Xi Nian Kwai Le!

Happy Chinese New Year from the Middle Kingdom!  The fireworks are ongoing, the stores are closed, and although our streets are pretty deserted here (most people travel to their "hometowns"), we hope to see some celebrating tomorrow at Tiger Hill.  I'm on a 2-week hiatus from work, so I'm thrilled for the holiday.

Making Hanging Decorations from red Envelopes

At school there were several events leading up to our last day at school.  On Monday last the Chinese staff provided an hour of fun cultural activities for us, including making a hanging from the hong bao (red envelopes used for gifting money), making dumplings, paper cutting, and painting Chinese couplets to decorate either side of your doorway.

Paper cutting...I skipped this one, not my forte.

 We collected money for our cleaning people, our room assistants, and our bus drivers and presented them with their hong bao with a sincere thanks and "Xi Nian Kwai Le".  It's the year of the goat/sheep/ram, so people decorate their doors with symbols of the year, ghosts to ward off evil spirits and all around cool signage for the event.

My studentsI

prepared poems about spring for a parent program on Friday before break, and I was part of a group of teachers who performed the opening act for the secondary assembly, Taiko (Japanese) drumming.  Catch our act on this YouTube channel:  http://youtu.be/-egjUPy7pFI
We had acrobats and a dragon dance in our main foyer on the last day before break, and they were good.  There are random bright pink plastic trees around the city to mark the celebration of the "spring festival" which is what Chinese New Year was originally called.  It's only 40 degrees F today, so someone needs to tell the weatherman about the spring part.
There were lots of boxes of various food items for sale, and people were buying as much as they could carry.  We went down an alley with a local market and I saw some puzzling items for sale, which I present the pictures of for you to ponder.  My favorite is definitely the fish;  Welcome to China, people, where you know it's fresh because we just killed it and the blood is still on the knife!

Notice the camouflaged penguins and one elephant???

We heard the air quality should improve dramatically in a day or two because it's the one time of the year where the factories are closed down.  I look forward to that. Right now outside it sounds like we're in a battle zone, lots of booms.  I hope tomorrow we see some of the colored stuff in the sky, but that may be all for export.  More to follow.

no idea...

eels, I presume.

Only a buck...I thought frogs were a sign of longevity???

cute cart for some type of kabob

very orderly kabobs, not sure of what

Massacre on the street, weapon left at crime scene.

pretty toasted somethings

not sure if you string them and wear them, or crack and eat.

Looks like parts of a fish?