Happy New Year!

Mr. Bird wishes you
恭喜發財

Wishing everyone health, joy and all good things for the Year of the Goat! Though the goat is known to be capricious ("capra" = "goat"), all will be well when the Good Shepherd is in control. Let him lead the way.

CNY Reunion dinner was quite an event ... not the meal in itself but the dramatic weather change we are experiencing. Temperatures plummeted, rainstorm battered and snow is expected. The Horse was not going out without a kick and the Goat is butting its way in.

Despite the weather, 6 of us made it to Mandarin Restaurant. Hailing from Taiwan, Mainland China and Hong Kong we met up to pass the old year and hail in the new. Not many other chinese came to celebrate the new year, not in this weather. There was a chinese guide and her family on another table, and a group of VIP tourists from China on the other. Our table was made up of students studying in the various Catholic institutes in Jerusalem: Magdalen and her visiting sister Betty, Lucie, Matthias and Pedro. Enoch had to go to the airport to pick someone up and Sherry was guiding a group so they couldn't come. Magdalen had just returned from Hong Kong and brought traditional cantonese carrot cake. Ah Ling prepared vegetarian siu mai and gao zi (jiao zi), boiled a whole chicken for 4 hours in herbs, rice, noodles, steamed fish, spinach, brocolli and carrots, Mongolian beef.

Our little group at CNY Reunion
dinner. Behind them is the Chinese
tourist group

We had a slow dinner ... with the hope that the storm would have blown off or at least reduced in force when we will have finished. It did reduce to a heavy drizzle and we managed to walk home. Let's see if it'll snow now ....