A + A // Christmas is for Secrets

Awkward:
- Losing my voice completely for the first time ever.
- Getting really used to Chinese people asking me if I have a boyfriend (and occasionally people who kindly provide me with a couple of options :P)
- Being completely sure about a piece of factual information and informing others about your excellent facts.... then discovering you actually weren't right about it.
- Discussing a Christmas present with Mum and having the intended recipient walk past the door to the room in which we were in and overhear tantalising and oh so tell tale tidbits of our conversation. Note to self: check doors are shut before talking secrets in future.
- Leaving personal belongings behind.
- Not being able to make it to an important event you were expected to attend and having to explain the reason you were unable to attend.
- Which happened to be that you were going to be out of town visiting your extremely unwell grandparents which is always awkward telling people because no one quite knows what to say to "My Grandma is dying of cancer".
- Completely missing perfect cues for puns in conversations. Like, come on Bonnie! You can do better than this!
- Trying to wrap awkward shaped gifts. How is one supposed to wrap a ukulele in a way that makes it seem extremely un-ukulele like when you have no suitably shaped cardboard boxes and nothing very useful apart from gift wrap?
- Making plans then having to unmake and remake them oodles of times because your plans just don't work out.

Awesome:
- Finding funny things in English in China.... for example this restaurant that on their business card claimed to have 'Lady-like Kind Gentlemanly Taste', whatever that cryptic phrase really means!
- People who take you seriously.
- That incredibly suspenseful few seconds when you see your exam results have arrived in the mail and you're opening up the envelope, busily imagining all the possible scenarios that might happen. ("So if I get an A+, I'm going to whoop and scream and phone up all my friends.... if I fail I'm going to crawl into a hole and never come out.... if I get one of those annoying in between marks I'm going to pretend I'm disappointed by the lowness of my mark but really I'm going to be secretly thrilled I didn't fail... etc)
- Sunny skies. I have never appreciated sun in the sky so much after seeing all the pollution in the sky in China.
- In itself, the ability to be thankful. So much we often take for granted!

- Having fun with family.
The latest craze amongst some of my younger siblings (especially Ben and Johnny) is carefully building things with wooden domino-like blocks. Then you knock over one end and have a nice carefully planned trail of knocked over wooden domino-like blocks. Or you can build pyramids and things like Caleb is doing here.

- Fresh strawberries and peas in the pod
- Christmas carols!!!! (You knew this one was coming, didn't you.)
- Having brainwaves. They don't happen terribly often, let's be honest, but when they do it is certainly something to celebrate! ☺
- Life in general.
- When you manage to clear away and actually do that one frustrating item on your To Do list that had been sitting there and bothering you for ages.
- That one shade of colour that is pretty much a perfect cross between pink, orange, red and yellow and looks SO BEAUTIFUL whenever you see it... come to think of it, it often crops up in sunsets.
- Sunsets

What do you think we take for granted too often?
Do you have any funny stories about secrets around Christmas time? Do share!
How's life going for you? Anything majorly awkward or awesome happen?

PS. Also, I've posted my family's Christmas Newsletter written by Mum if you feel like you want to read it. Link here . I put it on it's own page since it's so gigantic so if you're looking for it look at the top of my blog along with the other pages.