Brrrrrrrrrr...my nose is froze and my toes is froze

Ok, so I know my Canadian friends will have little to no sympathy for me... since as Johanna would say, these temperatures are positively balmy.... but that no central heating thing does add an extra coldness factor! I've actually had to explain to people what we do in Canada during the winter because the people here don't heat their homes at all. So yeah, it's been quite cold these days, down to 8 degrees, which is ok for walking around etc but for say, sitting outside eating dinner, or other stationary activities it's not so fun! It's 15 degrees (celsius) in my room, which is noticeably a lot colder than the normal 22 degrees (room temperature). We bundled up to sleep last night! Hope's outfit consisted of 2 pairs of socks, 3 pajama pants, a tank top, 2 long sleeved t-shirts, a turtleneck, a sweater, and a hoodie AND she wore socks on her hands. lol. I wore really warm socks, my flannel pajama pants, a tank top, a long sleeve shirt, and my big fleece housecoat over all that! I tried to sleep in my toque too but it was kind of uncomfortable.

ANYWAYS... Happy New Years everyone!! Xin Nian Kuai Le!! We had a fairly uneventful New Years Eve, went out for dinner with the people we normally eat with on Fridays and since the wife, Mimi is a kindergarten teacher, they were having a little staff party, so all the teachers from the little school the church runs and their families were there. Many of them went into the hot springs afterward (where we had supper), but we didn't. We were reallly cold by the end of the night since we had been sitting on a semi-enclosed patio for over 2 hours! Then we came back, wandered around, got coffee, and watched a movie! The funny thing though was that Yuli was having a big celebration in this field that's really close to our house, so at midnight they started screaming, playing instruments and setting off fireworks (which after all, originated in China), it was actually louder than our movie! After that I phoned some people to say Happy New Years! Good fun.
Tonight we are having some of the buxiban teachers over for a little shindig.. lol so on my agenda for the morning is some grocery shopping, cookie baking, cleaning, and an attempt at making egg nog... man i remember Theresa's great recipe... i think it uses whipping cream though, which i don't know if we can get here (i wouldn't know how to read the label anyways...). Can you have egg nog without nutmeg?
Anyways, to finish off this entry here are a few more pictures from last Sunday: our little performance, the following lunch, and our favourite boys doing their great dance routine complete with 'angel paint'!