I spent a lot of time looking up last night. I loved watching these ladies set off this lantern. For a while we thought it would veer into a tree and start a fire. At midnight, when the year of the cow officially began, we saw some massive explosions, in the sky and on the ground. You would not believe how long the black cat strands are here. Loads of folks came to our usually sleepy neighborhood to burn incense at the Buddhist temples in the area. The whole event kinda felt like Christmas and New Year's eve wrapped up in one. Roger commented the procession of people reminded him of Christmas mass. Early in the evening I heard little kids in our neighborhood crying because of all the noise, but our little puppy was unphased. I was so proud.

Yesterday we made dumplings from scratch. We also boiled live crabs in the wok. The low point for Roger was when he found out he had been eating crab sperm. The high point for me was learning how to make this awesome vermicelli noodle dish with stir fried pork and shredded cucumbers.

In the picture, that's our Chinese neighbor and good friend on the far left. We call her "Iverson" because she's infatuated with the basketball player. In the middle is Iverson's home town friend, who's nickname is "Camel" in Chinese. The two are both about to go home together for Chinese New Year. Right of my brother is Rachel, the lead chef in the dumpling venture. She's super chill.