Student Christmas Party - 2008

So we are a merry bunch, I am not going to lie. If you don't believe I have proof - just look at this.

I mean seriously, how can you not laugh at that? So yeah, this is what a pre-warm-up looks like to a student Christmas Party that could potentially have 800 students when there are only 7 American teachers. But seriously, what would you do if you were hosting that many students for 8 hours? Albeit we invited all our classes to come at different hours and only for one hour each. The turn-out rate made it enjoyable, but not overbearing. Plus, we had had training in Zhengzhou during their Halloween Party in which everybody and their neighbor - it was crazy!

To give you a little insight into our party strategy we broke it down into 3 separate activities with some transition time to give us a buffer between different student groups. Our first activity was the "Dizzy Bat Santa Relay", which I watched over for a good part of the day. Our second activity was Christmas caroling and drinking apple cider. And lastly, our third activity was the Christmas story via dialogue by the students with some clarification and narrating by the teachers. So all in all, it was a pretty cut and dry; just executing it would have to be seen.

So the hour came for our festivities to begin. Jonathan and I made sure to dress in our dashing CTF green shirts with a red santa hat and stand guard outside our dorm building. We were blessed that day to recieve back-up by our friends from the old campus who helped to fill in the gaps in our ranks when we were greatly outnumbered (which was pretty much the whole time). We begun by having the students do the "Dizzy Bat Santa Relay", which I must brought me more joy than I could have thought. Despite the weather not entirely working in our favor and being a little brisk (as my friend Katie would say), the students willingly participated, even if slightly hesitant at first.

Jonathan and I worked together to explain to the students that they would need to put on the whole Santa Clause outfits - which we had obtained from somewhere as well as had - as fast as they could, run to where people were holding "bats" (which was actually one bat with a piece of a broom as you can see in the picture above), and put their heads to the bat and run around in circles 5 times. Of course, the Chinese were a little taken aback at first, but found our game somewhat humorous and must have written it off as something that only Americans would think of. At any rate, we lured hundreds of Chinese students into playing our game and it was great. I mean its not everyday that you can have hundreds of Chinese Santa Clauses running haphazardly, almost tripping over themselves, and jumping up and down.


I should also mention that as China is a collective cultural in contrast to us, we decided that it might be a good idea to encourage the other students to help their teammates get all the Santa apparel on. This worked out well in many ways: (1) It allowed a lot more people to be participating at once, (2) Students were some times able to help each other dress faster (if not it just brought joy to everyone else watching), and (3) to help Santa make it back to the line as sometimes students became so dizzy that they fell, hit walls and fences, and/or simply had to be carried back to the finish line. Ultimately, the whole ordeal was just really funny and I could spend some much more time than I have had talking about everything that happened in relation to the "Dizzy Bat Santa Relay". So instead I am just going to post a series of pictures to express what I can't say in words.

(Jonathan and I instructing the students)

(Student nearly tripping and falling)

(Student going around the bat 5 times - kind of)

(Students running away and taking the bat with them)

The rest of the party went well too. My students came in force and brought me great joy. Those kids are so funny. I am looking forward to spending more time with them next semester. Well, I would write more, but I would just ruin it at this point.