Day 37: February 9, 2013 Happy New Year!

      Today was the first day I actually got to sleep in! Catriona was awake so I was in and out of sleep after about 10, but I didn’t managed to make myself get up until almost noon. I got up and changed and then headed downstairs to meet up for the girl’s lunch we planned with Dianne. We walked over the one of the malls and headed upstairs to a nice restaurant that was apparently made famous for it’s great dumplings. We got a huge variety of things including some Chinese pears, cucumbers, rice, noodles, and of course dumplings. The dumplings were so good that we ended up ordering more! We had a great talk amongst everyone and it was really great to interact with the girls from the other class that I don’t get to see much. Dianne was so sweet and insisted on paying, demanding that we allowed her to so she could “save face” (a huge cultural thing she has been stressing in class since our arrival). Without much room for argument, we let her pay, took a group picture, and were on our way. 

Mall decorated for Chinese New Year

     
     Kara, Kathleen, and I wandered around the mall for a little while completely mesmerized by the decorations. There were hundreds and hundreds of red lanterns that were almost impossible to look away from. After somehow making it out of the lobby, we headed back to the hotel with only a couple of hours until our group New Year’s banquet. In the short time we had, I managed to shower and head to the train station with Adam and Bryan to square away the rest of our tickets for our trip. With that stress off of our shoulders, we met the group at the restaurant for a great celebration. 

     I got the privilege to sit next to the other class’s Chinese teacher, Susan, as well as a student on our trip named Sanford who is originally from Taiwan. It was really cool to see Sanford’s appreciation for the holiday here and how excited he was to be able to celebrate it in China for the first time in 10 years. It was also really nice to have him at the table because he could actually tell me what I was eating, which was definitely a first. Susan also helped out a lot as well and even gave me some travel tips for Hong Kong. 

Group photo

    
    After dinner Dianne made a little toast and thanked everyone for their help, especially the leadership team and Sanford. She gave out some gifts as well as received the typical little red envelope full of money for a New Year’s gift. Generally the older people give them to the younger people, but Sanford said we could just pretend like we don’t understand the culture and do it in reverse. 

     After a great dinner and celebration, we headed home and made sure to buy some fireworks on the way considering it was clearly the thing to do as they were going off everywhere around us. I gave in to my first McDonald’s meal when Bryan asked if I wanted anything brought back because it was just too easy. Unfortunately it wasn’t very good after sitting in the bag for a while, so I guess I will have to go back another time. Not to worry, within an hour we headed back to McDonald’s for ice cream and ended up with delicious strawberry Oreo McFlurrys. 

     After dessert we went to shoot off the fireworks, which we were expected to be awful since they were only about $2 for 7 of them. Surprisingly enough, they actually shot up really high and were super loud. We shot off a few at a street corner and then decided to find some fun places for the rest. After a few more stops we decided to head back on campus and shoot one off of the snowman built in the middle of the quad area. It flipped around on the way up which was a little sketchy but went off as well as the others and left the snowman covered in black. After setting off a few more, we headed upstairs to get some stuff done in our rooms. 

Roof top perch

     Not too much later, around midnight, an unreal amount of fireworks started going off and we all ran to the window down the hall to check it out. Without much hesitation, John and I decided to sneak back up to the roof. With my practice from the night before, we were up there in a matter of seconds only wearing shorts and a t-shirt but luckily John was nice enough to lend me his coat. As soon as we got outside we were awestricken by how close the fireworks were and how they were just going off in any direction you looked as far as you could see. We continued to look around just dumbfounded and made a pathetic attempt to capture the madness in a picture when we saw another person come out onto the roof. I initially freaked out a little thinking we were going to get in trouble, but it was just other kids from the group trying to join the fun. It ended up being Joe, Catriona, Bryan, Justin, John, and I just sitting at the highest point on the roof, which is on top of the air-conditioning system. We sat there for quite a while until eventually there was so much smoke from the fireworks that it was making the new fireworks hard to see. We decided the New Year is anything but good for the air quality but such an amazing site to see. We eventually made our way back inside and packed for our 3-day class trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou that takes off in the morning!