So near to Christmas

Xmas is one of the most important festival. During Christmas time, everybody is inside their houses with their families. It's the same that during Chinese new year we spend more time with our families, but we also spend a lot of time hanging out in the city center, shopping and enjoy the atmosphere there. Traditionally, parents will buy some new stuffs for the house also for the family and friends. For example, parents used to buy their children a new coat or a new pair of shoes. Because it’s NEW year, everything put the meaning of NEW, which hopefully bring some good fortune next year and a prospect to their children doing fine the next year. It’s also a kind of attitude towards life, because after Winter people looking forward to Spring, that’s also why we called it Spring festival.

During Christmas it's tradition to take candles to the cemetery, if you have relatives in there or just remember someone who has passed away. It looks beautiful when it's dark, thousands of candles. In China we also have our tradition to memorise the people who has passed away, but in a different way. We burn a special kind of yellow or silver colored paper which represent “money”, because Golden and Silver used to be the currency in the ancient. People do this to pray for the people who has passed away to live a happy life in the other world, with these “money” they can take care of themselves there.

On 4th this month, SAMK organized a very nice and warm Christmas dinner in Rauma Unit for all the incoming exchange students. We got a free dinner with a lot of traditional Finnish food. After that all the exchange students singing Christmas songs in their mother tongue, you can imagine the atmosphere. Then Santa Claus came into the house and brought us Christmas presents. I got some lovely candies. The Christmas dinner was great. I had a good time.

One week later, there’s another Christmas dinner for staffs. The host divided us into different groups, each one has to decorate cakes and setting tables. After that everybody vote for the best one. I am happy, because this is my first time decorating a cake. We made a big smiling face by using different kind of candies, though we didn’t win, I really enjoy it. Thanks to SAMK, for everything:D

This week nearly all the exchange students will go back to their home countries and having Xmas holiday with families. I wish all of them and all the staffs here have a nice and lovely Christmas!