The  Jolly  Christmas  Party

 By Zhong Wanting

‘The boat is sinking! Group yourselves into three!’

As Eden’s voice echoed through the air, we all darted around anxiously, trying to form ourselves into groups of three. Someone was left alone, dashing around frenziedly, trying to find a craft with two people on it. Yet, there was none. Helplessly, she sank into the dark ocean……

Don’t mistake it for a real sailing disaster! It was only a game in our Christmas party at Linguaphone and it was called ‘The Boat is Sinking’. The room was soon filled with laughter from the participants, as we dodged around, trying to form ourselves into safe groups. There was absolute confusion as people bumped into one another, and we even tried to hide an extra person in our group by packing together closely and screening the crouched down extra from view!

‘The Newspaper Dance’ is a very traditional game in which two people try to stand on a newspaper together. Be careful, the newspaper gradually gets smaller after each round!

Although it was an old game, we still enjoyed playing it! After finding partners, we started playing the game. We all struck acrobatic poses in this game, standing on one foot and trying to keep our balance in ‘dangerous’ ways. My partner and I held on to each other firmly and finally, we lasted to the end.

Have you ever gone shopping like a real housewife? We really had some fun and enjoyed the happiness of teamwork.

It would definitely have been a difficult task had we been separated, yet with the help of our team members, we were able to complete the seemingly insurmountable task, in which we had to wear an apron (it must be tied up well!), a pair of gloves, a silk scarf, a pair of sunglasses and a large Christmas hat and walk two lengths of the room while carrying a large basin without hitting a large bottle of coke at one end of the room.

At first, it seemed impossible to do so within half an hour with ten people in a team. However, with good teamwork, we managed to do so rapidly.

‘Quick! Give her the sunglasses!’ A girl ordered as she was tying the apron for another girl.

‘Gloves? Gloves?’  ‘Where’s the hat?’

‘Here, and don’t forget the basin!’

Sometimes a girl’s apron would fall lose and somebody else might sprint up immediately, trying to help her with the strings.

Soon it was my turn to ‘go shopping’. The hat was stuffed onto my head, the sunglasses were crammed onto my nose and the scarf was tied around my neck as I clumsily stuck my hands into the woolly gloves. The apron was already tied firmly and I stumbled out in the excited screams of my teammates.

No sooner had I finished my turn than all my heavy shopping garments were stripped in barely more than three seconds. I was rather amazed at their speed! See, this was what we called ‘cooperation’!

We played several other games such as ‘Word Rearrangement’, ‘Christmas Quiz’ and ‘Potato’. With the final game, ‘Make a Snowman’, we reached the climax of the party. We were organized into groups of five. By wrapping one person in tissue, we could make ‘snowman’.

After asking the ‘mould’ person in our group to sit down, we others started unrolling the roll of tissue. We carefully wrapped the tissue around his body. Soon, he looked like a snowman mummy entangled in tissue!

There was a lot of laughter in the party, and we all enjoyed ourselves. This was a merry Christmas! I hope that all of you can enjoy yourselves during this year’s jolly Christmas! 

      广东实验中学  初二（1）班  钟琬婷