a new computer, new clothes, etc. Some others however were a bit more interesting - one student was a tad embarassed when she had to reveal that the gift she wanted was a foreign boyfriend (her exact words). Another student meanwhile said that she wanted a supermarket, so she could have all the food she wanted. I tried to point out that if she just asked Santa to make her a millionare, she could buy any kind of food she wanted. She admitted this, but then quickly pointed out that if she was rich, she woudl still ahve to walk or drive to the supermarket. But if she owned the supermarket, then she would not have to spend precious energy journeying there. Touché.

Needless to say, classes were actually quite good this week, especially today's oral English class when one student walked up to me at the begining and handed me a gift from the glass.

No, I am not trying to fool you. Those are indeed what you think they are.

Yes, a collection a little glass pigs - one big pig, and lots of little ones. Do I know the traditional symbolism behind it? Oh, gracious no. Heck, I'll happily take it anyway though. It was a remarkably sweet and wonderful gesture that really helped cap off the week. Mind you, I use "cap" rather loosely here....I still have more class this week, tomorrow morning on Christmas Eve.

Oh well, at least now I finally understand what things can be like for my pediatrician aunt who has spent several holidays at work. Do you hear that, Aunt Margaret? Christmas Solidarity! That's the best kind of solidarity (you can't sing Chrismas carols with the other kinds...)

Comments

[Chris]

Those cookies look delicious! I made you a batch of cookies for you to have when you get back to the states. They might be a little stale by then.

In that case...I made you a batch of coasters and paper weights! Merry babyjesusday!

I have to go buy presents now. I think I am just going to kidnap Phoebe, wrap her up, and give her back to Steve and Brianne. Everyone wins! Well, everyone except Phoebs.

Then once I do that I can kidnap Phoebe, Brianne, and Steve, wrap them up, and give them to Mom!

I'm going to need a lot of very durable wrapping paper.

Email me about skyping with the fam. Awesome.

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