Gosh, it's been a long time! I've got some blog catch-up to do, so bear with me if some of these are old.
Happy Chinese New Year! To be honest, I've never really celebrated Chinese New Year before. I always knew that it was happening, and sometimes I got red envelopes from teachers, but it was never as big a deal at it was in Cambridge! I'm not quite sure why this is, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that there are more Chinese students at the University than American students, so it is a large community. It may also have something to do with the fact that it is a really fun holiday to celebrate!
Let's brush up on the facts of Chinese New Year. It's a holiday based around the lunar calendar, so it falls at a different time every year, but if always towards the end of January or in February. Each year is associated with an animal zodiac, of which there are 12. This is important, because, like the other zodiac, the animal whose year in which you are born say something about you, and when that year recurs, it's supposed to be lucky. This was actually very important for me when I was a child. Being young for my year, I was so jealous because all of my friends were born in the year of the dragon whereas I was born in the next year, the year of the snake. But, remember the rules? It's according to the lunar calendar, which doesn't change over until Feb, so I'm still a dragon! Yay! According to the Chinese students in my lab, it's a very good sign!
This year is year of the Rabbit, which was exciting for my lab because one of the Chinese students was born in the year of the Rabbit. Considering the fact that our student from Taiwan just completed his PhD, we decided to have a celebration for both of them! This was my second chinese-new-year-associated event (we had a Gates Chinese New Year Party too), so I was excited for my second helping of chinese food in a week! To celebrate, our lab went bowling, and then we went to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant in Cambridge, which was absolutely amazing!
For my third and final Chinese New Year celebration, there was a special hall at Churchill to celebrate the holiday. To be honest, the food was not that great, but they did have a fantastic troupe of lion dancers!
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