A white Christmas.

I took off Wednesday after class for Shenyang, Liaoning -- the northeast of China -- where my former Harbin roommate Beth is stationed. Three hours on a plane and one taxi driver who tried to rip me off later, I found myself at Beth's place which just so happens to be located inside of a 5-star hotel. That meant ample space for the guests who descended on her (besides me, there were two other students from CLS last year in Harbin, and three of their friends), and that also meant amenities such as a kitchen with a stove! and a bathroom with a tub! She's truly living the high life in Shenyang.

Cooking had begun before I even arrived, as Beth and her colleagues (one of whom is a Georgetown graduate of '07 who also had the pleasure of having Yu Laoshi as a teacher) have been attending holiday parties. So there was lots of food: delivery pizza on Thursday, peanut butter-m&m-chocolate chip cookies, peanut blossom cookies, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, homemade macaroni and cheese, stuffing, pumpkin pie, sweet potato cheesecake, veggie chives and onion cheese dip, gouda! cheddar! camembert! and Harbin sausages... all for a never ending Christmas banquet of deliciousness.

Christmas dawned bright and white -- marking my first-ever white Christmas (cue Bing Crosby). Of course, thanks to the four smokestacks within view of Beth's windows, the snow quickly turned yellow and black. But I still had time to make a snow angel on the sidewalk while making a run for some groceries; this might have been a mistake given my knowledge of the spitting habits of Chinese citizens. The weather was unbelievably bitterly cold, so cold I was sure my eyelashes would freeze, but that didn't stop eleven of us from making a trek on Boxing Day to get Korean food (bimimbap!) and karaoke. I also enjoyed stories of the random happenings of US Consulate officers in their quests to find fraud among the multitudes of visa-seeking Chinese.

Merry Christmas!