excited

I just woke up and ran straight to my computer because I can’t wait to tell you about last night. Wowza! What a night it was!! So fun, and exciting, and LOUD… and very special because we were able to spend such and important holiday with a very sweet local family. I should point out to you that it is really a huge honor to be invited into someone’s home like we were. Imagine if you invited some foreigners that you barely knew into your home to share your family Christmas. Same thing. Yes, it was a real honor.

So, New Year’s Eve can be summed up with 3 words: Family, Food, and FIREWORKS!!! I write that last one in capital letters because I promise, you have never seen fireworks like these. I know I hadn’t. As a matter of fact, the experience was so insane, that I decided to capture it on video instead of trying to describe it to you. Words will not do last night justice.

Family: Like I said before, this is China’s biggest holiday of the year, and one to be celebrated with family. In most homes, families will gather around the TV to watch a 4 hour long variety show called The Spring Festival Gala. About a billion people watch this program every year. In my opinion, this is true for 3 reasons:

1) it is produced by the government and therefore shown on every channel

2) since it has been airing for over 30 years, it has become a tradition

3) propaganda goes really well with fireworks.

Food: Chinese dumplings are one of the most important foods of Chinese New Year. Since the shape of the dumpling is similar to ancient Chinese gold or silver ingots, they symbolize wealth. Traditionally, the members of a family get together to make dumplings during the New Year’s Eve (now, while watching the Gala). Very traditional families may hide a coin in one of the dumplings. The person who finds the coin is supposed to have good fortune in the New Year.

After making the dumplings, we sat down to a feast of local Qingdao seafood.

That last dish is made of sticky rice and is topped with the Chinese character, Fu, a character which pops up alot during the Festival. Most families hang a large paper Fu upside down on their front door. This is the only time when a Chinese character is written upside down on purpose. Why?? Because the Fu character means lucky or good fortune.  In Chinese, saying “fu dao le” (foo-dow-luh) means “luck or fortune has arrived”. But the word “dao” can also mean to fall down or turn upside-down. So, literally turning the character Fu upside-down is a play on words implying fortune has arrived. Pretty cool, huh?

Fireworks: A little background… The legend goes that every New Year, a man-eating sea monster called Nian (which coincidentally means “year”) shows up to attack the villagers and kill their livestock. The bright lights and loud noises of the fireworks are said to scare him away.

There is also a tradition involving burning money in the streets for your dead ancestors. I’m still a little fuzzy on this one because they obviously don’t burn real money, and I’m not sure why dead people need money anyway. Maybe by next year I’ll have this one figured out (but at least this sort of explains the men building a fire in the road on the video).

The experience is impossible to explain. Just watch the video. Things to remember as you are watching:

1) Anyone, anywhere can shoot fireworks, so they are going off in every direction. Literally thousands of people are shooting fireworks at the same time around the city. You are surrounded by fire, and noise, and chaos. Thus, the screaming (mine).

2) The fireworks go on ALL night, and continue throughout the entire festival. Yes, 10 days. Some people I know that have been living here for years, now leave China during the holiday just to escape the noise!

3) The Chinese invented fireworks. Don’t know if that is really relevant to the video, but I thought I needed a third point. I blame my Southern Baptist roots.

I know the video is a bit lengthy, but I think that if you watch the whole thing you will get a taste of what the night was like for us. Again, WOWZA!!

This is sort of a repeat for those of you on facebook, but WE GOT SNOW!!!

Being from the American South (where schools close for flurries), this is a pretty big deal. We were so excited to wake up Sunday morning to a real winter wonderland. Of course, we immediately bundled up and ran outside with our cameras, filled with hometown paranoia that it would all disappear by lunchtime.

It has been a full 3 days now and things are still white around here, by the way.

Lots of families were outside building snowmen. The kids were all so cute and proud of their creations. Our neighbors said that although it snows quite a bit in Qingdao, the first snow is always the best consistency for building a snowman. Hmm, good to know.

By the end of our photo session, I was freezing! I don’t think I have every been so cold in my life, but I’m not complaining. It was beautiful, and it looks like we are heading for a white Christmas in China.

