The weeks since Christmas have passed in a flash. I have been occupied with completing grade reports for my students (as always, everything must be hand written in multiple formats), organizing the teaching workshops for the Amity Winter Conference, and making my travel plans for the winter break. This week I leave for a brief visit to Xi'An, location of the famous Terra Cotta army. Then on the Guiyang (in southwestern Guizhou Province) for the Amity Conference. After that, I hope to head off to Viet Nam for a week or two.

Christmas itself was idyllic. I fled Lanzhou and spent four days on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province. My journal at midnight on Christmas morning:
"The Catholic Church in Haikou is located on an offshoot of a tributary of a back alley, through a narrow passageway, up a flight of stairs. The church is tiny, and was already filled beyond its capacity when I arrived for Christmas Eve mass. I was just in time to hear the choir’s prelude, “Oh, Come, Oh, Come Emmanuel” – in Chinese. The processional hymn was “Away in a Manger.” At first, I was on the outside, looking in through a window, but eventually managed to squeeze inside. A kind parishioner passed me a plastic stool and I crouched in the doorway. When the time came for the offertory procession, I needed to move out of the way of the parade as it assembled, and took the opportunity to snap some blurry close-ups. The mom in charge of policing the children wore a Santa hat and a stern expression; her last words to the procession as it launched, 'Man zou!' (Go slow!) As the consecration began, everyone knelt, wherever they happened to be, every head bowed. As I inched my way to communion, the choir was singing “Silent Night.” The faces of the singers looked supremely joyful.