China has everything I could ever want... except you.

This Christmas season I did a lot more to force the Christmas spirit. During Halloween some friends and I stumbled upon our greatest discovery in China! Sunggong warehouse! All the factory leftovers from the products sent to the US. I felt like I am in Wal-Mart’s holiday section, just dirtier, cheaper and a lot more crap to sift through. We came back to this gold mine around thanksgiving and it was a CHRISTMAS EXPLOSION! I am talking a full street with trees and garland covering each store front. And 2 of the buildings had 4 floors of Christmas goodness inside, mixed, of course, with the usual baby clothes, purses, plastic ware and other randomness. I couldn’t keep my legs still. They had a 10 foot plastic tree that I could comfortably live inside! Life-size Santa figures made out of glitter and gold paint (China version). As I spent every penny in my purse on lights and a wreath, I realized my apartment was too small for a tree.

Since my classes are much smaller this year I can do a lot more activities with them. So I asked my school if I could buy a tree for my classroom and they loved the idea! A friend suggested I take my class on a field trip to the warehouse and let them pick out the decorations. But I decided if they were devil children in the classroom, I can’t imagine what they would do turned loose in society! But for a total of 300 kaui ($50 US) I bought 2 trees 40 ornaments, 2 strands of lights, and 2 star toppers! I had taught my students last year about Christmas in one 45 min class since I only saw them 2 or 4 times in a month. I see my students now 5 times a week. The tree purchase inspired my 20 lesson Christmas series, which was only met with minor opposition from my devil boys. We talked about the legend of Santa clause and the first Christmas tree. We made a Christmas chain with our Christmas wishes. We wrote Family newsletters, listened to Christmas music and even watched “How the Grinch stole Christmas.”

The best part of the lesson series was the Christmas play. My church had just done the children’s play the Sunday before, and I was talking to my friends about how cute they were. My friend who is also a teacher said he has his middle school students act out the Christmas story every year and they love it! In the US that would be a major lawsuit to teach a bible story in a public school. But the way he explained it was that he was teaching a piece of American culture. Non-Christians know the story, you see nativity scene everywhere and it is alluded to in movies and TV shows. The students need to know the story to understand the references. There are many rules against missionaries in China so I wanted to be careful not to get myself in trouble, but I thought it was a great idea I couldn’t pass up.

My first class was 10 boys, not knowing the story I assigned a role for each boy with the instruction to act out the story as it was read aloud. This was extra fun for me as I ignored the statements of, “What’s an Angel?” And “Is Mary a girl name?” So after every few lines I would stop and have the characters mentioned stand in the front of the class. I made “Mary and Joseph” hold hands when it says they were engaged to be married and then Joseph pulled his hand away when he found out she was pregnant. I had the boys playing the Angels flap their arms like wings, the Star do jazz hands as he lead the Wiseman around the room. The whole class was laughing and participating, definitely my best teaching moment thus far. Their understanding surprised me too. Both classes when I read that Mary and Joseph were told to hide in Egypt until Herod was dead, the students scurried around the room and finally pulled the window curtains around to cover them! The shy boys that don’t have the vocab to speak out in class were actually getting it! The teacher in more couldn’t help spoiling the fun with the, “See! Class can be fun if you just pay attention!”