Happy Chinese New Year-Year of the Ox (aka cow)

Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year was officially Jan 26-28th and we returned to work Thursday Jan 29th after a nice 5 day holiday of doing virtually nothing.

Mark returned from a week in Shanghai for work right before the holiday and unfortunately brought home a cold and was feeling sick during the weekend. Now I have the cold and have spent this Saturday sleeping and trying to get rid of it. But, back to Chinese New Year (CNY).

CNY here is the biggest holiday of the year where shops actually shut down and everyone heads home to spend time with their families.

I dragged Mark to the Chinese New Year festival in Victoria Park near our apartment and for a former cow collector like me, this was a cow heaven. These were the only pictures I got this past weekend, so all these pics are of the festival.

The year of the ox meant an overload of cow stuffed animals, cow shaped everything for sale, for wearing and for eating. Although, I think these nasty black tongues are actually pig tongue.

There's so many superstitions surrounding CNY I can't begin to name them or believe in them, but one we can't help but follow is the tradition of "red pockets" since everyone I know has their hands out expecting them.

Red pockets are the red envelopes filled with money you give to people younger than you, unmarried people and employees. This means I get to give to pretty much everyone in my office, the 1/2 dozen doormen at our building and children of friends.

Australia Day
Monday, Jan 26th was also Australia Day and one of Mark's Co-Workers (Lorelle) threw an Australia Day/Chinese New Year party.

Lorelle lives by Monkey Mountain and we drove to the party with Mark's boss Julian and his wife and 3 kids. They had never been to Monkey Mountain before even though they've lived here longer than us. I couldn't have that so we convinced them to make a quick stop so the kids could see the monkies.