新年快樂！

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快樂！（xin1nian2kuai4le4）

(Ya-Shu Mommy handing out 紅包）

In honor of the New Year, I've been sleeping for 10-12 hours everyday the last week. It's awesome, and now that my week of having a nasty cold is over, the last bit of break has been great.

Menu from Ya-Shu Mommy's company's party

Last week, I went to a giant Chinese New Year party at Ya-Shu Mommy's factory. It looked like a Taiwanese wedding, and (like the weddings here) there were 10+ courses of various fish, veggies, meats, fruit, and ice cream. I think the party was made up of several different factories (including the screw factory that Ya-Shu Mommy operates), and the bosses of the factories gave their employees red envelopes. Everyone ate a lot. There was a group of three Taiwanese girls singing and dancing that were pretty attractive, extremely skinny, and not wearing very much clothing. Many of Ya-Shu Mommy's employees are immigrants from Vietnam, Thailand, or the Philippines, and Ya-Shu said a lot of them are unmarried men, so they really liked the dancers' entertainment. It reminded me of a few months back when I went to a wedding with Nora where there was a performer who sang and wore almost nothing.  

January 23rd was the official New Year, but it's similar to Christmas where you can celebrate pretty much the entire month around the official date. This week, a lot of restaurants have been closed for the week while people go home to spend time with family. I went to my host grandmother's house twice this last week and got to spend time with a lot of my extended host family. Because we live in the countryside of Kaohsiung, live is a bit slower than in the city of Kaohsiung, and everyone in my host family is incredibly friendly and welcoming. On New Year's, my host family was at the grandmother's house (ah ma 家）where all the aunts and uncles gave the various cousins 紅包（hong2bao1, red envelopes)。In a way, it's more efficient than Christmas. because you just give kids money instead of presents. Jubbie told me in her family it's traditional to sleep with your "lucky money" under your pillow for the week of Chinese New Year, but also said that traditions vary a lot in different parts of Taiwan.

(the youngest cousin with her 紅包）

Jubbie with 紅包！

Jubbie also mentioned that the youngest cousins often get the most money in their red envelopes because it costs a lot of money to raise small children, so people tend to give more money to the younger children (which their parents can use for food and diapers and such). When getting red envelopes, kids say "恭喜發財，新年快樂！" or “新年快樂，恭喜發財！” (Good luck and prosperity! Happy New Year!)

Sometimes people joke, "恭喜發財， 紅包拿來“ which means something along the lines of "Good luck and prosperity in the New Year! Give me red envelopes."

(part of dinner at Ah Ma's house)

There was a lot of meat and rice at dinner as well as some pretty delicious desserts. 

(pudding, 很好吃！)

delicious pastries

After eating lots of delicious food, Jubbie, Ya-Shu Mommy, and I headed over to our family friend's house to play 麻將. 

麻將！

The version that I've learned is fun and easy to pick up. People tend to gamble when they play around the New Year. Earlier this week, Ya-Shu Mommy won a bunch of money playing, so we went to McDonald's and bought four boxes of french fries (they were 買一送一, buy one, get one free）。  

Current goal for break: Learn ㄅㄆㄇㄈ 

bopomofo, the phonetic system for reading 中文

When little Taiwanese children go to school, one of the first things they are taught is how to read this phonetic system called bopomofo. I'm ok with most of the consonant sounds. Learning the vowels are a bit harder;  some Chinese sounds are pretty different from english: the zh,ch, sh vs z,c,s sounds are especially hard for non-native speakers.

Most children books in Taiwan have bopomofo next to each character, so the reader can sound out a word when they're learning how to read Chinese. Also, Taiwanese cell phones use bopomofo to send text messages, and most Taiwanese people use bopomofo to type in Chinese rather than pinyin. Taiwan's use of bopomofo is different than China, where they use pinyin rather than bopomofo. China also uses simplified characters while Taiwan uses traditional, what they used in China pre-Chairman Mao. 

Basically, I'll be able to do more with Chinese if I have bopomofo skills.

Late Night Snack with Jubbie and Nora 

新年快樂！It's a great time to be in Taiwan.