Christmas season comes to Xiamen

I returned to Xiamen in the middle of the night on Friday...That had not been my original plan. My travel to and from the US had me changing airports in Shanghai (from international to domestic airport), a one hour trip by shuttle bus across the city on the highway. Well, on the way there it took one hour and on the way back it took over 2 hours...so I missed my flight to Xiamen, discovered I had to pay the higher fare for the last flight. Discovered that I was 20 yuan (about $3 US) short to buy the new ticket; discovered that at the airport they don't take credit cards, there was no currency exchange (except past security, but you need a boarding pass to get there), and the lone ATM was out of order. I was on the verge of panhandling for yuan from other travellers, but I finally persuaded the ticket agent to accept $20 US for part of the fare. His quote, "Well, you should know better...this is China".

Welcome re-entry culture shock after a week of credit card shopping in Michigan with my parents... by the way, my mom is still doing well, recovering at home after her surgery and will start further treatment after the holidays. So she and the family have a little breather. Her quick recovery did give me time to do some serious shopping in the US, especially warm weather fall clearance clothes for me, as I have actually lost enough weight to need them, gifts for the kids, BOOKS (walking into Barnes and Noble was an out of body experience), African American hair care products and the ingredients for fudge for our holidays in the guesthouse.
First day back was great, really felt like coming home -- warm and sunny with a light breeze, and we had tickets to the expatriate Christmas party at the Sofitel downtown. It was a lavish meal (see above) with games out on the terrace for all the kids...I am guessing pretty much every "foreign" kid in Xiamen was here with their parents...we had all the trimmings : crafts --


kids of all ages in their finery...

Face painting...

Helen was so proud of her face paint, she wanted to walk around on the street near campus afterwards so "people can see it and know its Christmas time"

We had "The Night Before Christmas"...(since Thomas spent a fair part of the party hiding from the other 6th graders --both girls-- who were at the party, while eating an enormous quantity of food, this is the only picture of him)

And finally an appearance by a very slim and trim Santa, who brought a book for every child...

Sophia was quite mystified by it all, but Helen is in Christmas glory...Santa gave her a book with a locket in it..a copy of this book was left in our apartment by the previous occupants, sans the locket of course. Helen said, "I have wished and wished for that locket and Santa knows so now I have one"

Afterwards it was back to our place to set up our little tree, which really does brighten up the place. Lots of stores sell some simple decorations, so I think Christmas, or at least XMAS, must be pretty popular with folks here.

Here they are..all ready for the big day...they wrote letters to Santa today, since a visit to the Crossroads Mall in Portage, Michigan (where we usually catch up with Santa with the cousins) is not in the works. We found Santa's address on the web. Apparently the North Pole mail is delivered by the Canadian Postal Service, since the address we found was North Pole, Canada, H0H0H0 (the zip code of course).

Now back to the routine of the week, which I am looking forward to after my travels...I am so jet lagged that it doesn't even make sense..awake at weird times and starving in the middle of the night--go figure.