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Kung Hei Fat Choy! Sun Lin Fie Lok!

Monday, February 03, 2014

Chinese New Year has officially kicked off and is in full swing here in Honkers.

tina and i in disney with our cny ears

January 31 was the first day, and it all began with the night parade. The parade began at 8:30pm and we arrived at 4pm, since it is such a popular event. It was very frustrating at times because Tina, David, Ivenise, and I were pretty much constantly fighting with people around us to keep our spots and stay at the front by the gate. We had a good time though checking out all the Chinese New Year decorations downtown though.

pink lanturns?! my kind of new year!

before the parade...around 4:30pm

still saving spots..probably 5:30pm ish

after parade...so over it...about 10pm

REALLY after the parade..it looked like a natural disaster had come through

The parade itself was pretty neat. It was full of lights, lions dances, dragons, and precious little children. There was also a Disney float with some of my coworkers waving to us on.

I have really gotten in to the Chinese New Year spirit, and began decorating my apartment with lai see (red pocket money).

and yes my Christmas tree is still up, but it is even better cause it has CNY decor!

I was very excited to get my first red pocket money envelope at work the next day from Sang Sang.

I also got some special lai see from work...

This week I also went to a very local event, the Lunar New Year Festival. Let's just talk about how many people were there for a second. I could barely move up and down the aisles because it was so jammed with people. There were lots of stands with people on ladders with microphones yelling things in Chinese (when they weren't giving me my own special shout out welcoming me to Hong Kong...). Here is a little taste....

Speaking of taste, I had some really awesome, and some really not so awesome treats there.

This thing was like two saltine crackers on a stick, with some very, very sticky honey-like substance in the middle. So good, and I was very sad when it was gone.

This heavenly concoction was strawberries on a stick with some drizzled sugary glaze, then frozen. This was so amazing, I got two of them. Sadly, these are just a Lunar New Years Festival specialty, and they do not sell them anywhere ):!

Now this one...looks like a chocolate chip cookie on a stick, right? Wrong. This was terrible. It is a jello consistency, which is brown sugar flavored, and the things that look like chocolate chips are red beans. This thing is served luke warm, and made me gag trying to eat it.

Other than that, I had a pretty super fun time at the festival.

On a different cultural note, we celebrated Australian Day this past week as well. Some of our mermaids and jungle men are Aussie and they had a little get together for everyone where we were introduced to fairy bread (bread with butter and sprinkles), lolli's (candy), and other goodies.