Chinese New Year

The link below gives a nice look at how the Chinese New Year is celebrated in Beijing.
{It made me a little homesick.}
As one friend wrote, "you can almost smell the fireworks!"

Xin Nian Kuai Le!!

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/01/23/world/asia/100000001306948/year-of-the-dragon.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=VI-E-FB-SM-LIN-TIE-012312-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Chicago Chinatown's New Year's Parade

The parade it's self, to be honest, was a little mama huhu.

Chicago was, after all, still digging out from the city's third worst blizzard on record. Days before hundreds of cars had been left stranded on Lake Shore Drive. We weren't sure if it was prudent to even go, let alone drive, so the girlies and I caught a commuter train to the City and cabbed it down to Chinatown.

The familiar, oily smells, and swirl of Mandarin and Cantonese and English, and the piles of white snow everywhere added to our sense of adventure. We met our good friends the M-L family, who also once lived in QD, had some great Si chuan for lunch-- which we ordered entirely in Chinese, found some hot Taiwanese bubble tea, and let the girls loose in a Chinese stationary shop reminiscent of their favorite ones in China. (Only it seemed that the prices were dramatically inflated! Things that would be 4 kuai in Zhongguo where 4 US dollars in Chinatown!) Still the experience was completely worth the efforts it took to get there.

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

Xin Nian Kuai Le!