Christmas day in Taiwan

And now for the Christmas update that I promised:

Like I said before, my Christmas went very well. My team had an amazing time together and I had an AWESOME time skyping my family. 

In order to make it feel like Christmas in a country where Christmas isn’t really celebrated we tried very hard to make things how they would be in the US. We made sure to have a Christmas tree and a fireplace with stockings. Every year of my life I’ve always looked forward to making up on Christmas morning and going in the living and opening my stocking. This year I was GOING to have a stocking. This year there were only a few stockings at the stockings at the store and Julia and I didn’t like them so we made our own stockings, for making them 100% by hand they came out and worked really well.

To make sure that everyone received presents we did a “secret Santa.” Everyone drew names and had to get their person a present over $1,000………………………NT (about 30 USD). Julia, Amber and I, with help from a couple other people, bought things to fill up the stockings.  

On Christmas Eve Julia and I had a sleepover in the living room. It was the saddest thing knowing that when you woke up nothing was going to be different from when you went to sleep. At home I go to bed with stockings completely empty and wake up with them completely filled and more presents under the tree. This year, when I woke up Christmas morning everything was the same as when I went to bed. That’s okay though because being Santa is kinda fun :) 

Well anyway, back to the start of our Christmas celebration. On Friday night we went caroling! It was such a remarkable experience. We went with one of the Church’s that we go to. They sung in Chinese, we sung in English. That night I learned how to say “shengdan kuaile.” I also learned how to sing a song in the original Chinese version…”o shengdan shu, o shengdan shu, o shengdan shu, o shengdan shu.” Okay, maybe not. That’s just O’ Christmas tree over and over *insert watching of Ernest P. Worrell saves Christmas*

Skip to Saturday night. That same Church that we went caroling with was having a “Christmas party.” Well, that’s what we were told. In the states, it would be called a special program. Basically random people from the Church got up and did things. The kids acted out the story of Samson, we did our “You are Special” skit, tons of people danced, some people sung. It was a good night though :) These were aboriginal’s so of course it was a blast.

That night Julia and I had a sleepover in the living room. In the morning the boys were going to come over at 7:30 to open stockings. Julia and I woke up at 7:24 and filled the stockings, and then the boys came over. 

After stockings Aaron, Kyle and Camellia went to morning Church while the rest of us stayed behind. While they were gone I skyped my family. It was their Christmas Eve and my relatives were over so I wanted to say hi to them. It’s our tradition to open one present on Christmas Eve so my family wanted me to “be there” for that. 

I had a blast skyping my family watching them open their one present. My sister is crazy, she convinced all of us that she thinks Matthew and DJ or twins or they’re the same person. We’re not quite sure which one she meant. I’m pretty sure we go through the same thing every year though. We open one present and get so excited we all want to open another one, this year was no different. My Dad made the decision though when he got up and went to bed. 

After skyping my family I got ready and went to Church. Jared preached and his sermon was really good. When Church was over I was socializing and ended up talking to some people from Indonesia.  Random side note: my Church is so cool because there are people representing so many different countries. We have people from Indonesia, Taiwan, America, El Salvador, Vietnam, a country in Africa (I forget which one), Guatemala, and Finland. When we got back from Church we started to make dinner. 

I thought it would be cool to have everyone involved in making Christmas dinner. We decided what we wanted then we all made what we were good at. Well some of us made what we were good at, others of us made the easiest things. No, I’m just kidding. Dinner turned out superb! We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, broccoli, rolls, deviled eggs, eggnog, bubbly (sparkling apple cider), apple pie, and cream puffs.

Once dinner was served we dug in and were filled to our heart’s desire. Jared had to tutor at 6 which meant we couldn’t open presents quite yet. We had to fill up the time somehow and we thought it would be a good idea to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Man, that is a good movie!

Jared got back and we opened presents. As we thought about how to open presents we thought it would be most efficient to have the youngest give their present to their person, then the next youngest give their presents. It was awesome to open presents “as a family.” I felt like I fulfilled the role of the youngest very well! 

All the presents were opened and the pie was out of the oven so we gobbled it all up. Then, we watched Elf :) I couldn’t finish all of Elf because my family woke up and they wanted me to skype them while they opened their presents.  

When I was finished skyping my family I went to bed and got up on Monday for work. 

Just so that you're postive we had fun here's some evidence: