We spent most of December 29th lounging around Aaron’s apartment and watching TV. After all, that’s what vacations are for, right? Aaron had to teach a class in the afternoon, but Taara brought along some TV shows to watch and Aaron has a large collection of Chinese bootle…er…perfectly legal DVDs, so they kept us busy.

In the evening we found ourselves headed towards Miriam and Heather’s house (two of Aaron’s friends who also teach English here in Guangzhou). Aaron brought home Pizza Hut pizza (real, pork pepperoni! we don’t get that in Bangladesh) and we enjoyed a nice game of Settlers (especially nice because I won!).

But the real fun was to begin on Day 4 of our trip, December 30, when Aaron introduced us to one of the many multi-storied wholesale shopping malls in Guangzhou, where stores are crammed together like sardines. We were able to snap some pictures of some of the interesting things we saw, so that we could share them with you. Read More »»

Here are some sights and memories from our second day in China (December 28). We started off the day early, checking out of our hotel in Kunming and heading to the airport to check into our flight.

We were impressed by the amount of influence that Christmas has had here, decorations were everywhere and a Christmas tree was prominently displayed in the hotel lobby (as well as in several places at the airport). There were Santa Claus faces everywhere, but absolutely no nativity scenes, which demonstrates how commercialized/paganized is the version of Christmas that has “infected” China. Well, I guess you could make an argument that the Western version of Christmas is just as paganized (ask Taara, we’ve had that conversation every Christmas over the past few years), but it’s usually tempered by at least some of an emphasis on the Christ in Christmas. Not so here in China, they’ve only imported the materialistic and commercial version of the holiday. Read More »»