Happy Lunar New Year

Chinese New Year is in full swing here, which means that the roads are empty, the food stalls, local shops, and even major malls are closed, and everything is somewhat still. (Our first year here, I thought there would be parades and crowds. Not so. I guess there is one parade downtown several weeks prior to the actual New Year.) Red lanterns hang from all the street lights and little mandarin trees are set up like Christmas trees in the malls and outside doorways. Because we live close to a major road, we are fortunate enough to hear the trucks carrying dragon dancers pounding their drums as they move on to their next gig. It is loud too, especially after 10:00pm. This year we were invited to another Chinese New Year party hosted by a colleague of Joseph's from Cargill. Mostly it is a huge family day, like Thanksgiving in a way, with lots of food and sitting around talking. Then you go and make rounds, visiting all your friends and bringing them 2 oranges and red envelopes with money for the children. Last year Abigail and Maggie each earned $30 without doing much more than smiling and saying "xie xie." Even Xan and Ella came home with several of these red envelopes . I would have loved a holiday like that when I was a kid!

So this last Saturday we all got dressed for the party and made our way to this home for the festivities. We were about 25 minutes late and when we pulled up there were no other cars. I thought, "oh, that's sad. No one came to their party. Looks like we are going to be the only ones here." Then I pointed out the lack of cars to Joseph and he looked puzzled for a minute then pulled over and checked the email (I hate Blackberries and I'll save my ranting for another blog, but this was one instance where it was really useful to have access to email in a random place.) Apparently we were invited to attend a party to take place the following Saturday. Fortunately, we were saved from an embarrassing moment showing up with our oranges one week early. This turned out to be a good trial run and I'm sure we will make it to enjoy another successful Chinese New Year celebration next weekend. I pulled that picture of dragon dancers off the internet. The only dragon dancers I've seen are at the girls' school and it is pretty fun (and loud).

By the way, it is the year of the Ox. We don't have any oxes in our family, but maybe you do. Here are the birth years for the Ox: 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 2009