Blogging
From Abroad

Chinese New Year festivities will begin this Friday, Feb. 16th. The town is decorated with huge red lanterns, stores are flooded with red pocket money holders and our campus International Exchange Office had a celebration dinner with about 40 students (local & exchange). We baked traditional cakes, practiced Calligraphy, and had a traditional feast.
-Cake baking was quite a biceps workout. Geezie we had to stir for so long! But (as with all desserts) it was well worth it!
-Writing in traditional Chinese calligraphy made me think of ‘the good ol’ days’ in my kindergarten class when I would practice writing my name, concentrating on each letter, trying not to mess up and thinking this is the hardest thing in the entire world because Chinese Calligraphy is so intricate. It took me at least 10 minutes to finish my 4 character greeting. You bet I flaunted that sucker around, like an A+ spelling test.

-One of my favorite memories of the day was when they brought out our traditional dinner, an entire roasted big, nostrils and all, with red flowers on it’s head. Then (if it didn’t get any better) our advisor says, “Come and stand behind for a group picture.” haha Carolyn, a used-to-be vegetarian, goes “Baby steps people….BABY STEPS. I just started eating meat again” lol I don’t think it was coincidence that we had so much pork left over on the table.