It's Beginning To Look (and Feel) A Little Like Christmas

Christmas is still more than a month away, but our little part of China is already starting to look pretty Christmassy. Wal-Mart has started selling some straight-outta-the-70s Christmas decorations and stockings, Starbucks has introduced their holiday drinks, and everything is just starting to feel a little more festive than usual. Pretty cool, considering almost none of the Chinese celebrate Christmas. Thanks for thinking of us, locals!

Yesterday this giant Christmas tree appeared in Sea World square near where we live. We stopped for a photo shoot tonight after Kathy's birthday dinner at McCawley's.

 

Of course, we don't get snow in southern China, but the season is definitely changing. I would say this week is the first time it started to occasionally feel cool here. We've had a few days where the temperatures was in the mid-to-low 20s- and I promise I'm not being a wuss- that temperature feels colder than the mid-20s at home due to the humidity in this region. The leaves and flowers are starting to fall from some of the trees, but most of the plants here are the kind not to lose their leaves- I haven't seen any frond-less palm trees yet.

 

On Sunday, it started to feel a little bit cool in our apartment. We tinkered with all of our air conditioning units (we have 4!) to see if any of them had a heat setting, but only our bedroom unit does. We expected none of them would, so at least the bedroom will be warm this winter! Since we know exactly how crisp an unheated apartment in this part of the world feels in the winter from our time in Taiwan (it feels like you're camping on a dewy day for months), we knew there was no way we'd go the winter without a heater for at least our living room area, so we went out and bought a mid-range oscillating one for about $50 at RenRenLe. I don't know how much of a difference it will make, because our apartment is so open, but it feels nice when it's blowing right next to us. We'll see if we need to pick up another one as the season progresses. Anyway, by the next day, we had our air conditioning on again, but we know that won't last much longer this year.

So, after we got home this evening, the weather and the decorations in the area had inspired us to bring out the little Charlie Brown tree we bought at the Daiso dollar store in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. We decorated it (that took a long time lol) and I made a little star out of tin foil. This year is going by so fast, it's hard to believe Christmas is only 1 month and 5 days away. And we'll be celebrating it on a beach in Thailand. Can't wait!