February 2, 2014

this is a place in aberdeen where we find and our district with a couple mandarin sisters

this is us ice skating and sister lee and i eating squid legs :) they were tasty

HI MUM! well so much happened this week and we dont have much time on the computers because it is still new years and places are not opened haha. Chinese new year lasts about 5 days. it is crazy! they have all different days and all different traditions. Each day has a family to visit or friends. or a pace or something to worship. It is pretty interesting. I actually love it all so much! it is HUGE!

There are so many traditions for the new year. My favorite is the mouh si. that is the lion or the dragon  dance. You know how in mulon they have the huns in this big dragon/lion costume? well they are real! Yep these animals run around from store to store and collect red pocket money. People walk around them with huge drums and bang on them! the drums are to warn the children of the monster. We were doing language study and all of a sudden we hear this huge huge like huge drum. We didnt know what it was so we ran up to the roof and we saw a huge dragon dancing in the street! It was sooooo cool! i took a video that wont let me send but you have to look it up. It is so fun. The dragon is very big in china. i dont know why because people say that the dragon is evil. Everyone steers clear of him. But it is just so cool!

Another tradition is red pocket money! Chinese people get all there money together and put it is beautiful red and gold envelopes. Then the week of new years they walk around and give them to children...and especially missionaries :) When someone gives you an envelope you must bow and put your hands together and shake tehm up and down and tell them "SANTAI GINHONG" or "CHING CHUN SEUHNG JYUH", or LUHNG MAAH JING SAHN". these are just like health luck and stuff like that. It is so cool. We are not supposed to accept tis money but they force it at you. So it is realllly rude not to accept it. so we just give it to the missionary fund every year. Sister johnson and i got over 1000 dollars for new year. So the missionary fund will be booming this month :) haha the members and people here are so amazing and deep in culture.

We also had a whole lot of chang outs this week because of new year. The members love to make the traditional stuff. So we had bagged spicy duck tongue, cat, liver of all different animals, and of course RICE! they have something called yahm cha. it is where you go to a restaurant and they just keep bringing food....and keep going adn going and going. It is pretty cool. but you eat everything in tiny rice bowls and just keep putting more in so it is very unhealthy because no one knows how much they ate :) haah but it is good.

This week we also had exchanges and it was a 24! so that means all missionaries in our zone exchange. And just my luck, i got changed with a mandarin missionary..in my area. so it was pretty much 2 days of just me. She couldnt speak cantonese at all. but it was cool to see my improvememtn.

ummmm oh the fair! the fair was so cool :) i ate a lot of squid legs and saw SISTER LEE! i will send you pictures

so this is a cute chinese baby and the dragon dance!