Week 19: Chrolanukkah

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy birthday to one of our Kinmen ETAs! This week was packed with holiday and birthday celebrations as well as visits from several ETAs' families.

Monday was pretty ok. Teaching was fine, and the weather was cold. The Mandarin final was so-so, but it's over now! We all finished a bit early, so we spent our extra time getting hot cocoa (and/or ice cream) at Family Mart, then petting the local cats. We also saw some lovely light displays in the courtyard at NQU, so we took some end of semester photos with them.

Tuesday classes went well enough, and I think they liked the teaching games I had. I didn't do much outside of teaching, just went home and did chores. I did get to have dinner with another ETA though at the spicy noodle place, which was nice.

On Wednesday, we didn't have workshop, so I spent the whole day at school before dance. Among other things, I got to play a fun Christmas cup stacking game with my sixth graders and enjoy the Christmas decorations at Jhou Huan. I also received a free large bubble tea (yay!) and a bowl of tangyuan for the winter solstice on Thursday.

We had our last dance practice after school, so it ran a bit long, but the girls got to rehearse both their traditional folk dance and their contemporary dance to "Good Time" by Owl City. They were a bit nervous about Friday's Christmas assembly, but they were doing a pretty good job!

The winter solstice was Thursday, so we had tangyuan for lunch. Classes went well enough; the kindergarteners loved the dreidel freeze dance game I taught. Even though I've been pretty stressed this week, I think most of the learning games I've been coming up with recently have been hits.

Jhou Huan also handed out little paper cards to everyone so they could write down wishes for the new year! I misunderstood the assignment and wrote, "Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays" in a couple of languages inside (oops). I liked seeing everyone else's cards though!

Most of the cards from the rest of the staff wished everyone and their family good health, but one from one of my co-teachers said, "I hope every student can improve their English and get excited for English class." A couple from the students said, "I wish I had a puppy," "I wish I never had to come back to school," etc. One particularly funny one said, "I hope COVID ends soon so I can stop wearing a mask. I hate masks."

After school, my boyfriend and I went to get our flu shots, ran some errands, then went to one of our friends' birthday dinner. It was a lovely dinner; most of the cohort as well as one ETA's family came, and we had candles and a cake.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make the post-dinner trip to the bar. I ended up staying in Jincheng and baking cookies for the rest of Jhou Huan faculty for Friday. In theory, these cookies should've taken an hour and a half. In practice, they took over three. Isn't staying up until 2am great?

The good news was that I could sleep in until 9am since Jhou Huan had put in a work request for me to go to JHES instead of EV the next morning! I didn't sleep great, but I got to sleep an ok amount.

The assembly was amazing! Every grade had their own performance, which varied from Christmas carols on the melodica to choreographed dances which included TikTok moves. One of my coworkers had a Chinese yo-yo performance and another had a flute performance, and I got to lead a Christmas English activity.

Later, Jhou Huan's dance group performed both of their dances, and they did great. I think out of all the performers, the cutest ones by far were my kindergarteners, who tried their absolute best!

The most chaotic part of the assembly was when the "Santas" came out, who were just the school principal and one student's dad in Santa costumes. As they rained candy into the crowd, the kids went nuts scrambling to grab every piece they could. There was definitely some screaming and shoving involved.

Despite some of the chaos, I'm glad I got to attend the assembly, and I think my kids were too. They kept excitedly pointing and smiling at me, and one of them even offered me one of their pieces of candy!

The other half of the school day was spent at EV in Jinhu, then I got dinner with my partner and we got the apartment set up for cohort-wide movie night. Friday's movie? "Kung Fu Hustle" (2004). It was a pretty good movie, and I think we all liked it.

Afterwards, six of us, including a visiting Kaohsiung ETA, headed to a nearby bar called Night Owl to hang out. The hanging out lasted well into the night even after the bar had closed, and I ended up falling asleep at 3am. Whoops.

The lack of sleep definitely caught up with me on Saturday, and I ended up missing the JHES dance group's performance at the Kinmen Cross-Country Race, which was a shame. I was glad I got to see them perform the day before at least.

After lunch and some productive stuff, I started helping the rest of Mr. Hong House get ready for that evening's Chrolanukkah party, which was meant to commemorate Christmas, Hanukkah, and also one ETA's birthday. The decorating went pretty well!

The night was split into three main portions according to each occasion. For the Christmas portion, we had a White Elephant, and I ended up with a big round Sumikko Gurashi plush, who's been dubbed Yoyo the Fried Fish Ball, and some Christmas stickers. I ended up sticking the latter all over everyone's faces, including my own.

During the Hanukkah portion, we played a dreidel drinking game, then during the birthday portion, we played a different drinking game. It was a good time! Also, around 10pm, we all checked the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) Santa Tracker and cheered when he reached Taipei.

I slept in a bit on Sunday, then went to hang out with everyone who'd slept over. It definitely didn't feel like Christmas morning, but it was enough to just sit by the Christmas tree with everyone and chat. I didn't really do anything Christmas-y for the rest of the day, but we did have a nice group dinner at our weekly hotpot place.

The one part of the day that did feel more Christmas-y was exchanging gifts! Unfortunately, my gifts for the rest of Mr. Hong House were far from ready, but I did have some little gifts I could give everyone. I received some lovely gifts from my roommates (matching mugs, macarons, and a wind lion pouch), and I got a nice Pilot fountain pen from my boyfriend.

It's been weird celebrating holidays here in Kinmen. Christmas Day itself felt like a vaguely "Christmas-flavored" day, but it didn't really feel like Christmas. I definitely miss being with my family and friends (and dog) back home around this time of year, but I'm glad I can at least spend time with the rest of my cohort members.

Happy Chrolanukkah everyone!