On Saturday the church branch I am apart of in China invited us to their Christmas party in Shenzhen. We all meet up in the afternoon and took a 2 hour bus ride to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a city populated with many people from all over the world. So when we arrived and saw white people playing soccer and a group of people speaking English and kids running by us yelling in English we were a little taken back. I can imagine going back to the States where people are the same race and speak the same language as me will be a little overwhelming. It's weird, but in just 4 months I'm so used to being surrounded by people of a different race and different language as me. Once we arrived in Shenzhen we watched the soccer game and helped decorate for the event. I enjoyed the decorations because  "Christmas Internationally" was the theme. There were signs in many different languages with the message "Merry Christmas" on them, there were country flags hung up and placed on the tables, and the program was a passport. It was adorable! We first ate dinner which was amazing! They served us green beans, ham, salad, rolls and potatoes. Afterwards they had people in the ward share how they celebrate Christmas from the country they are from. There were people from Netherlands, Columbia, South Africa, Siberia, Mexico, and Chile. That was by far my favorite part. It was very interesting to learn about the small and big differences countries have when celebrating Christmas. Afterwards we sang Christmas carols and then watched the children act out the nativity. Because our bus was schedule to leave before the party was over we were not able to light lanterns like they had scheduled! I was really bummed, but decided I will just have to light off lanterns at my wedding. I am so grateful I went to that party because it really got me in the Christmas spirit which I had been lacking. It was yet another enjoyable experience in China!

Our main coordinator has a friend named Alan who drives some of the teachers to school everyday to practice his English. On Tuesday he wanted to take us out for lunch as a thank you! He took us to a Buddhist temple he works at in Zhongshan! After school on Tuesday we all meet him at this Buddhist temple. Walking up to the temple there were a lot of homeless people begging us white girls for money. Homeless people here are significantly more homeless looking than in the States. Majority of them have some sort of a severe physical disability and make me feel bad I can't give them a million bucks each. When we walked in the temple a ceremony had just ended. Inside the temple there were three massive golden Buddha's with several different God's all along the walls.  Monks were walking around and people were worshiping the God's on their stoles everywhere. Once we explored the temple we were taken to another temple where we were seated for lunch. We ate lunch INSIDE the temple! We had people worshiping around us and had Buddhist God's staring at us while we "ate". We were served 10 different dishes and we knew nothing that was on each of those dishes. Alan informed us later we were eating mushrooms, seaweed, tofu, peanuts, kelp and a few other things I can't remember. Alan told us that because Buddhists are vegetarians some of the dishes are made to look like meat. The lunch we ate had two dishes that looked like chicken and steak but tasted far from it. I did try everything but only ate about a bite of it. Thank goodness for rice! I only had rice to cover up the bad taste of the food, because of course they did not provide water. Only a bad tasting tea. This was one of those meals where girls were pretending to eat and shoving food in their purses haha! After lunch Alan chatted with me about his religion. His English is mediocre so I couldn't understand everything he said, but I was able to learn some interesting things about Buddhism. Alan would get so excited when I asked him questions about his religion and I understood what he was saying. It was a really cool experience!