Tai Chi-y Christmas

Yesterday was our Academy's annual Christmas get-together. I've been attending these for nearly as long as I've been doing tai chi. And this has been the best one ever...Okay, so I may be slightly biased in saying that considering the amount of effort I've put into it. But it's true!

Back in September, Maxine (being the other main adminy type person at tai chi) & I were given the responsibility of organising our tai chi Christmas party as we'd been informed that our Grand Master didn't want a party. We originally thought of holding a picnic. After a brief scouting about hiring areas of parks and then trying to work out catering, we gave up. Rather good that we did, since the weather was more like mid-winter than summer.

One of our instructors volunteered his daughter to do the catering when we were entertaining the picnic idea, and after checking out what they had on offer, we decided we'd just dine there instead.

After announcing the details of our function, we had a lot of people expressing surprise at how different things were going to be this year. For starters, we'd picked an Italian restaurant instead of the usual Chinese. And it was lunch, instead of dinner. And we were asking people to supply a small gift on the day for a Secret Santa affair, since Maxine & I really didn't want to run a raffle...we should've known better, though...

In order to keep costs down, we decided to not include desserts in our set menu. However we thought that people should have something sweet to nibble on at the end of the meal. Thus the idea of little parcels of chocolates was born. Which, of course, Maxine & I then had to make up. So we spent an afternoon sprawled on Maxine's living room floor divvying up large boxes of chocolates and candy canes into small parcels wrapped up in coloured cellophane and curling ribbon.

74 of these? What were we thinking???

Last week we also discovered that Grandmaster Fu had a number of photos he wanted to raffle off. So we ended up (much to our disgust) having to organise a raffle after all. Although there really wasn't that much in the way of organising to be done - just needed to buy some raffle tickets and figure out what to do with the photos.

After all the preparation work we put into it, the day arrived. We all dashed off after tai chi (yes, we were mad enough to hold a tai chi class before our Christmas lunch!) and then made our way to the restaurant. Maxine was already there and had set up our tables with the chocolate parcels on every plate. It looked excellent, and I regret that I didn't think to take a photo of how it looked. Oh well...

People wandered in fairly promptly and fortunately most of them had remembered to bring their presents, so we had two boxes that were overflowing with goodies to be redistributed later. We had a basket as well that was full with gifts which were for the raffle. Maxine had supplied an extra handful of gifts to supplement the photos that Sifu wanted raffled off.

The food was excellent. If you find yourself near a La Porchetta restaurant in your travels, and it's anything like the one we went to, I can definitely recommend it. There was also plenty of food. We had antipasto platters for starters, pizza for our entree, followed up by spaghetti bolognese, penne pesto and a fisherman's basket for the main course. I ate enough of the antipasto and pizza that I didn't have any room left for the pasta or fish (not that I eat fish if I don't have to).

Maxine & I had to do a little bit of running round with selling raffle tickets, drawing the raffle, and then distributing the Secret Santa gifts. Fortunately, we made sure we got to eat before we ran about doing things. I also got pulled up to take photos at one point. Thinking back on it now, there were a few things I would've liked photos of now!

For now, though, this is a picture of one of the tables. Don't you just love the hats that Maxine & I had? They're a lot longer than they look, because we had them sort of piled up and wrapped about so they wouldn't get in the way.

And me, Sifu and Maxine's daughter, Lauren. Lauren also did a bit of photo taking, and of course, Sifu likes the pretty ladies, so had to have a picture taken with them!

The raffle ended up a bit of a laugh once we'd finished it. Because Maxine & I were selling the raffle tickets, and me being the type to think about other people before myself in these sorts of situations, I almost forgot to buy any tickets for myself. I ended up buying myself a few tickets, and didn't really take a good look at them, not really expecting to win anything.

After a brief pause filled by eating and counting money, we got up again to draw the raffle. About three quarters of the way through, a number got drawn, and after shouting out the number several times and not getting any response we discarded it and did a redraw. Grand Master Fu started opening the tickets before passing them to me, so he could find the ticket his daughter had so she could get a prize ("fortunately" he found it right on the last prize). With all the raffle prizes gone, we sat down again, and I closely examined my tickets. Only to discover that the ticket that didn't get a response was sitting right there...

Presents were distributed not long after this. People were good enough to say if they hadn't brought gifts as well, so we ended up with enough to go around. I ended up with a pen (nothing fancy - just a plain ball-point pen that you could buy in any old newsagents) and a dried flower bookmark.

It was really good to see people staggering off at the end of the afternoon after having had plenty of yummy food to eat, and carrying multiple colourfully wrapped parcels. One instructor had brought his 12 (13, maybe? I've forgotten how old she is) daughter along, and she ended up with ten of the little chocolate parcels as everyone on her table gave them to her. She said that she was going to pass them on to her friends as Christmas gifts.

I'm just glad that everyone enjoyed themselves, and actually told us how much they enjoyed it, too! Who knows what we'll do for Christmas next year.