Birthday and Chinese New Year

Well I had a pretty eventful past two days so here's a bit about it:

First, the night of the 24th, I went out with my friends for pizza and dancing.

Then on the 25th during the day I went to a temple fair (which was mostly stuff to eat and buy) with my roommate.

At five pm, I met up with four friends and headed to the Chinesebox Hostel, where Jake and I stayed when he was in Beijing. When Jake was here, we made friends with the owner, Joe (he's in his mid thirties), and he invited me to come back to celebrate New Year's with them. It was so cool! We met lots of Chinese people and we were in the hutongs, the traditional architecture area. We ate dumplings, which is tradition, and mutton and cabbage, which is also tradition.

People were setting off fireworks starting around sunset, but at midnight it was crazy. There were fireworks everywhere as far as the eye could see. It was a little scary cause people were setting off pretty big fireworks just about 20 feet away from us. But it was beautiful, and exciting.

We spent the night there because we stayed up late, not many taxis on New Year's Eve, also it was a hostel and they gave us a cheap price because we are friends. This morning, Joe made us a traditional Chinese New Year's Day breakfast and we drank good coffee.

After that, three of my friends went home and my friend Susie and I decided to explore a bit cause the weather was great. We went to a temple and saw lots of people there who were I guess doing their new year's praying.

Then, we went to a snack place and ended up sitting with two women from Beijing, a 55 or so year old woman and her maybe 75 year old mother. We talked to them for a long time, mostly about food, which was pretty exciting.

We wanted to go to a park after that, but we got on the wrong bus and ended up around one of the more famous shopping areas, so I bought a shirt that has a bus on it and says Donut Take Out.

Being here for Chinese New Year has been pretty great. Everyone is happy, friendly, fireworks have been going off almost 24 hours, and I don't have to study. It's hard to explain how I feel about it--but let's just say it was a very very good thing. Pictures soon!