The 'Niu' Year

is what you call it because it is the year of the cow and "niu" is the word for cow. How appropriate, because at home we call it, "Happy Moo Year".

So far, it has consisted of: lots of people over - many of the Meng Family friends. I was told to call all of her father's friends, "Shoo Shoo" which means uncle.

 Lots of jaozi:

an unexplainable amount of fireworks - they went off all through the night and most of the day today. For lack of time to upload my video--check out my friend Joe's video who was in Beijing for the New Year.

The men played "mah jong"

The women chatted and compared their red socks (all with cows on them--of course) my foot is turned out with the 'bamboo green' long johns.

and the teenagers watched jackie chan movies (his Chinese name is "Cheng Long") in chinese with chinese subtitles.

Happy Niu Year!