Chinese New Year and Xander's Field Trip

We recently celebrated Chinese New Year here in Singapore. It is the biggest holiday of the year here, mostly because the bulk of the population is of Chinese heritage. Joseph went to Chinatown with Xander's kindergarten class during the festivities and took some fun pictures that represent what we see all around us during the holiday. I thought I would post them because someday when we move away it will be fun to reminisce about the things that were so familiar to us at one time of our life.

Xander with his school buddies. He sure has a fun time at school and enjoys just about everything about it. The other day he was sick and was missing his first day of school this year. He was pretty distraught because he thought he would miss something fun.

We see a lot of dried meat stalls around CNY. I recently learned that it is because the Chinese do not want to use knives (bad luck) after the start of the new year so they buy dried meat to steam with rice.

Xander took this picture of Joseph. (That was pretty brave of Joseph to hand over his huge camera.) Joseph is standing next to a stand of pomelos--a sweet citrus fruit popular during CNY.

Burning sticks for ancestors--the smoke goes up to heaven and reaches them.

Chinese lanterns hang everywhere.

Cherry blossoms bring to mind springtime and new life. In China I think they bloom around CNY. I love this picture because of what Xander is wearing. He was so excited about the field trip and carefully picked these clothes the night before to wear (normally he wears a uniform to school but it was free dress for the field trip.) Plaid on plaid and just perfect.

Read and gold are the colors we see around us everywhere--they symbolize weath and prosperity.

A CNY delicacy. I used to know what it was made out of but I forgot.

I just love my happy, optimistic boy.
Shop houses in Chinatown.