The McKells Take On China

Merry Christmas!

Chinese Time:  Saturday, December 25, 2010 9:45 pm

Merry Christmas to all! I kind of hope you aren’t reading this today.  Instead, I hope you are spending this wonderful holiday celebrating the joy of Christ’s birth with your family and those closest to you.  God has given my family so many blessings this year, too many to mention.  I hope He has done the same for yours.

Today was a traveling day.  No one was really looking forward to spending Christmas on a plane, but at least it was only an hour-long flight.  It was really funny on the flight because the plane took off at 10 and they fed us lunch.  In the USA you would never get fed on an hour flight, and definitely not to the extent we had today.

When we got off the plane, we met our new guide, Rebecca.  She is very nice and I’m sad we won’t be spending more time with her.  Rebecca took us to a local restaurant where we had an amazing lunch. The table centerpiece was extravagant, easily $300 in the US.  The food here is a lot spicier than it has been up to this point.  Even so, I’m really liking it, which is a surprise because I HATE spicy.

After lunch, we headed the local People’s Park.  It was really cool.  The first thing we saw inside was a little amusement park.  Of course, it was for younger kids, but it was still cool.  Right beside the rides was a little booth.  The lady inside was making animal suckers out of sugar.  You would give her 3 Yuan and then spin the spinner.  Whatever animal it landed on was the one you got.  Throughout the day, we bought TONS of these.  Xi and Jai got the first ones.  Then L and Meg shared one.  Then Cait and I got one each.  On the way out, we bought a bundle of little sugar suckers for all of us to share.  The animal suckers were also teaching tools.  While Cait and I were getting ours, a group of Chinese children gathered around the group.  They all had their own suckers.  My dad sat there and pointed to each of the animals and told the kids their English names.  It was very cool and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

The parks in China are not like they are in the US.  Well, in design they are, but not in content.  Besides an amusement park and the usual play equipment, they have singing and dancing.  It’s like a festival, but the thing is it takes place every day.  It was really cool to see.  There were, also, men going around the park writing poems and characters in oil on the pathway.  The whole experience was so much fun.  I wish we had something like that in America.

In the park there was a Tea House.  We all sat down there and were served tea or lemon water.  We laughed and carried on lots of conversation.  Then, after Ann was done with her tea, I took it and read her tealeaves.   Okay, okay.  I pretended to read her tealeaves.  I told her I saw a moon and four corners.  The moon signified a clear journey and the corners signified strength.  In my reading, these signs meant that she had a clear journey ahead of her and that she would be strong throughout it.  It was so much fun to just joke around with everyone.

Once we left the park, we headed back to the hotel to rest and get cleaned up for dinner.  For the first part of the break, Dad, Meg, L and I went out to do some shopping in the local market.  Then, we headed out to a hot pot Christmas dinner.  I must say that I don’t really care for it much.  It was very good, but not something I would eat a lot.  During dinner, we had these two little kids that kept running into the room.  They were so cute.  I don’t know what they were doing, but it was funny to see.

Well, now were back at the hotel and heading to bed.  Tomorrow we are visiting the panda breeding center and then flying to Nanning.  So, I’m hopping into bed.  Merry Christmas.  May the Lord bless you and your family this holiday season.  Be safe and have fun.

God Bless,

~Kristen