For both Christmas Eve and Christmas day we were invited to one of the doctor's houses. On Christmas eve, we brought art supplies to make some ornaments - the children had come to our apartment previously and had fun painting with Dolly, so they wanted to make ornaments with her.

There was a Christmas tree, a live one in a pot. It was not the standard American variety, but it resembled a kind of pine tree. The top branches spread wider than the bottom ones which gave it a vaguely upside-down feel.

The next day we went over for a lunch of fried rice, sweet-and-sour vegetables, and soybean kofta in a soy sauce gravy, with fruit custard for desert. It was a nice get-together, but it didn't feel so much like Christmas, between the weather and the lack of familiar rituals.

Later that night we went to the cloth market and picked out a curtain for our living room. The store we went to had a few small, cramped floors with dozens of rolls of cloth to pick from. We eventually picked colors and patterns that we liked, and they should be made in another day or two.