To all of you who lovingly chastised me for being a lazy blogger, I apologize. I’ll try to do better from now on. Although, I must say that I am shocked by how many people are reading this thing, as that little hiatus worked as a bit of a roll-call for my silent readers. So, for the record, I’ll do my part (blogging) if you do yours. This means I had better start seeing some comments from those of you who made your presence known recently. And this goes for you blog-stalkers, too!

Bo and I are both working now, and every spare minute over the last 2 weeks has been spent looking at real estate. Yeah, you heard me. I think we hold some kind of record for how many times you can move in 6 years. When we settle in to our new place next week, it will be home-sweet-home number 8. I kid you not.

The lovely little condo where we have been residing for the past month has a great view of the Yellow Sea. But I can’t fit all of my shoes into that. And a studio apartment is cozy and romantic for about a week, but then it hits you that nothing has a “home” and that all of those piles of “stuff” will be there forever unless you MOVE!!

So we are moving, and I can’t wait. The process of finding a place was exhausting and frustrating. The language barrier is a problem, and you pretty much have to accept the fact that you are going to pay at least 20% more for a place just because you are foreign. So we looked at SO many apartments, and finally decided on a great place in the cutest little beach community. The central business district of downtown Qingdao (where we both work) is only about a 5 minute bus ride from the new apartment, but the neighborhood feels like the suburbs.

It is so quiet and peaceful. No more waking up at 5am to the sound of saws and hammers (there is a high-rise going up next door). Yay!! And the best part is that we are even closer to the ocean, which pretty much sealed the deal for Bo.

Here’s a peek at our new backyard…

This is the street that leads to my bus stop. I am SO exctied that I get to look at the ocean every morning on my way to work.

And here is a better view of what the beach looks like. There are white sandy beaches a bit farther down the coast, but here we get to watch the waves crash against the rocks and cliffs. It is breath-taking and I love it!

One-way plane ticket to China… $1200

FedEx 8 a.m. next day delivery for visa documents… $64 

“Priority-Super-Duper-Express-Plus” Rush service for passport stamp… $300

Seeing him on Monday instead of Tuesday… Priceless.

This weekend was the first holiday that I’ve spent away from Rebecca in seven years. For the last three days, China has been celebrating the Mid-Autumn festival, which is also known as the Moon Festival. This is one of the two most important holidays for East Asia. It falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which usually is around mid- to late-September. This year it happened to fall on September 15, which marks the seven year anniversary of the first date of Rebecca and I. Seven years ago to the day, I drove from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night to meet her for our first date, and what a date it was!

Last night as I was taking a little stroll down the coast, I was thinking: little did Rebecca and I know on the night of our first date, as we sipped coffee at Cups and talked about music and movies, that seven years from then to the day, I would be in China desperately waiting for my wife to join me. But that’s the way life is. You have your own plans and your own intentions, all to be thwarted by what lies waiting for you around the corner. For Rebecca and me, life couldn’t be any more unpredictable than it has been. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. There are those who prefer predictability and those who prefer spontaneity. Rebecca and I without a doubt have always fallen under the latter category. So, though we have had to pay a three-month price for our willingness to step into the unknown, our excitement for what lies ahead and our confidence that this is the right move overshadows any temporary hardships we’ve had to endure. But that doesn’t mean that this hasn’t been difficult for us. We’ve cried together and we’ve poured our hearts out to each other, but our waiting is finally coming to an end. Tomorrow, I pick up the last document that she’ll need for her visa. I’ll then express mail everything to her and she’ll quickly have the visa stamped onto her passport.

I cannot wait until I meet Rebecca in the airport and we get to begin the next seven years together. Who knows where we’ll be then. I can’t even begin to imagine. Today, as over a billion Asians are celebrating with their families and friends and admiring the bright mid-autumn harvest moon as they entertain stories of folklore, my reasons for celebration are closer to those of the Chinese farmer’s. On this day, he celebrates the end of the summer and the coming of a brand new harvest. My sentiments exactly. And my new harvest begins when I meet Rebecca in the airport. (Hey, the Chinese can be poetic. Why can’t I?)