Christmas Parties!!!

With the idea of hosting the first ever Christmas Party of this year, on Dec 9th, my flatmate Irina (from Romania again!) and myself hosted a collective cooking, intensive drinking and massive dancing party at our place. Trainees were cooking food from different countries all the way from 6pm till 10pm. We emptied all the cans and bottles in the apartment. With the limited amount of dancing music I had, I became the DJ of the night. I had to be very careful not to play any AIESEC dancing music to ruine the party mood. Olga had her Indian-ess revived (she was CC of IC India) became the a star of Indian music, completely outshined the Indians. The latinos were a bit frustrated because our laptops (given by the company of course) couldn't play the CDs they brought with them. So no arse shaking! Sigh... Still the party ended up so high that most of the people went to a good club downtown.

I didn't join (Devrim will say that I am a retard!) because: 1) I was tired. 2) I was broke. 3) I cannot dance, especially seeing people dancing in my apartment. I need way more alcohol to loose a bit.

Friday (Dec 15th), I went to the Christmas dinner hosted by the LCs here in Stockholm. It ended up as my favorite party of the year because I DANCED!!! Guess I was drunk enough after glögg, white wine and 2 ciders. Also because Aron and me are equally 'good' dancers. We put up our thick skin and 'danced' like nobody was watching in the middle of the floor.

I met 2 interesting guys at the party. One called Robin who is very cute but having dinner alone at his table then I joined him. He has been to Thailand and Malaysia and took Chinese courses in university. He studies change management (how AIESEC is this!). So we had a lot to chat about.

The other one I cannot remember his name (hehe...I actually never remember anybody's name but always their faces. I have a 'picture memory'.) has lived in Beijing for 2 years and just came back from a 2 months stay in Shanghai. I was living in Beijing when he was there also though he didn't have time to contact AIESEC, despite that he was studying in one of our LCs - PKU. We spoke about Wu Dao Kou, Hou Hai, Sculpting in Time Cafe and Propaganda club, etc. All those typical international students hanging out place. Gosh, he made me miss Beijing! He said I am the first Shanghainese he met who prefers Beijing! Da!

17th I went to Aron's uncle (Dad's older brother)'s 60th birthday/Christmas dinner party. People tried to speak English with me, talking about China or Asia which was very sweet. I hate to be in the centre of attention especially when the rest have no clue of the topic though. The most interesting part of the dinner was taking a look at the family's horse collection. They have more than 10 huge horses. (I think the horses are huge because Chinese race horses are smaller.) The names of the horses were more than expressive: furious, cha cha, etc. Some of the horses looked funny because they were in winter jackets. Their hair were cut because they sweat and got cold with long hair. So I got a bit of horse lecture as well.

Christmas is by all means a commercialized festival. However, I can still find some real human touch within because gift shopping is by no means an easy task. It is a very sweet thing to find the best gift for someone. I totally enjoy the process and receiving gifts and cards! Sometimes people expect to spend some time together instead of anything material as a gift which is an even nicer thing to do. Aron and me have already planned to cook a Chinese dinner for his entire family. God bless I don't burn anything or hurt myself this time.