Kamla's Birthday + 元宵节

Good things come in small packages, or so I am told. In today's case, good things can come in a short amount of time, so I truly enjoyed the reprieve from work, though I must say that I am completely exhausted.

The previous night, we had a lot of fun at the 南京大牌档, which was loads of fun. Since it's 元宵节 today, it is the 15th day of Chinese New Year's, and it marks the "end" of the lunar new year celebrations. As a result, yesterday, there was a bunch of cultural art stands, that sold their artwork at reasonable prices (10 rmb a piece). I think this is one of my favorite aspects of China, is the little stands that contain so much culture. It's fun for me just to browse, and the street foods are always amazing. They had this lovely sugar candy that is heated up into a syrup, which they can "draw" into lovely designs/zodiac animals. I got a butterfly, and watched in amazement as the artisan poured the syrup into a skilled design, which cooled almost instantly. He slapped a stick on it, and I happily frolicked around, nibbling at the thing looking like I was 4 again with a giant lollipop in my hands. It was priceless. I was browsing at their artwork, and found one of the art styles that I've seen before back in Guilin when I was traveling 2 summers ago. It is where they have a glass vase, but paint on the inside of it instead of the outside, a reverse art that takes years of training to master the skill. I found trinkets that were much too large and impractical, but then noticed the tiny little cellphone devices they had for sale. I decided to pick the 兰花, which stands for purity in the midst of "dirtiness." Since practically speaking, I hate things that jingle on my phone, I ended up purchasing one for my sister and wrote her Chinese name on the inside (a free feature). Luckily, she was willing to write it in traditional Chinese, and I found this a much more meaningful gift than any of the other things I saw on the entire street.

Today though, after some morning errands, Kamla and I had a nice lunch at a Korean restaurant, where the sam kye tang was unfortunately not as good as Korea's (and had a lot of 鸡精 in it... MSG), but it was still good to share a nice meal outside. We traveled home on our bikes, and I chatted with my parents on Skype for a bit. It was nice to catch up and I showed them the grand chop I made as I shortened my hair by probably 6 inches. I think it's a good, fresh start for my hair to start growing back again. My hair is currently undamaged and back to its original state. I am personally relieved. This evening, we celebrated Kamla's birthday with her 50 公 and her 阿姨, and since her uncle typically cooks everything, we thought it'd be nice to show them some of our personal skills for once. I made 3 dishes, but the chicken wings didn't come out as nicely as I would've liked, nor did the mushrooms as they began to get too soggy. Argh! Darn my lack of skills, but it was good. We had cake, and far too much food (more leftovers in the fridge to last us a week or two again... *sigh* hate that). But yes, at least we celebrated in style. After our food bit, we went downstairs and lit up another bout of fireworks in celebration. Since today is 元宵节, it marks the final day that we can let off fireworks (legally), and so we let off a good number into the night sky. Currently it sounds like a war zone, as people all let off the rest of all the fireworks they can, so it's just resonating this booming sound incessantly. Oh well, it'll be nice to finally get a good night's rest of peace and quiet after this is over.