Week 44 All I want for Christmas is....
on Tina's Journal (China), 27/Dec/2009 11:37, 34 days ago
The best Christmas present I got this year was an e-mail from my sister Luisa telling me that my 17 year old niece, Sofie, was coming out of hospital for Christmas and not having to endure any surgery as we were expecting. Sof has been very poorly and in very bad pain suffering from Crohns disease. For the moment, she will not have to undergo the intrusive operation and we all hope that the new drug therapy she is on will help her, we truly hope and pray she recovers completely. This illness has been affecting her life in a terrible way, but she is an amazing girl who has the strength to face life's woes and knowing she has the love of everyone in the family will make her even stronger. I believe too that sharing her birthday with her late Nana Dot, my mum, also means she has some of her very special qualities which will stand her in good stead all her life. Here's to Sof:-)Of course, knowing that Sof was feeling much better meant that I could enjoy the Christmas festivities more. On Christmas Eve, I gave a Christmas lesson to a class of PE students. Their teacher, Betty, asked me to give the lesson as it was their last one for the end of term. The students were very enthusiastic and now have a better understanding of what Christmas is about. It went well, apart from the part where I was teaching them that Santa goes down the chimney to deliver the pressies, but, occasionally gets stuck when he's eaten too many pies. I think the joke was wasted on them!!!In the evening, the students from the English Department arranged a party, although a party here usually means a show. I told them when I arrived that I hadn't prepared anything so don't ask me to sing or perform anything! Well, that was a waste of time. After Jayne sangWhite Christmasone of the presenters announced"And now Tina will sing a song"All eyes were on me and I was handed the mike. What does one do in such a situation, only embarrass oneself. I apologised for not having anything ready and I could not for the life of me remember any words to any Christmas songs apart from'We wish you a Merry Christmas', so that's what they were entertained with! Actually, it wasn't too bad as I managed to keep myself in tune. I don't know, all in the spirit of Christmas cheer I suppose.For Christmas day we opened presents round at Jayne's and then a few of us had lunch at our regular dumpling restaurant. We made it Christmassy with tinsel and crackers which was nice for our Chinese friends to learn how we celebrate Christmas. Everything was going well until the end when we were leaving. For some reason I mentioned something about the Dalai Lama. Edith, a good friend who teaches Chinese History and Geography, and is also a Buddhist said"That man is evil and kills people".My initial reaction, probably due to the excess wine I had drunk, was to blurt out"What the f-----g hell you talking about?"She was obviously taken aback by my expletive but I couldn't help it as I was so shocked by the convinced way she expressed herself. I believe the others were also taken aback by what she had said but didn't want to pursue the topic. Edith and I walked back to the college together and I told her that the rest of the world didn't necessarily agree with this opinion and asked her why she thought he was evil. Of course, I got the usual explanation, that the Chinese government say so! I just went on to say that there is one news agency in China controlled by the government, whereas in the 'West' we have freedom of the press, therefore we get to hear different opinions and many sides of the same story. What surprised me, was that a few days previously we had an open discussion about living peacefully and freedom to be who we want, yet, she feels so strongly about the Dalai Lama. In fact, most people I have had conversations about Tibet with, have been very much of the opinion, that is, Tibet truly belongs to China, and very little sympathy towards those who feel differently. It just goes to show that when you only hear one side of the story, and probably based mainly on lies, how destructive it can be. I'm not sure of her opinion of me now as I told her I respected the Dalai Lama and made a special visit to Glasgow with my sister a few years ago just to hear him speak!Well,this is now my last week in China before I leave on the 4th January back to Sardinia. I'm sure I'll have an emotional week saying the goodbyes. I haven't started packing, I'll start tomorrow all being well as I have come down with a cold, sore throat and chesty cough. I bought some cough medicine which made me heave when I took it as one of the ingredients in it is snake bile and that's all I could think of when I was swallowing it, lets hope it does the trick!!