Progressive Christmas

My teammate Lisa teaches a sophomore culture class. To help the students experience some Western holiday traditions, we invited them over for a progressive Christmas party. They were split into groups of 12-20 students, and they spent 25 minutes in each of our three apartments:

1) Lisa -- listening to the Christmas story, eating oranges and candy
2) Tarah -- learning Christmas songs
3) Alison -- gift exchange

For my apartment, each student had to bring a wrapped gift worth no more than 5 RMB. We had a white elephant gift exchange (although most students were too nice to steal desirable gifts from their friends). I've never seen so many stuffed animal keychains, cutesy piggy banks, and cell phone charms in my life. The most popular gift was a shapeless gray blob with an LED light inside. Seven different colors. So beautiful!

As you can see from the pictures, there was one point in the evening where Joseph from my nativity scene committed suicide by jumping off the shelf. Overall, the event was fun and I think everyone had a good time. Except maybe Joseph.