Becky’s MS Blog

Christmas chinatized

December 25th, 2007

Well, it will be one we won’t forget anyway.  It was a regular day today.  Becky was back at acupuncture, morning physio in spite of the dang headache being back.  I headed off to WalMart, it’s a nice walk, what can i say?  And we found out we were supposed to bring something to the party.  Tony had said “Maybe a cake? But if you can’t cook that’s okay, you don’t have to bring anything.”  How do you cook (or bake for goodness sake) when you have a hotplate, a microwave and a bathroom sink?  We decided to make deviled eggs.  I went off to get more eggs, some leeks and was hopeful for some paprika.   It was a pretty smoggy day, so i broke out the face mask thing and tried to wear it.  It was a brisk day for a BC gal too, so i thought the mask would serve a double purpose and keep my face warm.  Alas, my glasses kept fogging up, so i had to ditch the mask and breathe naked.  I try to breathe through my nose only and not walk around like a slack jawed yokel with my mouth open, i think i look better that way too
So 14 eggs later, boiled in two batches, leeks chopped fine with a pocket knife, mayo that is sweet (?) and a wee sprinkling of what turned out to be cayenne; we had our contribution ready for the party.  The room was decorated in a mix of Asian and western.  There were Asian lantern things and lots of garlands.  Santa hats were plentiful as were devil horns that lit up(?).  We added our food to the table, and what a spread it was.  The highlight -  chicken feet!!!!!  We were all fighting over them, uh huh!  There were these thick cut chips that looked interesting, but they were sweet, not just sweet potato sweet, but glazed sweet.  Seems that there are two flavours in China – super hot, or sweet.  So other than the food, there was entertainment.  Rather than just talk loudly at the front of the room, there was a microphone with some real special echo feedback.  This made the accented English even harder to understand.  We had some nurses do an interpretative arm dance to a Chinese song.  Michael, our Welsh neighbour, recited a Chinese poem.  I had been persuaded to demo some yoga, which drew applause of all things – kinda mortified, had tried to explain that yoga isn’t a spectator sport and all, just glad it’s over.  We had a few people sing karaoke – the sound system and the fact that the songs were all Chinese made us clap when they were over.  Becky’s headache had her back in the room by the time Santa came.  Santa only made it about a quarter of the way around the room before his bag o goodies was gone!  We were all back in the room by about 6:30.  It was really sweet of the staff and everyone put this party on for us to celebrate Christmas.  We miss home and everyone there.  Take care and love love to all.
kim

Entry Filed under: in the swing of things now, uh huh,ms