Christmas Time Is Here

We had three Christmas parties this week! By the end of the week, we were both very tired! We watched Rudolph, decorated Christmas cookies, played cards, and drank hot chocolate. I think they all had a great time! We really enjoyed getting to share part of Christmas with them. We have also been giving final exams this week. We have Monday and Tuesday left to give exams and we are both finished for the semester! We plan on traveling to a few places during the vacation, but we are unsure of the details right now. We are looking forward to our time off because we are both getting worn down, but we are going to miss all of our friends when they go back home.
We put pictures of our Christmas parties on our website. http://picasaweb.google.com/jcd1983
Enjoy this Christmas week! We are thinking about you all!

A Warm Heart Even in the Cold

Hello Everyone! Craig and I are working hard preparing for our final exams this week. This week will be very busy, but we will be finished at Christmas. My mom's package arrived so our house is fully decorated for Christmas. I'll take pictures this week and also take pictures of our Christmas parties this week. They are all so excited about it! My mom got me a Christmas tree cookie cutter so now they can all decorate their own Christmas tree! Thanks Mom! We even found a fake Christmas tree here! When we were buying our Christmas tree, I had a 3 year old little Chinese boy warm my heart like butter. He reached up his chubby little arms for me to pick him up. The kids here never do that, most of the time they are terrified of me. I am like a creature from another planet to them. This one was the cutest one ever. After I handed him to his mom, he said xie xie (which means thank you). It just made my day!
All of our groups have been going great! We are going to miss all of them during the break! I will let you know at the end of the week how all of our parties went and show pictures. I hope you are all remembering the reason for the season! We miss you!

Burr....It's cold outside!

I just realized it has been two weeks since I have posted anything. We both have been very busy and I have been sick for the past five days. I have a cold so one of my students gave me an herbal tea. The herbal tea gave me a bad stomach sickness for two days. Now, I have a sore throat. It's been one thing after another. I think the cold weather is taking it's toll on my body.
It is getting really cold here. Today I wore four layers of clothes, thick wool socks, my warm boots, gloves, a hat, and had my hot hands and I still froze! Since I have a cold, all my students are telling me I need to wear more clothes. I don't think it is physically possible for me to fit on any more clothes. I feel like a great big marshmallow. We have two wall heaters and three space heaters. We can't use both heaters at once or we trip the breaker and shut our electricity off. We also can't be on the internet and have the heat on because it uses too much power. If we have the internet on, we have the space heaters on. Since our apartment is concrete, it is really cold without any heat. All of my students tell my the heat makes me weak. They don't have heat in their dorm rooms so they are used to it. I think I would turn into a popsicle without it. Our classrooms don't have heat so I wear a lot of clothes. I look ridiculous, but I am warm. The other day in class I thought my toes were going to break off because they were so cold so today I started wearing my winter boots.
We had our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday. Our friend, Katie came to visit us from Yichang! We had a great time! We had 12 people at the big meal. I made mashed potatoes, homemade biscuits, macaroni and cheese, corn, and my first coconut cream pie! It wasn't quite as good as my Mom and Grandma's cooking, but it was good! Our friend, Dave made an unbelievable sweet potato pie! It was a great holiday together!
I am looking forward to Christmas. Mom is sending me some Christmas decorations and some Christmas movies. I can't wait to start decorating and to watch the movies with our friends. Our friend, Eva is so excited to watch Elf with us. I taught Eva the song, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. It is so funny listening to her singing it. I'll try to record it so you can hear it for yourself. I think Jess is ready to kill me for teaching it to her because she sings it all the time! I love it! Sorry Jess!
We are going to make sugar cookies and hot chocolate and watch a Christmas movie with our groups the week before Christmas. They are all so excited! The school is having a Christmas party for us on Christmas Eve. We have to do a performance for it! They love to hear us sing. Last week, Craig did the bunny hop with some of our students. Since I was sick, I didn't get to see it. I am sure there are many many pictures of it though. They gave us a Thanksgiving party and I think we had our picture taken at least 100 times. My face hurt from smiling so much! There is no telling how many pictures of us there are in Enshi.
We found out this past week, we will be finished with classes on January 1st. We will be off from January 1st until February 16th. We're going south to avoid the winter for a little while. I can't wait! I will miss all of my friends during this time! All of the students go home during this time, but a few of our friends live in Enshi and a few are staying for a short time. I will also not have Jess with me for one month. It's me and the boys for a month. It should be interesting!
I'll try not to forget about updating you on our life here in China. Sometimes I get really busy and forget. I think business is a good thing though! We didn't come all the way to China not to be busy!
We miss everyone very much! You are in our thoughts everyday! We love you all!