Happy Chinese New Year!

This year is the year of ox, my baby's zodiac. I read on Wikipedia, that a person born in the year of ox is "Dependable, calm, methodical, patient, hardworking, ambitious, conventional, steady, modest, logical, resolute, tenacious. Can be stubborn, narrow-minded, materialistic, rigid, demanding." OK, mostly good. The link above has lots of great information about Chinese astrology, zodiac, five elements, etc, some of which I don't even know. You can check out what zodiac are you, and whether it was ying or yang, and what element was it for your year. And if you know exactly what time you were born on that day, you can learn more. It's a lot of fun.

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year! Read more about our biggest holiday here. Yesterday, the new year's eve, I was really in the mood of cooking, surprisingly. So, I not only made lots of dumplings (check out this tutorial I posted last year), but also cooked 4 dishes and a soup for dinner. Actually I cooked 7, but 3 of them took too long, so didn't made it to the dinner table. I tried some new recipes, and at least one of them turned out really great. I will post the recipe tomorrow, I need to scan the picture in. And we watched the national new year party, did the count-down together with millions of Chinese people. Too bad fire crackers are illegal here. =( Traditionally, Chinese people will try their best to go back home and have the big new year's eve dinner with their families. That's why around this time, there is the largest human migration, ChunYun. Since we are too far away, and don't have the chance to go back home at this time, we have to call our parents and say "Happy New Year" (Bai4 Nian2) to them before the midnight. My father-in-law is still in coma, so we couldn't call him. But he was definitely in our thoughts. This is one of the Chinese holidays that really makes you homesick.