Chúc mừng năm mới - Part 2, 3, 4.

Well it has been a busy few weeks....this post will mostly be photos to remember how we continued to celebrate Tet how we could...I managed to do a bit more clean up as that is an important part of preparing for the new year...also had our fruit offering to our ancestors...for Matteo I had an empty frame and hope at some point to find the right photo to add...still not sure on that......

This year we had a New Year's eve dinner party with Matteo's godparents and a student from Thailand who is living with us.  (We definitely enjoyed this and will do it again)  I had decorations from the year I was waiting for Matteo and they were featuring tigers (Matteo's year of birth)....Matteo loves the tassels...the tablecloth, which just happened to have snakes on it, is from Nepal, a gift from one of my sisters who viisted a family friend there....and I decided to order Thai food for all of us...I know I know, Thailand celebrates new year's the same as most western cultures, but I have not had success with the Chinese delivery options in the neighbourhood, though we have fabulous restaurants around....so for this year it was the choice...and then the student K. ended up making gold bags (basically spring rolls made into little pouches) stuffed with shrimp, pork, mushrooms etc....I managed to get the photo below before they were wolfed down by everyone. They are supposed to bring good luck...and I learned how to make them. K. is a certified Chef here to learn English and possibly at one point open her own Thai restaurant. We are fortunate to have her here, but more on that later.  One other detail, the mango mouse cake was a New Year's cake with a Fish, another symbol of good fortune in the new year.  So all in all everyone had fun, the children got lucky money and we even had leftovers to enjoy the next day.

The next set of photos is of the dragon parade held in Chinatown, a few blocks from home, in conjunction with celebrating Lunar new year and Winterlude which is the festival on now in Ottawa, to celebrate winter.  It was a crisp day with beautiful sunshine. There were multiple dragons with costumed individuals dressed as all of the other new year figures from the Asian calendar....there were also two figures, an old man and woman, will have to find out who they represented.  Matteo loved the dragons, and so did I.

  The final couple of photos are of a dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant with other families who have adopted....and thankfully S. took a picture of me and Matteo as I took very few. And unfortunately when we were trying to get photos of all the children together, Matteo did not cooperate. I made the mistake of giving him my iphone to watch some thomas just as we were finishing dinner and he was climbing on and off the chair, and I wanted to try to do some socializing and finishing of my dinner...though I still seem to eat too fast....anyhow I forgot that once he has that phone in his hands and thomas, it is hard to unwind him from it...and/or it is just par for some of the challenges with challenging behaviour we've been having...that I'll leave for another blog...for now, I was happy that we tried different things to see how we feel comfortable celebrating Tet...loved that it spanned a couple of different weekends.  Some of what we did this year we'll repeat and then also try other things, but one thing is for sure, we will continue to celebrate as it is great having a mid winter festival to celebrate and look forward to during the dark months of Jan/Feb. and March.  Additionally this is also symbolically the beginning of Spring and after the cold winter we're having, that warmth is also great to celebrate and look forward to......so Happy New Year to all of you!  Welcome Spring!