圣诞快乐!!

Greetings Friends,

So here's the deal: the package that my family sent me for Christmas arrived today, so I'm using that as my excuse for the tardiness of this post. Sometimes it pays to live 14 time zones away. :-)

(And that is not in any way meant to throw my family under the bus; we actually celebrated Christmas when I was home in November. This package is more like stocking stuffers and such. Lest anyone be confused, my family rocks:)

Christmas has come and gone here in HK and people keep asking me "How was your Christmas?" A fair question, I admit, but a hard one to answer. The truth is it wasn't great. There were great moments, to be sure, but overall it just wasn't great. But the thing is, I'm not sure it can be. When a holiday is SO closely related to being with family, and yet you're away from your family, there's a limit to the possible greatness said holiday can have. And that's okay, it comes with the territory. But like I said, there were some great things about it, and I'd like to share some of those with you.

One thing that ALWAYS makes Christmas great is a good Christmas tree. As you may recall from last year's Christmas post, the pathetic excuse for a tree that I had left much to be desired, but this year was a VAST improvement.

Aside from actually being an actual tree (instead of a lamp), and being the perfect size for the bay window above my bed, the best thing about this year's conifer was that it was free! Someone donated a dozen tannenbaums to the House and so everyone on staff got a tree. Yeah for free stuff!

Here it is with lights (but no ornaments). It cast a perfect, warm glow on the bedroom.

The angel at the top...

Close-up of the ornaments (nice fish, eh mom? ;-)...

My "presents," which simply goes to show how many dollars worth of love my family has for me...


And the full effect. Again, having a good tree is essential for a good Christmas.

Another essential to having a good Christmas is the right 'spirit.' That was always one of the harder parts of Christmases past in China. Thankfully that is not the case here in HK. This year I invited some teachers and friends to attend the candlelight service at my church on Christmas Eve with me. It was a very nice service (despite some technical difficulties with the candles) with great music and a beautiful atmosphere.

And what would Christmas be without good food? After church we went back to my apartment where I had prepared a spread of hors d'oeuvres that, quite frankly, I don't mind bragging about. After years of enjoying my Mom's delicious Christmas Eve delights, I did my best to recreate her culinary creations. I don't have an oven (or a microwave), so I couldn't make her famous curry wings, but I did find cocktail weenies (I had to go to three different grocery stores to find BBQ sauce). We also had Christmas Ham (of course), Norwegian smoked-salmon (shout-out to my boy Erlend, represent!) and cheese from three different countries (US, NZ, Scotland).

One word: Awesome. Mom, you should be proud.

But of course it was the company that really made it a special night (the food was a close second). Patrick (who came to China in 2005 when I first showed up) came down all the way from Shenyang, Kira and Angel came up from Zhanjiang, and Anne came all the way from Kennedy Town! (Kennedy Town is a neighborhood in Hong Kong. It is not a cheap shot at the fact that she's a soulless, bleeding-heart liberal. But it could be....)

Angel, Patrick, Kira, and Anne

It really was a great night, filled with great food, great conversation, and even greater friends. It was so great, in fact, that we never even got around to watching "It's A Wonderful Life," which was the original plan. But Anne and I did stay up till 3am watching "Elf." :-D

However, I would have to say that the best part of my Christmas Season actually took place the day after Boxing Day. A couple from church invited myself and some other people from my Bible-study over to their place for a big Christmas dinner. It was great for a number of reasons. For starters, the food was AMAZING! It made my paltry efforts seem sad and pathetic, but I couldn't have cared less! We ate and ate and ate all day long. They even had homemade lefse!

It was also great to be able to celebrate Christmas with a family. As I mentioned before, that's the thing I miss the most around the Holidays, and while it's obviously not the same as my real family, it was a pretty darn good replacement. The couple has two young daughters, the youngest of whom is a 3-year old named Talia and she is my new best friend in the world. She warmed up to me surprisingly fast and spent most of the day sitting in my lap making faces and playing "Gimme Five." (She loves pulling the "Down low, too slow!" trick. Classic.) The following Sunday at church her father Joel asked if I was sneaking her candy when no one was looking because he'd never seen her warm up to a stranger that fast. As much as I would like to credit my warm personality and winning charm, I think the truth is it's because I'm not afraid of reptiles.

You see for Christmas this year the girls both received pet turtles. They weren't any bigger than the ones pictured, and they make a surprisingly good pet for young kids. They don't shed, they're relatively clean, and most importantly they have protective shells (although anytime Talia's turtle would try and hide in his shell she would tug on his head to get him to come back out, which I don't think the turtle appreciated much at all). Talia named her turtle "Sprinkles" (apparently her recently deceased hamster was also named Sprinkles, I sense a trend), and the only thing Talia loves more than holding Sprinkles and petting his shell is giving Sprinkles to others to hold and pet. Since I was the only one in the room who never said no when the turtle was shoved into my hands (even when I was playing Wii with Eliada, the older daughter, playing Catch Phrase with the adults, or even when I was eating!), I quickly became Talia's new best friend.

A break from the turtle for some serious Catch Phrase action.

So let's review: Family dinner with lefse + adorable 3-year olds with angel-blonde hair and big blue eyes + turtles = Great Christmas.

Well shucks, this post turned out to be a lot longer than I originally expected, but I guess I owed it to you guys. I know I've been a bit of a delinquent lately in the blog-o-sphere and I apologize for that. My friend and fellow Asian Blogger Extraordinaire Dan Dooher and I have made a commitment keeping our blogs going despite our increasingly busy schedules, so please stay tuned. I promise to keep writing as long as you guys all keep reading.

Thanks for listening.

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!!
Aaron