The year of the horse is starting!!! 2014 is going to mark the year of the horse in the Chinese Lunar Calendar and the start of the Spring Festival begins here on January 31st and runs for 15 days. Bill and I are leaving the country today!!! Yep, we are heading to the land down under… Australia! Now you might question why we are leaving and not staying to experience the most important festival in Chinese culture… Reason being is that we have been told by most people we know to "get out" of the country. The New Year or Spring Festival as they call it here is when most people travel to their home towns and spend time with their families. This results in massive traffic jams, crammed trains, closing of most businesses in towns, for example a few local restaurants closed on Monday already and are closed until the 7th of February. Our gym closes today and doesn't reopen until the 7th as well. Even grocery stores close. So we weren't quite sure what in the world we'd do if we stayed here. This festival will also draw nonstop fireworks… think 4th of July but for an entire week straight and at all times of the day. Yesterday I was facetimeing with my mom at 10 in the morning and there were massive fireworks going off. (We're talking dynamite sticks!) We took the advice of our expat counterparts and decided it'd be best to head south!
For the past week places in town have been putting up massive displays and working on their fireworks staging areas.
We leave this afternoon and head to Sydney, then we'll make a trip over to the north island of New Zealand and after a week head to Brisbane to enjoy surfers paradise for a week before heading back to China. I'll try to post pictures/events while we are there! Hope everyone back home is staying warm in round 2 of polar vortex!
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