White Elephant, preparing to go home

Whew, what a week. I spent the whole weekend editing the Jan. cover story. Lots of work, lots of unpaid overtime that I'll probably always be too busy to make up for, but it's stuff I care about, and I hope/think this is going to be another good story.

After spending all Saturday and Sunday on that, the roomies and I threw a white elephant Christmas party Sunday night. Chef Mike made delicious egg nog, cider and hot buttered rum. Jess bought wonderful chintzy decorations. And I got up at 5:30 am the following morning to 1. finish writing the intro for my cover story and 2. haul all the beer bottles to the trash before my Chinese tutor arrived.

But thankfully, my biggest chunk of copy is in and the end is in sight. I'll be home in a little more than a week! 

I was hired by a friend who works at an event company and next Saturday I'm going to dress up like Snow White for three hours for a 'tea event.' I'm not sure what that means, but I'm hoping it's not at Jiu Guang - the highly-frequented mall near my house with all the Christmas + Snow White and Seven Dwarves themed decorations, though that would make sense... I'd prefer somewhere more out of the way. However, I'm going to be paid RMB1,000 - about $150 - which is enough to take James out for a steak dinner before I abandon him for the holidays. So I'm excited. Poor guy. All our close friends are going home and his roommate is going to Hong Kong. I'm curious also about what connection people here seem to think Snow White has to Christmas...because she has snow in her name? I'm so excited about the $ now that I'm afraid I'll show up and the dress wont fit, or they'll decide I'm too ugly and turn me away (I am low on foundation...).

As I type, I'm uploading photos from our Christmas get together. It's probably going to take hours, but if I don't give up, there might be pictures here soonish.