Happy Chinese New Year!

Hey Chia!

Happy New Year! Gong xi fa chai! Gong hay fat choi! Xin nian kuai le!

I wish you the best luck this year.
I wish you super health.
I wish you happiness.

The two weeks of Chinese new year is coming to an end, and I look back on how awesome it was this year as I had 4 dinners this year! =) My first dinner was with my birth father and his family. It was my first, well... 'family' CNY dinner, and I was super happy that they thought of inviting me.

For me, CNY was always something so foreign. I was never raised on this. The only thing I celebrated was Christmas. So I was always stuck feeling like a fraud as I looked the part, but never understood or knew about it. I only experienced CNY when I entered uni and all of a sudden all my friends just happened to be Asian. As time has gone by, I have learned more and more about the Chinese culture through friends, boyfriends and actively trying to learn about the Chinese culture and language. This year came in full circle as I finally felt comfortable with this celebration.

Hong Bao- I used to feel really awkward receiving hong baos. I actually cried one year because I felt guilty taking these red packets with money inside of them from people I didn't know. My own parents stopped giving me pocket money once I started university.

I also had dinner with a huge group of friends at Dragon Palace where we saw a lion dance, and I even fed a lion this time! First time ever!

This lion has LED lights!

They told me to stand on a chair to make the lion work for it. It was pretty fun and intimating with all the loud drums banging and the lion being so big and moving so quickly. You just don't know what is going on half the time.  However, I believe that feeding the lion is good luck, and I am feeling lucky at the moment.

On the 7th day Shaz invited us over her house where she made this awesomely big yee sung and we had steam boat! YUM!

Finally, last night Kev and I had our last CNY dinner with the uni crew; Clem, Terry, Vanni, Chrissy, Drew, Katie, Alicia and Michael, at Regal on Roe. Unfortunately, I didn't get a group photo this year  =(

Were you able have to have a CNY dinner?