Chinese New Year!

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Xin Nian Kuai Le!!!  恭喜发财！ 新年快乐！！ Happy Chinese New Year!!

I suppose you could say we started our celebrations by driving all the way to the city late last night to watch the fireworks as that massive luxury cruiseliner Queen Mary II left Auckland Harbour. It was a little hard leaving the house as on TV was the movie Mean Girls which wasn't too bad for a Lindsey Lohan movie! (well the beginning anyway...)

As soon as we got into the city though the traffic was really bad! We got stuck and ended up driving all the way to Mission Bay at a really slow pace. I was surprised at how many people turned up to watch the QMII leave! There were people lining up the footpaths clamouring to get a good view of it as we slowly crawled along the road! By the time we got to Mission Bay we discovered there was a jazz and blues festival going on, which was probably contributing to the huge traffic jams! We only got to watch the fireworks and the ship from the car as we couldn't find a carpark for miles, even though others had parked at bus stops and on kerbs. We finally find a legal carpark, but by then it was all over so we just had a little walk (in the opposite direction to most other people!) before going off home.

Triangle TV were broadcasting CCTV4 live right throughout the night and so I watched a bit of that till 3am and it was really cool watching the Chinese people doing their dancing and singing and singing and dancing together! They did a few skits/comedy things at times and even though I couldn't understand them it did seem a little...odd...

I managed to wake up in time for church anyway. The minister the week before asked us all to dress up in red, so we all did our best to! I was a little weary of doing that as when we approached church I couldn't see anyone else in red! As we walked in though there were quite a few people in red, traditional Chinese dresses or just wearing pink (good enough!).

The minister used his sermon to try encourage us all to get to church early and blablabla....I stopped listening after that! We were all given a little bookmark card thing before the service ended. I then caught up with Angie who was wearing pink (but yeah good enough!!). Before the special lunch, we were all numbered off and split into groups to do some activity where we had to introduce ourselves with a Chinese New Year greeting and memorise each other's. Fortunately the game didn't last too long and we went off for lunch.

Everyone had to contribute a plate of food. These types of lunches are my favourite, as there are usually heaps of yummy stuff and you can eat as much as you can! Angie went to have lunch with one of her friends while I had lunch with my family. Aonghas soon had to go off to work (once again they ring him right at the last minute to ask him to come in! So much for rosters!) Angie came over a while later for a talk and I ended up buying a chocolate bar from one of her sister's friends...you know Chinese New Year spirit!

It was really cool walking around Westcity when picking Aonghas up from work to see Asian people around the place either wearing red or pink! It'd be like 'Hey that person's wearing red!" (Yeah I sound like a dork!)

I haven't gotten any lucky red envelopes yet from my parents but it's all good, it's Chinese New Year, the year of the pig! It's my dad's year!! Plus it's also around this time of year I usually feel more Asian than usual!