Christmas Party!

Holidays present a good opportunity to tell students about "American Culture"...or the true meaning of Christmas in this case. So in my classes that meet two times a week I had a party during the second class last week. In all my classes that meet once a week I divided the class in half and invited each half over to my apartment for an hour (actually I didn't think of this until after having my first class last week, so I'll have to make it up to them somehow next semester :-/ So this picture is from last night's party, which went really well. I bought some snack foods - which I had to practically force them to eat since they think its rude to accept gifts sometimes...and then I told them about how most Americans celebrate Christmas by showing them pictures of Santa, a reindeer, a house with lots of lights, a Christmas tree, Christmas stockings hanging off a mantle, and a Snowman. Then I explained to them that while those things were fun, they had nothing to do with Christmas. I then read to them a lot of THE Christmas Story and stopped to explain what was going on every few verses. In this particular class I do not know if anyone actually understood anything, but almost all of them paid a lot of attention. In talking with other students whose English is much better, I've found that most of them have never heard anything of why we really celebrate Christmas. I had already taught them a few Christmas songs in class, so we didn't sing any at the party. Other than that, I just let them ask questions and give suggestions for what they wanted to do differently in class next semester. Overall, I thought it was very fun and successful, because that was truthfully my least favorite class all semester, but last night helped change my perspective of them. I've got another party tomorrow night...if I get any cool pictures from there, I'll post them. Oh yeah, and you're probably wondering about the facial hair, right? Well, some of the guys have been having a contest to see who could have the best beard by Christmas...its interesting, I've never not shaved for this long (almost one month now I think).