Chinese New Year

The school is currently on a 2 week break to celebrate Spring festival, or better known as Chinese New Year. This is the festival celebrating the calendar year changing. It is also called Lunar New Year.

When I was in Korea they called it Solar New Year, among other things. It is usually the same day, except once every 24 years based on the moon.

In China, this year is the year of the goat. Some traditional things that happen during CNY are lighting firecrackers and giving money in red envelopes. There are always fire crackers firing in Shanghai, but there were certainly more firing leading up to the big celebration. The teachers also pooled some money for the bus driver as well as the cleaners and this money was placed into a red envelope.

I flew home on Saturday, which is part of the reason this post is short and late.

My Saturday went like this:

7:30 Woke up.
8:30 Ran 13 KM.
10:00 Finish packing up.
11:30 Walk to the metro to catch line 9. Take line 9 to line 2 and transfer. Take line 2 to the fast train. Get on the fast train to the airport.
13:00 Arrive at the airport, 3 hours before my flight.
13:30 Find an empty check in desk only to find out my flight have been delayed 4 hours.
14:00  Eat at Starbucks.
15:00 Finally check in.
15:50 Check time, see my plane should have been leaving. Continue to kill time, including eating again, this time at Burger King.
19:30 Finally board the plane
21:00 Arrive in Toronto (having also traveled to a time difference of 13 hours)

I'm still attempting to get over jet lag.

Last Thursday the children did a Chinese New Year festival.Here is a small snapshot of it: