Gung Ho Fat Choy

Today is the Chinese New Year and that is the traditional greeting which means "may prosperity be with you". This is a very important time of year in most of Asia. It is a time to celebrate new beginnings,and fresh starts. They celebrate for 15 days and here are some of the traditions and preparations: cleaning the house to "sweep away the bad luck from last year", getting haircuts and new clothes for a fresh, clean start, decorating the house with red banners and scrolls for good luck, placing live blooming plants around the house to symbolize renewal, and handing out red envelopes with money inside to all the children for good luck. We had a little family dinner celebration last night with some chinese food, decorated the house with lanterns and dragons, and gave Laina a couple of small gifts(at 2, money isn't all that interesting thank goodness). We started learning to count to 10 in Mandarin, and read some Chinese New Year stories we found at the library. In the coming years we intend to learn more about it and attend some of the parades and festivities in Chinatown, or with our China travel group and all of the kids. Tomorrow they will make paper lanterns at Laina's Day Care and read some of the stories I have to the other kids. In the Chinese zodiac this is the year of the Ox. The Chinese observe a 12-year cycle in which each year is named after a particular animal. Laina was born in 2006, the Year of the Dog, Jimmy is a Rabbit and I am an Ox. I used to have a link for the zodiac for you to click on, just scroll down on the side of the blog. Hopefully it works. So we wish all of our family and friends "Gung Ho Fat Choy" today and hope for a fantastic New Year for all of you!