There's no place like China for the holidays! -Nina

Abby and I survived our first Christmas away from home! Although it made me quite homesick, we had a great time, thanks to Skype, our wonderful family and friends who sent us packages full of presents to open on Christmas and copious amounts of chocolate, the teachers at our school who threw us a karaoke Christmas Eve party, our easily excitable and adorable students, and last (and perhaps least) expensive, imported butter that allowed us to make cookies. 

Cracking hands and colds--Nina

Although the title of this post is quite negative, don't worry, it's mainly pictures of cute kids in homemade pilgrim hats! The holiday season has come to Yongfeng! But with it, unfortunately, comes very cold weather, a lot of sickness, and horribly chapped hands. Our poor students. If you were to look just at their hands, you'd think they had just worked a 12-hour shift washing dishes in scalding hot water. But they're such troopers. They can definitely handle the cold much better than Abby and I can, even though they have absolutely no escape from it, since neither their classrooms nor their houses have any heat. We at least have space heaters in our rooms. Whenever kids come to visit us, they say things along the lines of, "Wow! It's so warm! So comfortable!"