Bring your kids to work

One part of our job (working with International students) that I love the most is hosting. Even more specifically, throwing a Christmas party.

On Friday night we had almost 30 Chinese students in our home for a Christmas party. It was such a great night! The first guests to arrive were high school students. They go to the City School (same as Lilia). They are here practicing piano, hoping to get into Curtis; the best music school in the world. The doorbell rang and a car load of students showed up. More and more Drexel undergrads poured in by the car loads.
Once everyone arrived we prayed, ate pizza (they like meat-topped pizza & mushroom-topped pizza), enjoyed some fruit and homemade cookies. So many students told me how they enjoyed the homemade cookies. There are no ovens in China. People don't bake. They are also not a culture that likes a lot of sugar, but they liked chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin.

After we ate it was time for games. We started off slow with Christmas Bingo, which most never played. I went over each picture, and they learned new words like "holly," and "Santa's sleigh."
The second game was really funny. You put a plate on your head and I give you things to draw. You can't look at the plate, you just have to guess where draw the Christmas tree so it is on the floor. And you can't tell if you drew your stockings on the mantel until the instructions have stopped. I gave one girl a prize because her drawing was so good, but it was a guy named Ronald who won the most points. He's an impressionist artist.

Lilia as a snowman

The last game was the most fun. It was build a snowman. Each pair received a roll of toilet paper (from the $1 store), a scarf and a contraction paper carrot nose. The first team to build a snowman wins. Both Lilia and Alex played and loved it.

Reading the Christmas story in Luke

We moved on to singing Christmas songs, both popular ones and Christian ones. Dave had each student read along in a Chinese Bible as Herold (a Chinese Christian at Temple) read the Christmas story in Luke. Dave shared about Jesus and how history has been leading up to this moment. Christ the newborn King is born.
We then turned out the lights, and slowly passed along a flame, while Lilia led us in singing Silent night. It was a really fun and beautiful night. I loved watching my kids play games with the students, have conversations and lead when it was a beautiful moment to lead. It doesn't often work out to bring your kids to work, but when the opportunity is right - it will impact both them and those they interact with forever.

Alex the Snowman