Gong Hay Fat Choy

Day Two of the Year of the Pig and fireworks and firecrackers are going off forever, somewhere nearby. Can't see anything, but the booming feels close and car alarms sound every now and then after especially big blasts. I'm back in Shenzhen for a few days but I think I'm going to head over to Chengdu in Sichuan province to meet a couple friends and see the pandas before vacation finally ends. Was originally planning on doing Shanghai alone, but reconsidered. I'll make it up there in the summer. I spent Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. I planned a shorter big vacation than the rest of my friends in my travel group so I could return to spend new year with Anne, my contact teacher. But found out that Chester had to be in HK, so decided to see him instead. I got to stay a couple nights at his aunt's really nice place in Kowloon, and he showed me around some parts of the city I hadn't been to. It was really more of a resident's tour of HK, which was great. Got to see his old neighborhood, eat at smaller places with only chinese menus, etc. New Year's Eve we met up with some of his friends and some of my friends and went to the big flower market. super crowded and seemed to have more inflatable random things for sale than flowers. pigs, barbells, boxing gloves, traffic cones, bags of chips, flowers, mario characters, lots of things. it was kind of interesting. Spending afternoon/evening tomorrow with Anne and the other english teachers at her house, should be nice.