These past few months have absolutely flown by! It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Thanksgiving at school. Then I blinked and now it's already January and our semester is almost over. We only have one more full week of school, then we have finals week and our three week Chinese New Years break!
Our first Christmas away from home was a little strange since it was pretty much the first time we've ever been away from family for the holidays. Plus Christmas isn't too big here so there are no Christmas lights and very few festive decorations at all. In the days leading up to the 25th it was easy to forget that Christmas was just around the corner. However, on the Saturday the 22nd, the Kunshan Expat Association put on a Christmas buffet at one of the western restaurants here on town. We went with a lot of other teachers from school so it was nice to be able to get together with other people to celebrate the holidays. Then we had the 24th and 25th off so we went into Shanghai for two nights to celebrate with just the two of us. We found another restaurant that was also doing the Christmas buffet which also included free flow drinks. It was a very relaxing holiday.
Christmas Eve on the Bund in Shanghai!
Our all-you-can-eat Christmas Eve meal was awesome!
After Christmas we went back to school for a few days but then got a five day weekend for New Years. For that trip we flew up to the northern city of Harbin with a group of a few other teachers. It's crazy cold there but they are famous for their snow and ice festival which goes on every year. The biggest and most famous ice sculpture park is know for recreating (near) life size replicas of famous buildings from around the world. Some of them are as tall four stories high! Unfortunately that park didn't open until the week after we left, be we were still able to see some amazing sculptures at some of the other parks. They build lights into the sculptures and it was really beautiful to see them lit up at night.
Like I said, crazy cold! The temperature got well below zero at night and was usually around 10 or so at the hottest part of the day. Our last full day there was the warmest, getting up to almost 20.
Cold enough to sell ice cream in the street!
Lots of ice sculptures being built on the side of the road.
Snow sculptures outside the aquarium.
This was our whole group. From left: Klarke (HS math), Chris (MS math and social studies), Billi (2nd grade) and her daughter Cay (3rd grader in our program), Chelsea and me.
Animals at the aquarium.
Harbin is pretty close to Russia, so there is a lot of Russian influence. This church was in a place called Sophia Square and is one example. It was common to see things written around town in Russian and some of the locals even spoke some Russian. We read online there is a large Russian expat community in Harbin.
This park was actually located out on the river that runs through town. By late December the ice is frozen so thick they could easily have all kinds of games and rides. Chelsea, Billi, and Cay went on a horse-drawn sleigh ride while Klarke, Chris, and I drove dune buggies. We also went down the ice slide on a sled. The bottom picture is a top game a lot of older men were playing on the ice. They would whip the top to keep it spinning and make it whistle.
All over the river were people walking from one end to the other. Down further away from the park, people were even driving their cars across.
This was the main ice park that wasn't open yet. We were disappointed we didn't get to go in, but it was pretty amazing even seeing it from the gate. You can see the cranes still working on the sculptures. Below are pictures from the park we did get to go in.
2014 will be the year of the horse, so there were several sculptures depicting that. 2013 was the year of the dragon.
The two above were probably the biggest ice buildings at the park we went to. Nothing like the main attraction, but still pretty cool.
Another ice slide. This one was much bigger than the one on the river.
This was a little store we went into to have some warm drinks and get away from the cold. Weird that we could warm up in a building made of ice.
Frozen trees
These columns were just along the street. Lots of small ice sculptures like this were all over town.
Harbin was a really cool city and we're glad we got to experience it. We're back in Kunshan now and counting down the days to Chinese New Years and our trip to the Philippines!
Hunter
