have I mentioned we eat dumplings here?

On Friday afternoon, our class teachers threw a little Christmas party for us. I guess I should first note that Christmas as a religious holiday isn't really practiced by most Chinese people. However, the commercial concept of Christmas is being more and more widely accepted. There are Christmas trees in front of many of the major shopping centers here right now, a few Christmas decorations can be bought at places like Carrefour, Isetan (a Japanese department store) and E-Mart (a Korean supermarket). The idea of gift-giving is pretty appealing to many Chinese people.

Also, our teachers are pretty sensitive to their students missing out on celebrating holidays because we are in China, so they made a special effort to recognize Christmas for us. Our Christmas party's main events included:

1.) all of us going to the kitchen in one of the cafeterias and learning to make jiaozi (dumplings), a process that eventually and predictably devolved into a flour fight,

2.) eating all of the ill-formed dumplings we just made, and,

3.) singing karaoke for hours in a really cold room in our classroom building.

A very Chinese Christmas was had by all.

Here are some pictures. Somehow I didn't get any karaoke shots, but I might get some from others, and then post them soon.

"Chef" Miguel prepares to demonstrate his skills.

Rolling out the dough

One of the cooks shows us how it's really done.

Stuffing the dumplings. These were filled with minced pork and cabbage.


Everybody's pitching in.

The whole day was all a lot of fun, and I discovered that many of my classmates are great singers. But I have to admit: I'm really starting to get tired of dumplings. I think it's time to take a break, at least for a little while. It's going to be hard to do around here--they're pretty much a staple of the Northern Chinese diet. It's going to be even harder to break the news to Ben.