I really didn't have Christmas this year. Or I can also say I didn't have typical Christmas this year but it doesn't mean my Christmas was bad, no way, my Christmas was the best Christmas ever! I didn't have a christmas tree, turkey, macaroni casserole, lot of present, Santa Claus or even Christmas holiday but I had something that not a single of my Finnish friends had. I had the best weekend of my life by playing basketball with my friends, laughing a lot, eating hot pot, studying Chinese, singing KTV and staying up whole night. Can you beat that? I don't think so!
Saturday morning 24th of December I was up at 6am just for prepare our gym and basketball courts ready for our home tournament. We ate hamburgers and drank bubble teas together with the team and our long day was ready to start. Not a typical Christmas eve morning :)
On Saturday we played two official games of basketball and we won both of them. That of course meant that we continued our games in the next day witch was a wonderful Christmas present for me because I definitely didn't want to end my basketball career here yet.
Outside of the basketball courts we also played couple not so official match of table tennis, took too much pictures, play Taiwanese games and laugh a lot.
After basketball I put myself Christmas party ready and head to our own exchange student's Xmas dinner. Everybody had cook something Christmas like from their own country and we had a opportunity to taste many different Christmas foods. My Finnish friends cooked cinnamon rolls and I think they tasted so good after 5 months eating almost only Asian food. Night was super good and even though day was already being long I wasn't in bed before 1.30am.
Sunday, the Christmas day, started almost as early as the day before. I think other girls were at the gym way before I was because everything was already ready when I arrived :D Our first game was horrible, we all were bad, didn't make any shots, missed all the layups and passed the ball out so many times. But what ever, our team was still cheering for us in every situation, we tried our best and at the end we improved our game a little bit. Loss meant that we would had a bronze game just after one hour..
I don't know what happened to us after the morning game but when the bronze game started we were totally different team! We played so good and I was so proud of everybody in my team at that game that I can't even say.. I think that game was one of the best moments in my exchange and I was just hoping that the game would never end. But of course it ended after 40 min of playing like every basketball game and after that 40 min it was clear that we were the third best English department team in Taiwan!!!
After a long day in the gym we change our clothes and head to eat Christmas dinner part 2 with the whole team. We jumped on the scooters and drove one hour to downtown to eat delicious hot pots and to exchange small Christmas gifts. Riding a scooter was so cool because traffic and specially scooter traffic is totally different than in Finland or even in Europe. We where shuttled in the middle of other traffic trying to avoid hitting with the busses and other cars. My friend who was driving our scooter was totally crazy driver and we were all the time a head of others because she was just driving so fast and passing by all cars, busses and bicycles. And I was enjoying every minute because the whole situation was so unbelievable!
When we were finish our hot pots and divided all presents we head to KTV for the whole night. KTV is karaoke and it is super popular here in Taiwan. We started singing at midnight and finish it at the morning just before I had do go back to the university for my morning class. I have never laugh so much that in that night, I have never heard so many Chinese songs than in that night and I have never be happier than I was in that night! I really can't think any better ending for my Christmas than that night. I think the funniest thing with the KTV night was that I had a Chinese final exam next morning at 8am and my friend started to teach me Chinese at 3am because I hadn't study at all before that! But don't worry mom, my test went super good and I am still nerd even tough I am not studying 24/7 ;)
After the last weekend it has been hard to understand that I am really going home after couple of weeks and I am really leaving this place and these awesome people here… I don't want to think about whole thing yet so I will save my tears for later and just say now that I had the best Christmas ever, thank you so much for all the people who was a part of that! :)
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