All posts tagged: christmas

Saturday Feature: The School’s Christmas Tree

Published by Sula H.

Let me tell you about the school’s Christmas tree. It was set up in the main shopping square of campus about a week ago, and the decision as to whether it’s a pretty sight to be seen or not, I’ll leave up to you. However, what’s most interesting about this Christmas tree is it’s decoration. At the time it is being set up it usually doesn’t have any decoration, but this usually changes very soon afterward as students start flocking around the tree and hang little cards and papers with wishes on the tree. Not quite the traditional Christmas tree decoration, but the same thing happens every year. So, instead of the Christmas tree, it becomes a “Wishing tree”! And if you look very closely, you might even catch a glimpse of Santa Clause! Merry Christmas then y’all!

Merry Christmas!

Published by Sula H.

To all of you a very merry Christmas, pleasant holidays with your families with lots of peace and joy! Here in China, Christmas is quite a curious thing! First thing to note is the apple: everyone here associates apples with Christmas, thus Christmas is a heyday for fruit sellers! The reason? Part of the word “apple” in Chinese has the same character as “peace” which is part of the word “Christmas” in this language. Therefore apples are the most common gifts on Christmas! Secondly, as we are talking about gifts already, let me tell you how Christmas gift shopping works here in China. While in the West, everyone tries to get the Christmas gifts before the holidays, in China, the day of Christmas-gift-shopping is just that: on Christmas. So, on December 24, everyone rushes out in search for some nice little gifts and the streets and stores on campus go crazy, especially the later it gets in the day! For us Westerners, though, we get to celebrate with our friends, and so we get to …

Around Town: Christmas arrived!

Published by Sula H.

It’s here! Yes, it has arrived even here: Christmas. Or at least the decoration. About a week ago they put up all the decorations on campus – lights on the two main roads, the big Christmas tree in the central shopping square, and along the road to the teacher’s building a lot of colored lights. Now, whether the decorations are pretty is another question altogether, but at least there is something, and that’s enough to be thankful for!

Food Corner: Christmas Banquet 2010

Published by Sula H.

I haven’t told you much about our Christmas Banquet last Friday yet. Let me do so in today’s Food Corner. Well, after having had the same course of dishes for several years now, this year’s Christmas Banquet held a nice surprise. One of my American colleagues assisted in the kitchen and the result was a rather different banquet. Instead of squash soup with buttered bread buns, we enjoyed potato soup with bread that was baked with cheese and tomatoes. This was followed by a plate of various appetizers such as salads, sweet and sour chicken and meat with some kind of sauce, and yes, we also had cookies (I learned the cookies are a very typical side dish here in China!). The main course was mashed potatoes and pork with some steemed vegetables and our dinner was concluded with some sort of tiramisu. Aside from the fact that everything was cold by the time it got to us, it was quite an enjoyable dinner accompanied with the performances of lots of my colleagues, ranging anywhere …

Saturday Feature: Christmas Tree

Published by Sula H.

For some it is the cause for great excitement, for others it is a reason to turn their noses up and look at it in disdain: this year’s foreign faculty Christmas tree. True, it’s the first ever real Christmas tree we had in the lobby of the teacher’s flat, but for a real tree it’s a rather poor sampling. And even whether the way it is decorated is beautiful or not is open to dispute. After all, people’s tastes are different. As for me, I’ve come to the conclusion that even though the tree as a whole is a somewhat pitiful sight to be seen, this year’s decoration is a lot better than in past years, though I would have preferred the fake tree!

DIY: Christmas No. 4

Published by Sula H.

Christmas is fast approaching, but it’s still time to get those Christmas cards out, so today I’ll bring you another how to on creating your own Christmas card. First, as always, we need to create the card (with all the mats, background papers and embellishments) in our graphic program. This card is a rather simple one, so it only has five printable parts to it: Two background mats, the base for the ribbon, the label and the snowflake. I also used a white ribbon and a piece of string. After creating and arranging the different mats and elements in photoshop, I open a new canvas where I drag and drop everything and arrange it for printing. (Always make sure on the printing canvas to have nothing overlap!) Once I’ve printed everything, cutting and assembling starts. I use white cardstock (size A5) for the base layer, fold it in half and begin to adhere the two background mats on there. The order doesn’t matter, because the ribbon will cover where the two will overlap. I measure …

Food Corner: Special Treats

Published by Sula H.

They are not quite Christmas snacks, or seasonal treats by any means – the special goodies I get to enjoy recently, thanks to my family and friends who hooked me up with them. In Germany, they are pretty normal snacks and sweet treats, used generally throughout the year. Here, however, they are really special, because they are a little piece of home for me. Some of these snacks you can even get here, but since they’ve been imported they usually are so expensive that they are out of my reach. Now, though, they fill my little Advent calendar, and every once in a while they are just that: I special treat for me!

Saturday Feature: My Little Christmas Tree

Published by Sula H.

It all started a couple of years ago: I won one of four Christmas trees the International Housing Department of our school distributes every year through a raffle. Before that I had never even thought of getting a Christmas tree. Now that I had one for the season (we would have to return them after Christmas so they could be used again the following year), I realized I was in need of some decoration. So I went to the city in search for some nice ornaments. Now, those of you who don’t live in China need to know that there’s only one kind of Christmas decoration available here: the sparkly, glittery kind (not exactly my style). However, a Christmas tree without ornaments is an even sadder thing to behold. So I just bought what I found in the spur of the moment. Well, the following year, I decided to be a little more organized. Not wanting to depend on a raffle again, I got my own tree, plus a box full of ornaments. And this …

DIY: Christmas Card No. 3

Published by Sula H.

There’s still time to send out those little Christmas greetings, so let me show you another one of my Christmas cards and what I did to create it: The card comes with five parts – two background mats, two center-piece mats and a ribbon. Simple enough, right? I used four different kinds of papers – one patterned one, and the other three ones are plain solid colored. Now, what’s special about this card is that the top layered mat has a lot of writing on it – all words that have to do with Christmas. So, while it took me some time to brainstorm all the different terms, assembling them wasn’t all that hard. Simply pick a lot of different fun fonts and arrange them on the mat until there is no more space left. The trick is: re-size. You can make some words big and bold, others can be quite small. That way arranging everything is a relatively simple task. Once you’ve clipped all the papers and finished arranging the wordart, you can prepare …

Around Town: Shopping on Campus

Published by Sula H.

Christmas is always a good time for giving and sharing with others what we received. Now, we have a club on campus that supports orphans in our area. It’s a great opportunity for students to get involved in a charity project (they usually have very little exposure to anything like that). Every year for Christmas the club organizes the “Christmas in a Box” project where they collect boxes with goodies to give to the children in those orphanages. This year, instead of boxes, they use red bags. So, the other day I took some of my own students out shopping to fill my bags with goodies for some of the orphans. It was the first time for my students to do anything like that. The goal was to get something useful as well as something fun. So we went on a tour through some of the shops on campus, and look what we found: