Friday, December 5, 2008

Fall Holidays in Guizhou

Hi everyone,
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Well, we've just finished two significant holidays here: Halloween and Thanksgiving. And Christmas is right around the corner. I've got a lot of planning to do for that, but I thought I'd take some time and fill you in on how we celebrated in October and November.
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For Halloween, we traveled 7 1/2 hours by taxi and train to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou. In Guiyang, we celebrated with about 20 other volunteers at a costume party hosted by a volunteer couple. After much costume deliberation, we decided to go as a plug and outlet, an idea Jacq found online. With her engineering background, she was confident she could make the costumes for us, and so she did. It was a little challenging traveling with our costumes, especially because it rained the entire weekend, but we managed to make it to Guiyang and to the party. Our costumes were a hit, though most people had to see us together to understand us. At the costume party, we snacked, drank, danced. We managed to make it to a club in Guiyang the night before, but we didn't get to do much else because of the rain.
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For Thanksgiving, we played it more low-key. We decided to forgo the big Thanksgiving party in Guiyang, prefering to celebrate in Kaili with our couple friends, Holly and Marc, and Jayne and John. Holly and Marc live in Kaili, a small city (but bigger than Tongren) 3 hours from us by bus. There are a lot of minorities in Kaili, especially Miao and Dong, so we were able to visit a market where I bought a little jewelry.
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Our meal was incredible. For lunch, I made us a butternut squash and apple soup. For dinner, we had a pretty traditional meal. We had chicken and duck (no turkey in this part of China), stuffing, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, corn, broccoli, cucumber/pomegranate seed salad, pumpkin pie, and apple crisp. We even splurged and bought some decent wine. It was a Chinese-made Cab, really good by China's standards. Overall, it was a great holiday, and I'm glad for that because Thanksgiving is my favorite.
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For Christmas, we might host the same two couples in Tongren, but we have't decided yet. But first, there is some decorating that must be done. Some of my students want to sneak up the mountains behind campus to cut me down a Christmas tree, but I don't want anyone getting arrested! Ha! So we might just have to buy a plant to decorate as a Christmas tree. And I know I can find plastic garland and tree lights in Tongren, so that's my next purchase. I'll send pics as soon as I get my apartment decorated. But we're thinking we might really splurge and have a hotel room Christmas with Western toilets and indoor heat! We'll see...China is always an adventure.
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Love and miss you all,
Jennifer