Days 200-204 - Christmas in Jinan!!!

On Monday night, to get ourselves in the festive mood we headed off to Dave's place in town for a Christmas Eve Party, where we chilled the night away in great company before heading home for some sleep. Even though it seems like the hours we sleep are never enough, it was particularly so when we woke on Christmas day at 4.30am in order to catch the Porter and Denton Christmas morning celebrations!

Talking with our families made the day actually feel like Christmas, and as Christmas is always such a family affair it meant the world to us to be able to spend a small part of the day chatting with and seeing the people we love the most.

Let's such say trying to listen and grade hours of speeches was more than a struggle for the old eyelids (yes, we had to work on Christmas day!), but we made it through the day and soon we were walking through the front door of Leads Italian Restaurant for our Christmas splurge dinner with Matt and Dovid. Dining on our first western meal since arriving in Jinan we savoured every mouthful - we even got a touch of home with anchor butter and Adam dining on a (supposedly) NZ T-Bone steak for dinner, which while yummy was nothing like the steak at home! The lively restaurant boss kept on popping in to make sure the staff were treating his 'friends' well, which was good for us as we got free Christmas gifts in the form of a key chain and free dessert! We say he was 'popping in' because we were seated in a private room for the night - very flash if you ask us!!

Back home Liv conquered the difficult level of spider solitaire for the first time, while Adam joined the boys downstairs for a few quiet gins.

The rest of the week was spent finishing and marking exams, finding out that we finish a week earlier than we thought, and subsequently making rushed plans on how to spend our New Year's weekend. In the end we have decided to visit our friends David and Gael who we meet at one of our favourite travel destinations (Dehang) about 5 months ago! We'll fill you in on the details later!

Adlibing it to the end of the semester, a week early!