Christmas is all about spending time with your family and when you are a foreigner…..aw heck, who am I kidding. You all know what I’m about to say, why bother with fancy sentiments?
I had a Christmas party for my badminton friends! Specifically, a cookie decorating party. Seeing as almost none of them have celebrated Christmas before I took it on myself to make it as traditional as possible:
I made my own apple cider and then I mulled it
I made a video of a roaring fireplace with my favorite–and most classic–Christmas songs
The boy I tutor and I made snowflakes for the window
I made dozens of sugar cookies in the shapes on trees, stars, candy canes and gingerbread men
I dyed vanilla frosting in a variety of colors and got Christmas sprinkles and other deocrations
I had cut vegetables and hummus, and a curry cheese thing my mom always makes
We decorated cookies, drank red wine and Baileys, and afterwards played Pictionary.
How did it go? I’ll let the pictures show you:
Party prep took weeks actually, because I knew I needed American goods so I ordered early.
We played badminton first (of course) and then came directly over for the party! I had everything set out, ready and waiting.
I kinda underestimated the food that a dozen badminton players would want to eat, but we made it through with everyone getting enough to eat.
Decorating cookies was the theme of the night!
Us being badminton devotees, I think you can guess what the general theme of the cookies was. (You may recognize the picture as the logo from the Becky Cup! My friend liked it and got it turned into a cell phone cover. We then recreated it in cookie form.)
My coach showing off a few more badminton cookies.
We then played a very intense game of pictionary. Turns out we were just as competitive off the court as we were on it! The scoring got a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure my team won.
The cookies were too “American” (aka sweet) and several people thought eating raw veggies was “weird,” but besides that the party was a smashing success. My coach even drank a little–he almost never drinks alcohol–and he took the whole night off from the badminton courts (another first).
It was also the first time I have seen some of those people not in sports clothes, haha. The party was the weekend prior to actual Christmas but to me, the holiday was over. It was exactly as a Christmas party should be, and despite the hot weather and warm sunny days in southern China, I had a few moments of the good old-fashioned Christmas feeling.
Merry Christmas from my badminton family to yours!
