New Year

Making dumplings

Happy New Year! It was a busy weekend as the chinese migrant workers from all over the country came to Jerusalem to celebrate the New Year, which happened to fall on Sunday. They get a day off for this feast, so it was a long weekend for them. They stayed over for two nights and visited the churches in the Old City. Some had only arrived here to work 5 weeks ago so it's a very new experience for them. 

For the Reunion Dinner, the workers make dumplings and fried stuffed chillies and northern chinese cucumber salad. It was as northern chinese as possible ... with Tsingtao beer.

We had a thanksgiving Mass with Te Deum on the last day of the Tiger year, and then an early morning Mass to start the year of the Rabbit. The patriarchal vicar came to concelebrate the Mass ... he's in charge of all migrant communities. After Mass he had a chinese breakfast cooked by the workers. All in all it was a success. They didn't feel alone during the New Year, there was a little sense of home.

I think later this week the South-East Asian religious will meet up: vietnamese, burmese, indonesian and those we have yet to discover ... It's not easy knowing who's who and where.