Dec. 1, 2012

It is almost Christmas. The Christmas lights are up; the smell of mulled wine wafts through the air; Spotify's recommended albums are mostly Christmas songs.

With the MCR Christmas Dinner coming up in about two days, I am all hyped up about the festivities.

I have made big plans for Christmas.

I will buy small meaningful presents for my closest friends and send Christmas cards to my friends back in Taiwan. One day two weeks ago, one of my friends asked me, "What is the best present you have ever received?" I thought about it and what emerged in my mind was last year's Christmas. This was when I was still with my ex-boyfriend, and we were celebrating Christmas in Japan. In order to make our Christmas as Japanese as possible, we decided to get ourselves a Christmas tree, a small cheap plastic one but a Christmas tree nevertheless. We also got little red ribbons and golden bells to tie onto the tree. The idea was that the Japanese are so flamboyant they have more decorations than tree on their Christmas tree. When we finally set up the tree a few days before Christmas and we lit it up, I started crying. I had never had a Christmas tree of my own in my life.

Knowing how much Christmas means to me and to my (western) friends, I have decided to give all of my closer friends an unforgettable Christmas present. I gave one friend a traditional Chinese knot with a  piece of crystal attached to it. I bought it in China when I was traveling there over the summer. For another friend, I got him a "Sex Guidebook." He is very conservative, and he will remember the gift forever, I am sure. For another friend who hates mince pies, I will give him Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol since the character Scrooge is also a Christmas-hater but reforms himself in the end. There are still several more friends that I need to get presents for. Getting a friend something memorable is always a challenge.

Next Monday, there is the MCR Christmas Dinner. The seating plan has been made. I am at Table Five, the so-called "important table" this year because I am the MCR President. It is more because we are singing The Twelve Days of Christmas at this dinner, and the lyrics will be sung one line/day at a time table by table, and Table Five is the one that gets the line "Five golden riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings!!!"

Quite a few of my friends are going to be in Cambridge till fairly late -- mid December so I will have people to hang out with until the Christmas holidays finally kicks in.

I will be traveling quite a lot over the Christmas break. First, I will travel to Belgium with a friend to visit another friend. We will check out the Christmas markets in Brussels and then stay with our friend in the amazing historic town of Ghent. We can probably also do a day-trip a Bruges. Even though I have already seen the town, it will look quite different in this season.

By the time I am back to Cambridge, a friend of mine will be here to visit me. I will need to study for a couple of days (at least in the daytime) and we will go to a pantomime at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in the evening and go out to have dinners and just enjoy Cambridge around Christmas.

I will then travel to Paris with my friend. I have not yet planned our trip to Paris. We will see Moulin Rouge and have a nice fancy Christmas Dinner. I want this trip to be more relaxing and "pointless." Paris will be beautiful, and the best way to enjoy it is to just simply sit in a cafe and find someone to chat with. It will be a magical time!!

We will then come back to Cambridge where I will again study vigorously for a few of days before we then take off again to Scotland to see the Fireballs Festival of Stonehaven. I wanted to do something very fascinating for New Year's Eve and found this pagan Fireballs Festival tradition that has been kept alive in a small town in Scotland. The Scottish men will charge down their main street single file, hurling around two gigantic fireballs on a chain. All this time there will be much shouting, drinking, dancing, and frolicking. Sounds medieval to me.

When we return to London, we will stay in London for two to three nights and go to the Royal Opera House first for a ballet, and then for an opera. I still have to decide whether we will also see Twelve Night on one of the afternoons. Another friend of mine wants to see Twelve Night from the Globe Theatre but it is taking him ages to simply find a date. There is much more to see at the British Museum so I might also spend a half day in this world-renowned museum.

Before all the travelling kicks in, I shall have to study hard so that I will not feel guilty over the Christmas break. I have a chapter to write/revise and a book review to write (to be published in a journal).

Merry Christmas to everyone!