MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I would like to start this blog by saying GO PACKERS!! and Thank you Auntie Caryn. My mom said that I could open one of my presents before I left because it was actually a birthday present and it was this Favre jersey. I wore it all Friday (Thursday in the states) for good luck and I absolutely love it! It is exactly what I wanted, so thank you!
Friday afternoon we started our Christmas adventure. Andrea and a Chinese family that is friends of hers (Mark, Shelly, and their son Max) picked Laura, Matt, Ben, Deborah, Deborah's boyfriend Joel who is visiting, and I up in the van. The drive was not too far to our first destination, the hot springs. The hot springs were about 6 different temperature, sulfur-smelling pools done in this kind of Greek feel. It was really fun. It was really nice to be warm again and then to jump into the cold pool to cool off again.
After about 2 hours of relaxing in the pools, and some Marco Polo, we left to go to the cabins we would be staying in this weekend. They were up a one-lane road about 30 minutes surrounded by farm land and mountains. We arrived in the dark and dinner was already on the table. We had delicious plum wine with dinner because Mark is a plum wine producer. After dinner we walked our stuff into our rooms. The room building was separate from the kitchen room. It was set up kind of like a motel, but was very well done for China. One of the architects and his wife were also there. They lived in Los Angeles for awhile and just moved back to China and the guy built this place. You could see how really well designed it was, given how much better it fit in with the surroundings than most places in China. After dinner we moved into the "play room" where there was a fire place! It was warm and cozy and they had, of course, set up a karaoke machine for us. They also gave us all a Christmas present, which we thought was very nice until we realized it was a mechanized, battery-operated nail buffer. Then we didn't really know what to think. We sang songs and sat around for a few hours. My cookies went over really well too. Yay!
The next day I woke up and realized really how beautiful this place was. There were streams and mountains all around, it was just beautiful. After breakfast we went on a hike to a temple that was supposedly on the mountain behind us. A local led us to a path of stone steps and told us to just stay on the path. This of course proved easier said than done. We got lost and had to go ask directions, but eventually found the trail again. It was really nice to get out and see the valley. Hiking in China is always a little weird though. Even though practically no one hikes this path, it is all stone steps. There are no dirt paths, they are all made into stone steps all the way up to the top. When we got to the temples, they were also very cool to see. Joel was raised Buddhist and he would pray at the temples, which was also very cool to see. We met up with Mark, Shelly, and Max again for lunch and then took the van to drop them off at the bus station. They were returning because they had a party to attend. Then we went to the same museum cluster I had gone to with my swimming friends in Chungzhou. No one wanted to pay to go in though, so we just walked around a bit. Then we went back and played cards until dinner. After dinner we had our own "Christmas Party" complete with margaritas, wine, and King's Corner, a card game.
The next morning we got up and drove to XiLingXueShan (a skiing and hiking resort) after breakfast. We had all been told that this was a "ski resort" and were very excited to see snow and what the ski slope was like. When we got there though, it was not exactly as we expected. When we arrived there, we learned that we had to take the gondola to the ski area where the snow was. We had originally planned on driving up, but the road was under construction. It cost 163 yuan, which was expensive but not too bad. When we got to the ski resort, I didn't know what to think. There was practically no snow except in the few patches where they had made snow. The ski hill people kept calling "xue chang" which translates literally as snow field, for a reason. There was one run that was not even the caliber of most bunny hills. There were three or four big, crappy, Swiss-style hotels that were completely empty even though it was in the middle of their season. There was also a snow patch where you could drive snow mobiles around in a circle, amusement rides, an ice Great Wall sculpture, paintball, and snow luge besides skiing. This "ski resort" is by far the most pathetic and hilarious thing I have ever seen. All day we were there I just couldn't stop laughing because I couldn't believe it was actually this bad. We decided to do the luge, which was one of the cheapest activities. In order to do that, we had to take another gondola to the top of the luge run. As the gondola Laura and I were supposed to ride in came around, the guy opened the door and the door came off. We decided to take the next car. The luge was riding down a metal semi-circular tube in a plastic sled, but it actually went pretty fast and was really fun. Definitely worth it. Then we ate lunch in the abandoned cafeteria and went back down the mountain.
After we returned home, we decided to take part in the customary Chengdu Christmas Eve festivities as well, or at least go see what it was all about. We had heard that on Christmas Eve in Chengdu everyone gathers on the major shopping pedestrian road in Chengdu with big inflatable, American flag bats and hits each other. I don't know why they have this custom, they just do. It is usually not dangerous or malicious, but recently the riots had been getting more and more out of hand. Last year there were actual fights and the crowd had to be broken up with a fire hose. However, this year when we arrived the police were already shutting down the road. We asked why and apparently no one got hurt, they just didn't want it getting to wild. So they kicked everyone out of the pedestrian mall area and there were police standing in lines across every entrance. There were more people and police around than I have ever seen. We decided to walk around because it still seemed very busy and exciting. Even though the police were trying to disband it, there were still people selling these bats and hitting each other outside of Chrinqi Lu (the road). So Matt and Ben had to buy bats as well. The unwritten rule then seemed to be "if you had a bat you wanted to play", so as we walked down the street as we passed other groups with bats they would all frantically hit each other for about 30 seconds and then we would both keep walking. Then it would happen again a minute or 2 later. The police then starting taking away peoples bats and popping them and making piles of popped bats on the street. Matthew was very sad about that and here is crying over his destroyed bat. It was all very surreal and bizarre, I don't understand it and I don't think I ever will.
To make it seem more like Christmas Eve when I got home, I opened my Christmas presents, which was very fun. I got wonderful things from all my wonderful family members ( I love everything, thank you so much) and it made me really happy.