New Year Trip to My Home

The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, takes place on the first day of the year based on the lunar calender, which is usually in February according to the solar calender. It is a time for family reunion and a time to remember your ancestors. It's been five years since I've been home for the holiday. I really missed the festivity of the holiday. This year, John and I happened to be in China. Even though we only had 3 days off work, we decided to fly home. John was nervous to meet my family, he won't admit that, but I can feel his tension :-) But my folks weren't too hard on him.

There were lots of new year activities. We missed the month-long food preparation part for sure. By the time we got home, my dad has already had the spring couplets up. These are the red paper on the doors with writings on them. The one on our door this year says Good Luck Everyday, Big Fortune Every Year.

There are endless meals with all sorts of food. Lots of what I would consider delicacy appears as weird food to John :-) For example, my mom got out a box of delicacy which consists of two pig tails, one pig tongue, half a pig head, a pig heart, and of course a liver. And we had to go to different relatives to eat dinner as tradition goes. My favorite aunt prepared some fried cicadas for me, and John refused to kiss me for a long time after I ate a plate of those :-)

John likes my mom's big wok to cook dumplings in. The wok also serve as a heater to heat up my concrete bed. At night my mom would leave coal in the burner so my bed would keep warm. We kept sweating the whole night. Even though my mom put layers and layers of bedding on our bed, John still got a sore back after sleeping on it for three days.

Worshiping ancestors is a big part of the festival. My grandma and John set up the worship table and put lots of food on it. My dad had to light up the incense and candles after the table's set. Then he would burn some paper money in the courtyard. Hopefully my ancestors would have a good 2008.

At midnight we got up to set off the firecrackers. John woke up and told me he had a dream that he's in Iraq because the fireworks were so freaking loud and were going on continuously throughout the night!

I hope you are not bored by now. Maybe I'll talk about more later :-)

Here's a link to more pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/SherrySParentSHome2008

Our apt in Shanghai

We decided to upload some pictures of out apt in Shanghai so some of you don't have to worry that we are sleeping on the street :-)

Due to the snow storm here, lots of cities are out of power. The government has been calling for people on TV to turn off their heaters and turn down all the facilities that use power. John said he couldn't read so we could ignore the notices :-) We hope they won't cut our power cuz we'll be frozen to death before too long.

We got our tickets to go to my home for the Chinese New Year (sorry Judson, even though the Koreans celebrate it too, we still call it the Chinese new year because they got it from us :-) Just kidding). My parents are so excited to meet their new foreign son-in-law, which made John nervous. The village president told my mom he'd send his driver to pick us up from the airport. I think it's a big deal that I married an American. I hope John doesn't punch people in their faces when they come to my house and admire him :-) I'll have to watch him real close.

Here's the link to pictures of our apt.

http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/OurAptInShanghai

We love all of you. Stay warm!

Vagas

I don't think we ever posted about our Vagas trip. I don't have to work today so I decided to make it up. Mom got us a room at the Stratosphere so we could spend a night in Vagas and go to the airport in the morning. After we said goodbye to them in the hotel, we decided to go find the M&M factory cuz I've always wanted to go there.

We didn't realize it'd took us 2 hours to walk there. It's on the very end of the Strip. By the time we got there, we were both beat. When we were coming back, we decided to go eat. We found a Seafood Buffet for only $15 dollars with the coupon someone handed to us on the street.

When we got there, we found out that we had to be a registered member to use that coupon. So we did. And they gave us four cute snowman plates for registering. Guess what? I carried those four snowman plates all the way to Shanghai. Now they are the fanciest kitchen ware in my kitchen :-)

We got on the shuttle in the morning to the airport. Everything went well. We got on the plane without any problem. The plane we were on from Vagas to Vancouver was fancy, with individual TVs on each seat. You can watch movies and TV shows. John got to sit in the Exit row, too. However, the plane from Vancouver to Shanghai wasn't so good. John was really sad!

I slept the whole way as always while John finished his Harry Potter book!

The end.

Here's a link to our pictures from Vagas.

http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/Vegas2007

Enjoy*-*