Merry Jingly and a Hasaam New Year!!!

Day #48
Funds: Much the same as last time
Location: ditto.
Michael got right into the Christmas spirit!

Argh so ok tons to write about that happened in the last 4 days, fortunately I took lotsa photos this time round ...
So Christmas Eve comes around and we had class as usual. Nothing too exciting there. Then I skipped my tute to practice for the talent show. The fruits of my labour can be viewed here [http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=52132336213&subj=637056881] provided you have facebook. I'll say it went alright, but I could have done a little better. I could have sounded a lot worse though, and reactions from my classmates were overall positive. There's this dude we call Waiguoren (literally, "Foreigner", because he's from Pakenham, loves his bogan accent and makes it his business to stick out as much as possible around here) who just kinda stared at me for 10 seconds before finally saying "you should be busking!" ... that was my favourite comment. It normally doesn't take Waiguoren 10 seconds to think of something to say. I was nervous, as usual, but somehow doing that was easier than my last oral presentation. My theory is I practiced the absolute bejeezus out of the piece I wrote for the talent show, and the oral I'd just finished writing a minute or so before I stood up in front of my class.
When the act was done, I met my tutor from last time! Tutors take us for the last hour of a day, and are generally Linguistics postgrads and such. Mia remembered me from 2 years ago when she saw me playing the flute. I recognised her the instant she came running out of nowhere yelling "MIIIIIIICHAAAAAAAAAAEL!!!" So that was nice. She was like "I teach English at this Uni now!!!" and I was all "Oh. I'm still the same type of student as last time." Hahaha. I never thought I'd see her again. How awesome.

So we bailed on the talent show early. As a result I have no idea if I won anything. I was just SO hungry!!! Miranda came to watch me and had her guitar from something she did earlier in the day, so we brought it with us to the little Muslim restaurant that all the Monash students seem to like eating at so much. Sam bumped into us randomly and had dinner with us. The two of them play left-handed guitar so they had a lot to talk about, the sum of which saw us singing to their music (first a piece Miranda wrote and Sam played "I'm a believer") in said tiny restaurant. The chefs applauded them. =D Having gotten well and truly into the mood, I found some leftover lyric sheets from the carolling night in Miranda's guitar case. From there we paid our bill, and sang carols as we walked back to the guesthouse, and up the elevator. Somebody with a Christmas hat joined in until he got to his floor. Lenny saw us and ran away. He came back shortly with another guitar and joined as for the whole rest of the night! Zara and Adam came out of nowhere as well. Somewhere in the middle of all this I got a text from Monica saying "Christmas time is family time! Come drink with us!!!" but we all reasoned that, going out to not-all-that-exciting clubs with cheap drinks had been done before and hardly appealed to any of us, what we'd got caught up in doing was Christmassy, and had possibly never been done before at SISU ^^
We rode the elevator up and down a few times, getting people in on our act, then we sat around the hall for a half hour or so. Some people joined us, some people filmed us. An American actually thanked us and said it hadn't felt like Christmas til he heard us. Security came around midnight to tell us to calm down and we wished him a Merry Christmas. First time I ever saw a security guard smile here =D
Then we saw Miranda off into a taxi. Now that we were outside we felt like walking and singing again. People in shops smiled at us crazy foreigners and waved back at us. Within 10 minutes 4 random local Chinese girls had jumped out of their taxi and joined us. It seemed like I was the only one of us aware that we'd never seen these people before, the others all assumed one of us knew them xD They feature in photos on facebook also.
So yeah, haha good night that was.

Christmas day, Dylan let me use his computer for Skype, which meant I could talk to NANA and AUNTIES and Mum and DAD and Dude n J'Mak! Hooray! I only got an hours sleep between eve and day so I felt that throughout. We were at an all-you-can-eat buffet place that was built like a crazy elaborate food court. Look at THOSE photos cos seriously, the place had to be seen to be believed. 200RMB (approx $AUS50) to get in and that was all we had to worry about. Well that and exploding. As you all know, I do that sometimes. Awwww my aching Christmas Gut! It was a bit weird eating all that dessert without Uncle Lorry there egging me on though.
The majority of Monash students were there and we all fit comfortably. A girl from my class arranged the whole thing. Good on her! Oh and The Jie Ke (Jack) dressed as Skanky Mrs Claus. He enjoyed it far too much! After we all went back to SISU to try and watch a movie but I fell asleep =[