Gung Hay Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

The characters on our pig masks say "gung hay fat choy."
Chinese New Year is celebrated by spending time with the family--like Christmas or Thanksgiving back home. Shops close, everyone migrates back to their home town and there's a lot of gift-giving. Last night we went out to the "flower market" where people go to buy flowers (!) and other gifts for family and friends. The flowers were nice, but I was much more impressed by all the wonderfully tacky "year of the pig" memorabilia being touted. Even better is the fact that we get the next week off school. So, after two weeks of classes I'm off to Thailand for a week. I then have two more weeks of class before week-long Spring break arrives.

Here's a random pic from Macau. We had lots of fun on these exercise machines. In most of the parks there are some free machines like this--mainly eldery people were out using them, with the exception of Lady Ho Tung.