Chinese New Year and The Big Texan

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 

We have had a fun week watching the people preparing for Chinese New Year.  We have been frustrated with the huge traffic jams from so many shoppers and then we have enjoyed clear roads for the past day and a half because so many of the residents have returned to their home kampong (come-pohng) or home village, for the New Year celebration.  Last night and this morning it was great to be on the road because there wasn't much traffic to speak of but Wednesday, Thursday it was awful. 

Now, you have to understand that Chinese New Year is celebrated longer here than the new year is celebrated in the States.  School is out for a week and people travel, and have guests in their homes and celebrate with fireworks the whole week.  Saturday, Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday most of the businesses are closed or have limited hours.  Of course there are the visits that people are making to each other's homes to wish a happy, safe and healthy new year to friends.  Coming back to the apartment after Church this morning we rounded the corner by our apartment and the other side of the street was filled with parked cars, some with little flags on them.  Looking in the driveway as we passed we saw a very prominent white Rolls Royce with a flag on the front and a driver who was dressed in very proper classic clothing standing by the car ready to open the door for the owner.  Don't know who it was, but obviously someone important.  There had to have been 3 other cars with diplomatic type flags and maybe another half a dozen cars just parked in the street.  The other cars just moved around them.
  
So, I thought I would share a few more photos of the places we have gone and seen the fun decorations.  The pictures below are from two big malls that are close to us.  These displays are available for mall shoppers to pose and take pictures of each other in them.  Don't you love the fake cherry blossoms in the background of this one???

Another view of the "rickshaw".

I saw many families posing here.

These two pictures are of a display in the grocery store in this mall (This Spring it is called) of wrapped oranges which are given to older people as a gift of respect and endearment.

Before I could get this photo at a new mall called City One I took a couple of pictures of friends just hanging out at the mall.  This mall is so new that ost of the stores are not yet opened but they had the mall decorations for Chinese New Year all over.

I really loved this little bridge.....

I was driving when I took this picture.  It is a beautiful temple with a huge standing Buddah....can you see it?    The picture below is a better picture of the temple but you can't see the Buddah as well.

Ed was a little nervous with me shooting pictures as I drove by but there weren't very many cars on the road so I felt safe....really I did!  ^_^

This is the produce section of the grocery store in This Spring Mall that we go to often.  On our first trip we discovered at check-out that these ladies have to weigh, wrap and price your produce or you cause a wait at the cashier.  We won't do that again.  We also learned that the bakery inside the store is a separate business and you have to pay for your bread there before leaving the bakery area.  We had cute little girls running after us on our first trip. Fortunately they smiled and were all very nice, including the Chinese man who was behind us waiting while we had not one but two delays for produce on our first trip.

This is a scary but wonderful feature!  The parking is all under the mall so when you fill your cart with groceries you use this special flat escalator to take your cart down to your car.  It is at a pretty steep incline so you have to hold on to your cart when you get on so it doesn't get away from you! 

 Our week was overall a good one.  After last Sunday when we visited the Matang Branch and met the Kuching District Family History Director and found out that she had a meeting with her consultants already set up this week, we were so happy to finally be moving ahead with actual people who are here doing the work we have come to support.  We are thrilled.  

Monday we did the laundry, which takes a long time to dry inside, and had another training phone meeting from Hong Kong given by the Harrington's there.  It was good to see the information that is available to us for training that is online. 

Tuesday's are always fun because we have District meeting with the young missionaries and we do role play and sing together.  By the way...we have some great voices between the 4 elders and 4 sisters plus us.  It is really fun to hear.  After our District meeting the missionaries go to lunch together so we have gone with them every week.  We decided this week to treat them all to Magnum ice cream bars.  The missionaries love them so they were all happy.  

The Big Texan!

One day this week Ed decided he wanted a hamburger after we had worked out at the gym we joined so we went to This Spring and he tried "The Big Texan".  He did enjoy it and said it tasted really good.  He said he probably won't buy one again, but we will see when his Texan taste buds might get the better of him again....

You'd never know he was on an island in the South China Sea would you?  Cute Eddie!

 I had my favorites as always.....rice, vegetables, chicken and chicken soup.  This time one of the vegetables was bamboo.  I seem to recall that bamboo has absolutely no nutritional value but it is many oriental dishes.

