Mrmrmrrrraaaahhhhh!!!!!!!

I cannot believe that it's the end of November already. November has absolutely just flown by. To be honest, I think I'm still stuck in October. It's one of those feelings, where you blink, and 4 weeks of your life have gone by, and you ask yourself, "What the hell have I been doing with all my time?"

Since I've been in school my entire life, my ability to tell time has always been aided by school holidays, Thanksgiving, winter break. This time I don't have that. In fact my "winter break" doesn't come until the end of January.

This year, I celebrated Thanksgiving by having a buffet dinner at the Radisson hotel in Beijing. It was actually quite delicious. I thought it would be majorly depressing, but it was really cozy, and nice; the two delicious glasses of red wine helped, I'm sure.

And now, it's getting colder. And everyone is bundled up in thick coats, scarves, hats, boots, and mittens. And as much as I hate materialism and commercialization, there is something so comforting about the commercial holiday season. I have newly discovered the SoHo area in the Central Business District, and I find myself constantly wanting to curl up in a fat cozy chair in the local Starbucks or schmancy coffee shop. Marketers have definitely done their job right when people feel that going to your cheesy coffee shop with tacky plastic snowflakes hanging from the ceiling "just feels right" and reminds you of "home."

Commercial Christmas has definitely made it to Beijing. And it's not just commercial holiday season; it's commercial Christmas. And most Chinese people don't even think of Christmas as a Christian holiday; it's really quite telling.

I guess the point of this post is that, as much as I'm homesick, I've found so much comfort in that special something looming in the air at this time of year. The cold weather, begging you to buy cute sweaters, and overpriced coffee, and baked goods. I have so many mixed feelings about Christmas, which I guess is how I feel about most things in life. Ah Wendy, always complicating things.