I decided that even though I wouldn’t be home for Christmas I was still going to decorate. So in my traditional fashion I decorated the weekend after Thanksgiving. Martha had mailed me 2 cute door hangings and I bought some cheap Christmas decorations from Metro (China’s version of Sams). I invited one of my classes I had last year to come and help me and then watch a movie afterwards. There were only 2 elfs that showed up (Windy and Charity pictured above) but we got the job done in less than an hour probably because there was no crawling up in the attic to get the 3 big boxes of decorations and arguing with Zac about putting up the outside red lights.
After eeeuing and ahhhing about the small smattering of lights and snowflakes, we watched the movie Grease which is one of my all time favorites and usually really popular with kids. I ended up being glad it was 2 girls cause I never realized how much sexual slang was in the movie Grease. It sort of felt like I was back at Glynn Middle during the Sex Ed month in an 8th grade science class. I was asked to explain “knocked up & hickeys & protection” and I was lucky, cause there were a bunch more they didn’t ask about.
Side note – Hickeys- when we see a hickey on a neck our mind immediately goes in the gutter…. But in China a hickey doesn’t mean what you think it means. During the really hot months the kids will pinch their juggler vein real hard to cool down. This produces a mark that looks a lot like one you would get when you spent too much time in the back seat of a 59’ 3 cylinder Saab. There were lots of ‘heat hickeys’ during the Chinese Sophomore Soldier training. Some Chinese also do this to bring down a fever when you are sick. I think I would rather take aspirin and get hickeys for the other reason.
