xin nian kuai le!!!

Happy NEW YEAR!!
Today is new year's eve, which means staying up, playing cards, and eating dumplings and candy. It also means wearing red, especially if you are born in the year of the dog (1982) like me. You should say to people, "xin nian kuai le" or "happy new year" or also "gong xi fa cai" (note to my mother: the cantonese version is "gong hey fa choi")which roughly means "become prosperous"

On to other things: So I haven't written in a while, partially because we don't have internet in our house any more (long story), and partially because I've been so busy going to class and doing my homework. For example, over break I have to memorize a Song dynasty poem and write an essay about Harbin. I hope to be able to use some of my new vocab words like, "the beauty of mist rising out over the water" or "to thumb the table and roar with happiness." Sometimes I feel like my vocab words were defined by a non-English speaking Chinese person with a dictionary. My favorite definition was of the word "shi ci," defined as "poetry and ci." I must say, ci has always been one of my favorite literary forms. (It turns out ci is a certain type of poetry with a very strict word scheme, much like a haiku or sonnet). Other than teaching and studying I have been having dinner with more Chinese people, which is really nice. I also went to the beach on Wednesday and shot off many fireworks. It was a bit like fourth of july, except extremely cold (my big toe turned purple), and some of our fireworks were of the type that aren't really legal in America. We had a lot of the ones that shot into the air and then had a big colorful explosion, which was really neat, though a litte scary because it was just right over our heads. There were also lots of fireworks just like the fourth of july, right down to the dud sparklers. On the whole there have been lots of fireworks going up write around the city, and even more fire crackers. Sometimes it feels a little bit like walking in a war zone. "Little new year" or "xiao nian," which falls at the end of a month in the lunar calender passed last sunday, and that day there were so many fireworks we could barely teach over the noise. Following tradition, we also ate dumplings.