2004-12-20 - 11:45 p.m.

Merry Christmas!!!! My school just had a huge blowout Christmas Party today. The yard was so overly decorated it looked like Christmas pooed all over the place. There were balloons, streamers, Christmas trees, GIGANTIC POSTERS OF SANTA,
fake snow, and about 6 mannequin santas positioned throughout the grounds. These guys were terrifying. They looked like escaped mass murderers trying to look at little like Santa.
This guy LOOKS harmless enough, but he fell on me and tried to kill me. No joke. While I was passing out the programs to parents at the gate and butchering the phrase “merry Christmas!” in Mandarin, this Santa took it upon himself to fall right over. I fell over laughing. So there we were, fake Santa and I on the ground at the front gate, one of us in hysterics. In the background the whole time was this techno Christmas Music. Santa and I had a good ole time on program duty.
The program was a Sports Event/Demonstration of sorts. The students have been practicing for weeks. They played soccer, had relays, and loads of kids skated around the track with their rollerblade/roller-skates/skateboards/scooters while holding a ton of balloons.
Then they let the balloons go. Never mind about pollution in China, its all about presentation. Those balloons looked good . Then they had about 30 minutes of all these silly games that the parents could play with their kids, like this Hula Hoop madness.
They also did a very cute dance for their parents. It was really fun, but a little bizarre. The students and teachers have been PRACTICING the entire event for weeks. Even the “play games with your parents” part was rehearsed. No room for spontaneous fun. I half expected a teacher with a whistle to be patrolling the event, looking for anything that was not in the rehearsal. “JIMMY! IT’S NOT YOUR TURN TO SMILE!!!!” I am exaggerating, of course, but not much. They spent days rehearsing, really.
The principal told all the foreign teachers that they had to dress up like Santa and hand out gifts at the end. What a riot. I think on the program it said “Laugh at Foreign Teachers Time”. They ran out of Santa outfits so I wore what I guess was a Mrs. Claus outfit.
I think we looked scarier than the mannequin Santas. When we handed out presents, none of the kids wanted mine, because they wanted a present from SANTA, not his wife. I had a gang of kids surrounding me when the other Santas ran out of gifts, and I wanted to say, “Oh, now Mrs. Claus is good enough for you?????” but I just smiled because it’s Christmas.
This was the most exciting Christmas party I’ve ever seen put on by a school. It puts my elementary schools to shame. All I remember is getting Christmas tree sugar cookies, kool-aid, and maybe singing “Rudolph” a few hundred times. For a country that doesn’t even officially recognize or celebrate Christmas, I say well done China! There are some Christian churches that I’m sure are busy this time of year, but most people in China aren’t Christians ( I think) and don’t really give a hoot about Christmas. I think it’s just another annoying Western import to them. Ho ho ho. Here’s me and two of my students.
The one on the right used to call me “MR. ROLLIN!” I hope everyone has really happy holidays. I miss my famiily soooooooo much!!!!!!This will be my first Christmas away from home (sniff sniff) ….I’ll manage though. Mr. Rollin signing off……..

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