After a fairly stressful couple of days where I have had exams both in the morning and the afternoon (plus the weeks of preparation beforehand), the exams are finally over here in China… and so begins the long and hard earned two month holiday. To celebrate, I treated myself to the mini Christmas cake that Mum and Dad sent over, along with a nice hot cup of green tea and some mini-stollen (thanks Lynne and Simon). Absolutely delicious! Apart from the fact that there was no family around this year, Christmas was also odd because of the burden of the exams… and now they have gone I feel great!
This evening its definitely chill-out! I’m just here catching up with things in the internet cafe and making a couple of skype calls. Later on I’m going to get dinner with some friends and then head down to the nearby Karaoke for a bit of a sing-song with my classmates. This will be the last time we are all together as next semester we will all be reshuffled again! Tomorrow promises to be a big lie-in. When I do finally get up I will find out what people are planning on doing to celebrate - it will probably involve a rather late night out 
When I have recovered from all that I intend to start some house hunting, so keep posted!
After a rather quiet morning and a bit of revision, I headed over to the girls’ apartment where I helped them put together the Christmas dinner. In the end there were 7 of us. We enjoyed a lovely starter of homemade hummus dip with crisps and olives along with a Champagne toast.
The roast dinner itself was delicious. I don’t think I could fault anything - only that the turkey we bought was far too big for the seven of us. Turkey sandwhiches for the next three weeks now I think!
Pudding consisted of a delicious Apple and Blackberry Crumble, Pumpkin Pie, Cupcakes, Cream, Ice Cream and Custard. All that was washed down with some lovely red wine.
Later on after our stomachs settled down, we headed over to a nearby flat to play games with some other Leeds students who had also done their own Christmas dinner. Finally I headed back to my dormitory to get on with the revision. Siqi also brough around her present: a lovely Jack Jones Belt, a fluffy toy and some speciality chinese pastries.
All in all it was a great day… but not as fun as the Christmas back at home, it has to be said!!! Here are some photos.
It was lovely to be able to get up on Christmas day in Beijing and have some presents waiting by the side of the bed. Thanks to all of you back at home for the lovely food and bits and pieces that you sent over. Never mind that the postage cost about three times as much as the actual value of the contents, it was worth it - I assure you! All those chocolate, peanuts and other snacks that you can’t buy over here are priceless!!
Had a christmassy breakfast this morning - mini stollen dipped in a bowl of warm soya milk. Then some chocolate santas to wash it all down.
Got to be off now, I’m heading round to a friend’s apartment soon where we will be preparing a Christmas dinner for 10. Should be exciting!
After a morning of pretty solid revision, I headed to Xidan shopping plaza with Siqi last night for a more relaxing evening. We stuffed ourselves with some spicy chinese hotpot then headed to Wangfujing to have a look at the Christmas decorations and wander amongst the swarms of people who were heading to the Church there. Apparently there was meant to be fake snow some time after midnight but we weren’t willing to wait that long in the cold so got a taxi back.
For those of you who haven’t eaten chinese hotpot before, here is what it involves:
- Everybody has their own small hotpot on an electric hotplate. Inside is a spicy (to your own preference) broth).
- Once your broth is simmering, you need to order lots of tasty things to cook in it. Some of my favourites are: Beef slices, spongy tofu, mushrooms, seaweed, prawns, fishballs, vermicelli, eggs, potato, swede, spinach, lettuce, chinese cabbage, dumplings, squid…!
- Once your food is cooked it will be piping hot so you need to dip it in some refreshing (and fattening) satay dipping sauce.
- Now eat and enjoy the flavours.
- Oh yeah, you will also requrie a nice cold beer (Siqi also recommends coke) to wash that down.
Jono
