Painted windows
Decorating the tree
This is Rj's tree we all helped decorate
This is my tree.
This is me in front of my tree
Joe and his tree!
The stocking was a little big for him.
Surprises under the tree!
This year I had three Christmas parties with my local friends!
One of the many fun things to do was take pictures in front of the Christmas tree and other decorations. Some of which they had never seen before and all of which they had questions about. 
Another party activity of course is eating! Sometimes we would cook American food for them.
Apricot covered chicken wings are always a hit!
Some got to try out new foods they had never seen or tasted! 
Other times we order in Chinese food! The jello I made myself and was another big hit. 
Parties are also good for catching up with friends. Here is me talking to one of my good friends and Asian sisters!
Singing carols along with the guitar is always a good time. 
Kelly played wonderfully for us each time. 
We would sing twice in English- once so they could get the tune and then again all together for the words. 
Then we would sing them once in Chinese. 
After that I would tell a story and then we would read the Christmas story...
... and light the advent candles.
Lastly would would play a little game where each person gets to take a small gift home.
Hopefully some took home more than the small gifts and will soon open up a new life.
First you cut potatoes and boil them to make mashed potatoes. 
The secret is to boil them with garlic, chicken bouillon, and black pepper.
Sometimes we mash by hand, other times we actually use a mixer.
Notice anything unusual? The mixer cord is plugged in above our heads. Sometimes the electrical sockets make no sense here. 
After mixing the potatoes you add cheese, onion powder, pepper, and garlic to taste.
Then you stuff the potatoes in dumpling wrappers and fold them up so they are ready to fry or boil. 
I like them fried!
They are really good with sour cream (which we have none of!) and cheese. You can also put Alfredo or marina sauce on them. Yum! The Asians here love them because they are familiar in appearance to their dumplings and they eat potatoes.
When you first start up the street the cemetery is on you find booths like this all along the road out side the cemetery gates. This is where you buy the paper goods to burn at the grave site so your loved ones can have these things in the afterlife. That's right, you can buy paper flowers, clothes, money, cigarettes, alcohol, mahajong, decks of cards, watches, cell phones, cars, houses, TVs, you name it they probably have a paper version of it to burn. 
This man runs one of the roadside booths. He is making paper shoes to go with the paper clothes. When a local person was asked how often these things must be purchased they said that a devoted relative should buy clothes twice a year and other items more but that once a year or less was what often happens. 
The ones with red stars mark the communist party members.
The most encouraging thing to see in the midst of the rows and rows of ones who have already met their maker is a small red cross. Every now and then you would spot one letting you know that a Christian was buried there.
The ones with the oddly shaped red crosses represent Russian Orthodox.
Here on the end you can see one of the pits next to the row that are for burning the offerings. 
The bottom of the grave stones are often shaped like a small alter where things like food and inscence can be laid. They are often guarded by lions.
The city is always in the background.
The grave markings are similar to ours in America. They sometimes have a picture and they tell the name of who is buried there along with their status (mother, daughter, etc.) and the year of their birth and death. 
Here is one instance where someone has come and laid food for their ancestor's spirit to eat. 
After walking through the maze of graves and pathways on top of the hill you come to the other side and can look out at all the new terracing they are building on other hillsides to make way for thousands of future grave sites. Pagodas dot the hill tops.
The supplies are all waiting for their new occupants.
Here is where we get to my favorite part. If you go down the hill and turn and walk up the ravine further back towards the mountains you begin to see random grave markers pop up among the weeds.
Some aren't in very good shape but if you look up and further back you begin to see several graves scattered back in the hills.
This is where the Christians are buried. There are some red crosses for people who died more recently and had lots of money and sometimes even the position to be able to afford them a little red cross. Others however could not. In fact many of the little red crosses have been added posthumously by family members.
Some of these graves are really old and others newer. 
But everyone one of them has some kind of cross. Some at first only had a make shift wooden cross out of sticks, but then later when money was available family has come back in and erected newer grave markers in front of the wooden crosses.
Some are stone, some are clay, and some are wood. 
It was a really neat experience to traipse through the weeds into this seemingly lost and forgotten part of the cemetery. It was also encouraging to know that even though these have been hidden out of the way there are, and have always been, a 'cloud of witnesses' here.
