Christmas

Christmas is not a big deal in China. Its not a holiday, No one gets a day off work. The holiday here is New years. Everyone gets 3 days holiday, Jan 1-3. But we did a little decorating for Christmas. We ordered some Christmas lights online:

They turned out to be a perfect example of "Made poorly in China" because they are now (after 2 weeks) about 25% burned out - and these are LEDs (LEDs don't burn out).

We also ordered a small tree online, It came with a miniature string of lights and mini decorations. One package included everything:

And one night there was a halo all around the moon. Although it was brighter in real life, here you can just see the bottom part of the halo:

And the little town of Jackson Hole put up some decorations too. In fact they went all out with ice sculptures. There were 2 semi trailers full of ice that unloaded into the center of town:

The ice was carved into Cartoon Characters:

Rudolph:

An ice bowling alley and an ice castle:

The backside of the ice castle is a long ice slide:

There is also a snow cave:

inside of which are coloured ice sculptures:

 

And finally, Santa Claus. Now this isn't just someone dressed up as Santa. This is the genuine, official Santa from the Arctic Circle in Finland. That's right, this community spared no expense to get the real deal imported all the way from Finland.

And, my Christmas present is a drivers license. I went through a lot of administrative paperwork and organizing and a lot of studying for the test to earn this and it arrived in the mail Christmas eve. Now when we return in the spring I'll be able to drive a motorbike here (China is one of the few countries in the world where an international drivers license is not accepted).  Note the photo-shopped photo of me, looking 10 years younger - a typical practice here in passport photo-booths:

Merry Christmas to you all, and a Happy new year.
Bill (and Carole, who gets editorial approval-rights).