A Chinese Christmas

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Immy stayed in Beijing for another week and Mum and Dad came up for the Christmas weekend, which was fun. Unfortunately I had exams so I couldn’t really see them all that much…
On CHRISTMAS EVE we went to my church and then in the evening I went out to a very fancy French restaurant with some friends. It was a 6 course meal and was so good! We had prawn pate, snails, salmon, soup, turkey and Yule log. They were the 6…After it we went to the South Cathedral in Beijing, which is a Catholic church open to anyone. It was great, there were so many people there that the whole church was fun and we had to stand in the courtyard where they had the service projected onto a huge screen! It was really good and festive, although it was freezing! And the sermon was both in Chinese and English, and they had all the latin reading things so at points it was kind of hard to follow! I’m really glad I went though it was such cool thing to experience!

On CHRISTMAS MORNING I was woken up at 8am by Luara and Scarlett who couldn’t wait any longer to open their presents! We did that then had pancakes for breakfast! Then halfway through the morning oh so randomly, there was a knock on our door, and a Chinese man dressed as Father Christmas came in, took a photo, and then left! Mum and Dad came over late morning and we chilled out in the flat, had a late lunch of fajitas! And then chilled out some more!

It was a bit bizarre not going to church on Christmas morning, but it was cool none the less and we read some of the bible passages which tell the nativity story and were reminded of how incredible that story is! My favourite bit is from Luke chapter 2, where the Angel told the shepherds about the birth of Jesus, and so they go and see if it for real, and they praise God all the way home to thank him for this tiny baby who the Angels called the Messiah! How amazing is that!

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