Happy chinese new year and valentine's day too!!

Traditions, ah I just love them, just like I love to wake up to a new morning. Oh, wait what if we would combine these two, what would we get!? Well, let me tell you that we would get 15 days of drumming that conveniently starts when the sun comes up and you’re still comfortably under covers dreaming of something nice that most definitely doesn’t include drums! So why the drumming? Simply cause it’s Chinese new year and dragon dancers with their group of drummers like to hang out in our neighbourhood trying to scare away bad and evil spirits with their lovely sounds from their drums…I’m sure if I would be a bad spirit I would get the heck out of here.

So it’s time for the new lunar year, which this time happens to be a year of rooster. Outi and I have done some traditional things that are essential part of Chinese new year. We visited Mandy (one of my classmates) and exchanged mandarin oranges. I told you earlier how there’s nothing else in the stores that tons of oranges, and this is the reason. When you visit a family you give them 2 oranges (2 cause even numbers bring good luck. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I just bought 2 pairs of shoes that were exactly alike but just different colours. Without a doubt, that must bring me lots of good luck!!!) then you get 2 oranges back. Okey, I know, now your little grey, confused brain cells are wondering what’s the point of giving 2 oranges when you get back 2 oranges. Well dude, it brings you good luck, without which you cannot survive these days in this cruel, cruel world. And well, if you’re not married (one more reason why not to get married and take that nagging husband that eventually just ends up laying on your couch with a bottle of beer asking where’s his dinner…) you get a small red envelope containing money!!! The sum is not exactly the same than in a weekly lottery and you don’t spend a week in Bahamas with that amount, but hey, It’s FREE money (and a really nice idea and thought anyway. We singles are such a poor creatures…) And why is the envelope red? You guessed it, that colour brings you good luck. (just like little red sport cars…) So what if you have found that so assumed Mr.Right, and committed yourself to be his house slave for the rest of your life? Too bad for you, you just have to start giving out your money in those red little packages to every single friend or relative of yours that shows up in your house with oranges in her hand…

We visited Mandy couple of days ago and today was time for another visit. We were invited to have a lunch (gosh, that sounds like we would be some high-ranking people, who just drives around in limousines and gets invitations to all kind of parties…I wish that would be the case…) with one Chinese couple at their home. (There were also some Chinese exchange students, but you barely noticed them since they were sitting quiet throughout the whole lunch! You can guess that the case wasn’t the same with us…) So we went there prepared with 2 oranges, got our red little packages containing money, and surrendered ourselves into the wonderful world of Chinese delicacies. Oh well, delicacies or not, but I don’t prefer things that taste like fish food or potato flour! But you know, you gotta stay cool and act like everything you put into your mouth is the best thing you’ve ever had. Just don’t make the mistake of trying it twice! And then we did something that SURPRISINGLY is supposed to bring us a thing called good luck! We had a Singaporean fish salad that has like billion of ingredients in it and we all had to stick our chopsticks in it and mix up everything by lifting the ingredients in the air with our chopsticks. The higher the better, cause then you would get even more good luck! So there we were, 11 persons lifting salad up in the air with our chopsticks faster and faster, higher and higher until it seemed like most of the salad was on the table and not in the bowl! Well this must mean that I will be one hell of a lucky girl this year!

Outi was so thrilled today at the grocery store. (you should have seen her…) She found some Ben & Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream from the freezer! (like some of you know, we made a little pilgrimage to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory to Vermont during our road trip. We just had to do that after spending half of our wages in Block Island to that heavenly stuff called ice cream…) And now she is sitting on our sofa staring at her cup doing a hard job digging into her ice cream with the spoon and guess what, she can’t found any pieces of brownies in it!! She is totally crushed. What! No pieces of brownies?! They are cheating us! Chocolate fudge brownie with out brownie is like a Christmas without santa claus or beer without alcohol! This is a tragedy…What has happened to the world?

Oh and by the way, even though you won’t be receiving too many e-mails from me (because of this wonderful informational system called web blog…after which I don’t have much to write about for everybody personally) it still doesn’t mean you couldn’t fill up my mailbox with your e-mails!!

And the last but not the least Happy valentine’s day for all of my wonderful friends around the world!!! You are the best without a doubt.