Gung hai fat choy!

My friend Kristin and I rang in the year of the boar in Chinatown last night. It was great food, lots of interesting culture, and LOTS of people! Kris and I tried all sorts of food, from weird, doughy, fried sweet-potato filled dumplings to some weird little chewy bland-tasting sesame cake thing (I can't pronounce the names of any of this stuff, much less type it!), li hing mui ginger coated dried cranberries... The best part was definitely the lion dancing. I'd seen lion dances in the media before, but it's different seeing them in person - for one thing, the troupe we saw did the lion dancing on 10-foot pegs, and they were jumping back and forth from peg to peg! I couldn't imagine doing that without having a big costume over me (and not being able to see from the back!).

Gung hai fat choy, everybody!

--jess