Are you kidding me???

Seriously! I had grand ideas of how things would go here in China and all the things I would do...I planned to blog every day! can you see how successful that has been by looking at the posts. We have past our 6 month mark for the kids and I and Suonllen is going to be celebrating his year on Feb 22. We are just experiencing the Chinese New Year...so interesting. Things seriously shut down for weeks.

The studio where I teach my classes has been shut down for going on three weeks and when it's all said and done, they will be gone for a total of four weeks. I was in a panic, my students and I were not going to be gone for four weeks and still wanted to hold classes. I was able to pursuade them to let me have a key to the studio while they were still there so they could see I was responsible enough to turn the lights out and lock up after my classes. Which has also given them a break from hearing all the Zumba songs four days a week, six different times. So I have been able to still hold classes there but not under the best circumstances. First I was told there was not heat. One of my students was also one of the owners students and she quickly turned it on for us. Then I was asked for more rent money when they saw I was letting my students use it but with No central heat, it has been REALLY cold! Eventually we warm up the room and it steams up the mirrors and makes the floor slippery and then there is a whole other issue to deal with. With the oners being gone, right now there is no water ? I was told the pipes were "frozen" but I am pretty sure they had the water turned off while they were gone and did not care about my students still using the bathroom. So I am thinking I may need to take a bucket of water there to wash down some stuff if you know what I mean?

New Years for the Chinese is a big time, this is the year of the rabbit. So they are every where. The reason why they take off so much time is because they travel home, which could take days because of the remotenss of the village. It is also a time to give "gifts." Fruit is often given as well as money. We bought red envelopes to give to our new Ayi, our Haifu Ayi, Mr Yang our driver and also to his wife. We wanted to show Mr. Yang and his wife, we appreciate all the hard work he has done for us throughout the year. He basically is on call for us, 24-7 and there have been days when he has worked all day and night because we had things to do and then went out at night. He gets paid well enough with overtime but we also gave to his wife because I know what it's like to have a husband who is on call 24-7 for the job...hello? I'm living it now.
We love the Haifu Ayi and tried to get her to work for us full time but she couldn't, she had a contract she was honoring. And our new Ayi, is REALLY good so we made sure to give her a gift too so she would know we appreciate her even if she has only been working for us one month. But being as she is the THIRD Ayi we have hired and is good not only on cleaning but cooking too, we are going to keep her happy! (I will tell the Ayi stories in another post)

Fireworks have been going off daily for the past week and at all hours of the day. It has gotten to the point where we doe not even flinch when we hear them and when we watched the big celebration, it didn't seem like that big of a deal now. Is it possible to be immune to fireworks?

Dumplings are served at New Years and we have been enjoying the sites of the lights that have gone up, it kinda looks like a Christmas celebration but a month later.