 Wednesday night we had out meeting with the Kuching District Director and some of the Branch Consultants.  It was a great meeting.  Maureen began the meeting by asking if we would like some time to speak.  (We had prepared two short videos to show if she asked us to do anything.)  These videos help teach the doctrine of why finding our families is important.  They show the temple and the baptismal fonts inside and these sweet people were so happy to even see a picture of the temple.  The closest temple here is Manila, Philippines.  It is a huge expense for these sweet, humble people to save enough money and to take the time off of work to make the trip to have their families sealed together for eternity but they want to do it and long to be there. It was a tender moment for me.  During the meeting we found some problems that will need to be addressed, but overall it was great.  We made an appointment with Maureen to meet with her the following day to go over a plan for the District for the year to present to President Govin, the District President.  She is very excited about it. 

Friday we helped out the Elders and the Sisters.  The Elders (Pratt and Acton) phoned in the morning and said they had a package to pick up and didn't want to have to pay for a taxi to pick it up if we didn't mind getting them and taking them to the post office.  Of course Ed didn't mind getting them.  Then in the afternoon we  got a call from the Sister's (Trottier and Tehrani) to see if we could take them to a couple of appointments so they didn't have to ride their bikes since Sis. Tehrani had been ill a bit this week.  Again we were happy to take care of them.  Who wouldn't want to help these cute girls!
  

Sister Tehrani and Sister Trottier starting off their day fresh and sweet!

 By the end of a day of biking around in the rain, warm weather and humidity they often stop in because they know we always have cold water and Magnum bars for them!!

Friday evening we went with the Sisters to an appointment and their investigator had all the fun treats that are typical for guests during Chinese New Year.  

Most of the treats we tried were very good.  The striped things on the plate are a special Sarawak (the Malaysian state we are living in) Cake and takes a long time to make.  I will get a better picture of one later.  They have multicolored layers and the cake is quite good.  I think Sister Rita (an investigator who shared all this food with us) said it takes about 9 hours to make one cake! 

Saturday was my first time at a local Relief Society function.  It had been requested by some of the local members that Sister Nielsen show them how to make her wonderful rolls and how to make really good mashed potatoes.  These women want to break out and move away from rice with every meal and they think that we have bread or mashed potatoes with every meal like they have rice.  The wife of the District President is one who asked to learn about making good potatoes because her husband spends too much money buying the mashed potatoes at the local KFC!  

We started with a small group but more came later.  I loaned my Texas His and Hers aprons to the Sisters T for the activity.

Ready to make rolls!

Cute ladies trying something new.

Mashing potatoes the USA way

 While we were at the Church making rolls and mashing potatoes Ed decided he wanted to get some exercise so he walked for about an hour in the sun.  We haven't seen a lot of sun since it is the rainy season, but it was a beautiful day and he turned into a little bit of a crispy critter!!

A sunburned Eddie waiting for dinner at "The Mango Tree" a Thai restaurant close by where we live.   Hurray!!!

So we waited on Saturday night for the fireworks to begin to celebrate the new year.  We have been told that we wouldn't be able to sleep at all because the fireworks would go on all night long.  At about 11:30pm the first firecrackers started.  It was like being in a  huge building with thousands of old typing machines being typed on and hitting the keys as hard as you could.  It was loud and quite constant and then the bigger fireworks began.  Boom!  Boom! Boom! and then that screaming sound some of them make.  It was glorious!  

Out on our porch I could see them on the left in front of us and on the right.  I tried to get some pictures, but it wasn't too easy.  Even now as I am typing this on Sunday evening there are a few sounds of fireworks that did not get used up last night.  Today at Church meeting the Sunday School instructor stopped the lesson for a couple of minutes because someone across the street was setting off some fireworks.  They are really loud.  He just stood there solemnly for a few seconds and then he looked up and smiled and then broke out into a chuckle.  

So, the fireworks last night lasted about an hour and then all was quiet.  I was happy so we could sleep, but a little disappointed that it was over.  I chose a couple of pictures that may give you an idea of what I saw from our porch.  It was raining the entire time so the dots you see on the photos are from the rain in my flash.  The odd shape of the bottom photos is because I took those pictures to the left of the porch and I caught part of the porch in the them but I thought they good enough to put up here.  

Enjoy the week and

Gong Xi Fa Cai!!!

The horizon was red with the many, many fireworks being set off around the city.  This shot is taken straight from the porch in the direction of the "Chinatown" part of the city.