No room in the inn
No, seriously. Christmas Eve, far from home. We go to the hotel and... no room. Of course, we were only going to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and we ended up going to a different restaurant instead of a stable. But the parallel amused me.We had our Christmas weekend all planned. Yau Neih's family was here already. On Saturday, Christmas Eve, we would do a nice little family hike in the morning. We'd then have a light lunch and relax a bit in the afternoon. Thad had invited us to dinner and then the English department had planned a Christmas party in the evening. On Christmas Day, we would go to church, have lunch, open presents and then at 8 pm, some students were planning to come over and surprise my in-laws by singing some Christmas carols for them. Perfectly planned.
The first snafu was when we realized we had a communication error. We were told that the party was on "Christmas Evening". We translated that as Christmas Eve. The folks around here don't know from Christmas Eve. They literally meant the evening of Christmas Day. We found that out on Friday. But, hey, no problem. Yau Neih had one of the students announce a rescheduling during English corner. The announcement, of course, was in Chinese, given while my in-laws were sitting there, clueless as we schemed under their very noses. We would be expecting the kids at 8 pm on Saturday instead of Sunday.
Our second change was also minor. Saturday morning was rainy and foggy, so rather than taking my sister-in-law up to see the fog from a higher altitude, we decided to take her on an "urban hike" and show her some of the commercial streets instead. Come the evening, we gussied up a bit and rolled Mom down to the L. Road Grand Hotel. The hotel was quite tastefully decorated for Christmas and was bustling with guests. We beat Thad there so hung about the lobby. We had inquired about going upstairs to the restaurant, but were told that the place was holding a special event and we would have to have a ticket. We patiently waited for Thad and the tickets. Well, it turned out that Thad had no ticket nor inkling that there was a special party going on. But he and Mr. Zhou, the department's Party secretary, handled things and took us to a different restaurant. They told us that this place would even serve turkey, which was a quite pleasant prospect.
That was one surprise that turned out well. I mean, first we foreigners were ushered into a dining room and we were given steamed buns and sunflower seeds to eat. They also put a charcoal brazier under the table to keep our tootsies warm. Eventually dinner was served and we joined our Chinese collleagues. Instead of nice slices of turkey breast served with stuffing and gravy, we were given some brown meat with bones attached--typical Asian style. But it was quite tasty, and along with the other dishes, it filled our tummies nicely.
What didn't turn out well was the rest of our plans. Instead of sitting down at the buffet at 5:40 pm, we ended up eating much later. The joy of having a nice dinner was offset by us looking at our watch and slowly realizing that we wouldn't be home to receive our carolers. When we finally did get home at around 9:00, we found a number of Christmas cards stuffed into our door frame along with a note saying that our carolers were there, but we weren't. Yau Neih felt like a Christmas rat. While the rest of us started getting ready for bed, she went out and about on campus to find some students, tender apologies and try to reschedule back to Christmas Day.
posted by John @ 6:57 AM
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