On Friday the international staff at our school invited the loca staff to our house for a Christmas party! It was probably the most anticipated event of the month. Our staff was so excited to experience a Westerner's Christmas party. We planned on decorating Christmas sugar cookies, sharing the Christmas story, and doing some Christmas Karaoke (basically singing carols). Sounds simple but man does a lot of work go into doing that. I am so thankful for the awesome international staff (and their wives) for the help to host such a great party.

The party was planned to start at 7:30. The international staff arrived early because we were hosting it together and wanted to make sure we had everything. The rest of the staff congregated in the lobby of our apartment until 7:30. They were so excited that they were all early, which is vey abnormal, by they didn't want to show up early. At exactly 7:30 our doorbell rang and our entire staff was at our door. It was so awesome!

Decorating sugar cookies and mingling :)

The night began with some cookie decorating and mingling. They had never had iced sugar cookies before! It was so awesome to see their excitement! After cookies, the Christmas story was shared in the form of a game. Our staff opened presents to find two characters in the story. Then the characters and their role were explained. It was really cool to share the meaning of Christmas with them.

After the Christmas story, our team leader/acting principal lead us in the 12 Days of Christmas song. We separated into 6 groups of 3 and were each given 2 parts of the song. My team had the 3rd and 11th day. Then we sang the song and each group sang their day. It was really cool and a lot of fun. Just listening to them try to sing the song was great and everyone had fun.

After the 12 Days of Christmas, we started singing some classic carols. We intended for it to be karaoke style but it turned into all of us singing. It was so much fun to singing carols with everyone. I think my favorite was when we all sang Joy to the World. It is so awesome to fill our house with singing.

All in all it was an awesome party and I feel like barriers were broken between the locals and foreign staff. Relationships were strengthened. It even opened doors for us to spend more time with each other. My co-home room teacher accepted my invitation to attend the Christmas concert downtown on Saturday. And then my roommate and I were invited to another teacher's home for dinner tonight (Sunday). It is so awesome to see how God is closing the gap between the local and foreign staff. I am continuing to pray that the light of Jesus shines through all of us and our staff comes to know the ONE TRUE SAVIOR!

Singing carols and praise to God in 3 languages. I love how different cultures and languages come together to praise HIS name!!!