Hillston Uniting's Christmas in July

Question :-

What do you get when you put 11 Koreans, 1 Chinese Australian, 1 Japanese, 1 Polish Australian, 1 British Australian, 1 Australian who’s lived in Argentina, 1 Australian with a Welsh name, 2 who’ve lived in Hillston for over 70 years and 1 bog ordinary Australian, all of varying ages, into a room?

Shepherd, Joseph, Baby Jesus, Mary and an angel.

Answer: A night of fun at Hillston Uniting Church’s “English for Non-Native Speakers” Christmas in July.

Young,Tommy,Woody and Andrew open the bon-bons.

We weren’t able to explain why the jokes in the bon-bons aren’t funny but who could? But we wore the hats and ate the food and had a great night of conversation and fun. The hall was decorated with tinsel and a tree, with tea light candles lighting the way up the path to the hall. Everyone brought a small gift to share, which was put under the tree and handed out lucky dip style later in the night.

We sat down to a 3 course roast chicken and veges traditional dinner, complete with a huge plum pudding.

 Kibeom “David”Kim treated us to a Korean sweet, ho-dduk. It looked like a potato scallop but comprising mostly of sugar and cinnamon, it was much sweeter! Yum!

Small servings of the roast were collected on the first round of eating but plates were piled higher the next time. “It’s a good sign when they go back for seconds.” Roma, one of our native speaking volunteers, commented.

The shortbread and cake were a hit too.

In what turned out to be a highlight of the night we played a team game at the end where each team had to create a costume for a Christmas character out of newspaper and sticky tape. The results-Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, an angel, a shepherd and sheep were amazingly creative!

An international food night is planned to be held in a few months. These social events and English classes are made possible by the same grant from Unitingcare, obtained by Uniting church rural chaplains, which provided for computer classes in Hillston and craft days in Merriwagga, all administered by Hillston Uniting Church.