chinese new year


ahah. the camera usb-cable thieving mystery has now been solved (turns out i falsely accused andy of stealing it, but in the end it turned out to be dad, who knew of my plight right from the start!) and the good news is i can now update, cos u cant read a post without photos! especially not a chinese new year post!

so yes, now i am going to pretend that today is still the chinese new year weekend, and hence lie about the date of this post ;-)


*gong xi fa cai!!* happy chinese new year!
yay! haha. it is now officially the 'year of the pig'! perfect. i dont need to clean my room for a whole year! actually, it means it's time for some cute pig pictures. yay!


as everyone should already know Chinese new year runs by the lunar calendar, and this year New Year's Eve fell on a Saturday, the 17th Feb, so, as every good chinese housewife does, i was busy making jiaozi!
(or dumplings, for u non-chinese people). and yes, i do think im chinese. i'm certainly not russian!

I went to bed at a normal time, but for some the new year was met and many firecrackers were set off across the night in China! *excitement*


Sunday morning a group of ex-ELTHAM girls made their way into the city to chinatown on Melbourne's little bourke street. it was pretty cool, almost like being in China again...by that i mean there were lots and lots of people there! 'ren shan ren hai' both seas and mountains of people! it all added to the heat of the day - it was very hot!

but despite the heat it was fun anyway, we pushed our way through the crowds and chased a lion dancing lion. the lions were lively, there were six or seven, and five even climbed up bamboo poles - quite a feat!


after meandering through some more crowds we took a rest, as the lion was also pausing for a minute, and a nice chinese lady told Vicki to pat a lion's bum for good luck, so she did!
(note: she patted the lion's bum not the people underneath its! lol.they only wish she patted theirs!)

it soon became too hot to tolerate any more, so we fled for some lunch, and then decided to check out Cathy and Renee's parkville apartments. alas, both we didnt make it into either, as Cathy didnt have her key and Renee's house despite being near the zoo, was too hard to find! but we did have quite a journey getting there!

we took trams, sweating and feeling hot and tired, and we trekked along the rail road with the sun beating down on us and not a drop of water in sight!

we took more trams from deserted tram stops in the middle of no-where and rode those trams to the end of the line without getting off (something i've always wanted to do!) and then rode the same one back into the city, safe and not-lost at last! it was an eventful afternoon doing nothing!

after that a few of us went to richmond to vicki's house and then browsed IKEA looking for things for Cathy's apartment. we bought some hair dye and vicki drove to my house where the hair-dying and chinese new year banquet preparations began.

it turns out that Cathy is really a super-hero!! or maybe she just likes dress-ups...

we made some more dumplings, accompanied with egg and tomato (which wasn't very good! :( alas!) and we discovered that Vicki has another (this time not so useless) talent!
hair-dying! she looks quite the professional!


dinner preparation was complete, Leo's tea was in the teapot, and the banquet began! here's mum and dad with Vicki and Cathy and her newly golden hair still wet. wah!

and so concludes the 2007 spring festival day for this small group of girls.