return of Spring Festival

We welcomed Spring Festival in with another million firework bangs this year and again found ourselves sicker than dogs.

Krista again spent Chinese New Year’s Eve in bed all day with a major headache and fever – praying it away. Preston, who was recovering from his weeklong bout of sickness, enjoyed walks around the campus as he breathed in firework fumes and experienced the first warm day in a long time – a prelude to spring? February 13 was our first day without our day-long Chinese classes, so it’s no wonder we were exhausted and ready for a break.

Despite being under the weather, we got up Sunday morning to head out with our student’s family to enjoy New Year’s Day festivities Chinese style. Nell, her husband and 14-year-old son, David, picked us up in their car at 9 a.m. and ferried us over to the largest Spring Festival Temple Fair in the city.

Unfortunately, the weather was windy and frigid. But we enjoyed the bilingual conversation, the myriad of goodies and festival wares out for inspection and the people watching. For warmth we found an inside display of photos on National Day activities as well as a flower show and Chinese game center. Preston learned a traditional Chinese game and Krista found a seat and soaked up the warmth.

The day’s plans called for a daylong outing, yet Krista’s waning fortitude called for an afternoon rest before the jiao zi (dumpling) party for dinner. Nell lives in a two-bedroom flat in the same complex as her parents and sister. She put us up in the master bedroom (way better than our own digs) and settled us in.

For New Year’s Day dinner, we made jiao zi with the entire family, and being our third attempt, we finally have got the hang of it. It was so much fun enjoying the holiday together, especially with our Chinese friends, as we had previously missed our traditional American holidays.

Nell and her family were a perfect fit for our stamina and demeanor. We enjoyed looking at her son’s photos of his recent trip to Yunnan and the video of his participation in the National Day festivities (he was one of the flowers in Tiananmen Square – requiring three months of practice and 10 hours of work on the day of). Preston enjoyed helping Tiffany, her niece, learn a new song on the guitar and we both had fun teaching everyone the Chicken Dance and YMCA.

The day was rounded off by our very own personal fireworks show – which required a lot of running and laughing and insisting that we didn’t want to light any ourselves.

Day two saw us out for a one-hour walk around the neighborhood, hot pot for lunch and an afternoon at Chaoyang Park International Carnival. In the evening, we enjoyed learning how to make noodles (mian tiao) and watching the National Day video in English.

Now this side of the main Spring Festival celebration, the fireworks continue on and we are enjoying a few days of the Chinese-only environment at TIP. PTL our Chinese is pretty good. Krista has spent another three days in bed nursing a sore throat and nagging cough. Our Chinese speech is due on Monday and we are ready. We head to Hangzhou (near Shanghai) this week for a wedding celebration and bit of rest before the next session gets underway on March 7.

lots of photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40596876@N06/sets/