Bringing in the Year of the Dragon

Xin nian kuai le! Happy New Year! This week all of China celebrated with fireworks and firecrackers to bring in the year of the dragon and our second CNY here in Shanghai did not disappoint! Noise (as Joseph calls it) started about 6pm and came to full crescendo (think war zone level!) from about 11:30pm to 1am!

Again fireworks like we would see for an entire show back at the 4th of July shooting off on every street, in our lane, and right on our sidewalk. Zoe and Abigail slept through it all - unbelievable! Joseph on the other hand cried at each noise early in the evening and then decided to manage by needing to see where all the noises were coming from - so we ran from window to window, upstairs to downstairs and looked for all the pretty colors...until he finally crashed at 1am! Andy and the older girls did what any typical American family would do...set off our small assortment of firecrackers, played some frisbee in the streets and wandered around in awe!

Chinese New Year is the most significant holiday in Chinese tradition and the year of the dragon is the most auspicious year of them all (the dragon is the only mythical animal of the 12 zodiacs). Births in China are expected to go up 20% this year as parents want their children to be dragons - still a one child policy but lots of people to have babies! Apparently hospital beds are already booked out through August for the maternity ward in the larger cities! Now that is planning ahead! Oh and another tidbit...for each zodiac sign, whenever it is your year, tradition is that you wear red every single day for the entire year (that's gotta be a lot of red underwear being sold here!)

With Joseph still not finalized and our desire to not join the hundred million people traveling in China, we decided to stay home for the week long holiday and it has been wonderful! Playing games, reading books, watching movies, relaxing and having fun...no where to go and not much to do (since almost every place is closed!)...something I think we all needed! Reality will be tough to take next week!