Chinese New Year/ Spring Festival

The Festivities began on Thursday with a morning of activities at Huck's school. There were art projects and cooking activities in each room. Huck painted a fan, made a noodle art project of a Chinese Character, painted the Great Wall on a Challah cover and did several water colors. He also made jiaozi (dumplings)... Kosher of course.

At Jack and Jed's school, on Friday, there was a parade. I had a meeting with teachers, so Tom went to watch the boys. In my meeting, with 3 faculty members about some fairly serious issues, about 5 minutes into the meeting, loud drums and Chinese marching music began to play for a solid 30 minutes for the parade. We could not turn it off so we just talked through the ruckus.

Friday was Xing Ayi and Xiao Shang's last day of work for 9 days. I am sure they think the house will nearly fall down without them watching over things but we are managing well. Of course I prefer not having to do the laundry and dishes and cleaning but it is nice to have our house to ourselves.

There is hardly any traffic on the roads. The markets have shut from anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. Even our little Jenny Lou's grocery market was closed on New Year's Day. It seems as though more shops have closed this year. I assume it is because business is very slow so they figure shutting down for a few days can't hurt.

My friend took her kids to her ayi's house for New Year's dinner. Her daughter was sick and the ayi's mother reported that Western kids get sick more than Chinese kids because we feed them cold foods. The cold foods cause the stomach to shrink, so there isn't enough room for the food in the tummy and it comes back up... Interesting theory.