新年快乐!

新年快乐! Happy (Chinese) New Year!

Last night, my Chinese teacher invited us to her house for 饺子 (dumplings) to celebrate the Chinese New Year. She made 素饺子 (meatless dumplings) for us vegetarians (I wasn't the only one). A few of the dumplings had a date secreted inside them--if you got one with a date, it was considered good luck. Since the other vegetarian had left by that point, I didn't have much competition, but I only got one of the four, since the others hadn't been cooked. My teacher got three of the five that were in the meat dumplings, so she has a great year ahead of her. (This is my teacher, Tian Laoshi, on the right).

While there, we got to meet a couple of our teacher's other students (from the class after ours). This is Lee and his girlfriend Liane (who is the reason he is learning Chinese). We also got to meet our teacher's daughter, who is quite an exuberant teenager. She doesn't like 饺子 though, so we didn't see her for a while. When she finally came down, she was scavenging for food. Even though she was really hungry, she couldn't make herself eat the dumplings. We all thought they were delicious (很好吃) and I ate way too many.