Counting down to New Year

With the weather turning colder and rainy, we are starting our countdown for Chinese New Year. CNY is really early this year. The official day is 23 January. But we leave for vacation in just over a week, 19 January.

For Andy, CNY does not start until the company New year party is over. Each year, he gives a speech to start the dinner off. The past couple of years, he has given the speech entirely in CHINESE. Needless to say, he prepares for this for a long time and it stresses him until it is over. The company dinner was this past Saturday and he did an AMAZING job. I was so proud of him as he looked relaxed and gave a great speech. [just to brag a little more on him, he talked for more than 5 minutes!]

You know it is successful when you tell a joke in another language and people actually find it funny and laugh. Because I have found that humor can be so unique to culture. He told several jokes in Chinese and each was greeted with laugher. Success! Countless times, I have said something that I thought was funny and no one laughs. Then other times, I say something, everyone laughs and I have no idea why.

So now we are looking forward to our annual trip. Each year during CNY we visit someplace in southeast Asia. This year we are going to Bali, Indonesia. Beach, jungle, volcano . . . bring it on!

**Just as an aside: Honestly, we have a great camera that takes wonderful pictures. But do you ever find that it is just hard to always have it on hand? I must confess that I am amazed by the blogs where every picture is phenomenal. Because while I love to take pictures, sometimes in everyday life it is just not practical to drag the camera on the bus (or e-bike). So I make do with my phone. And as a result, share crummy-quality pictures with you.

How is it that every picture I took of Andy giving his speech he had his eyes closed? One would think he was concentrating really hard or something!

 Part of the New Year's party is games. In the past they have hired performers. One year there was a magician who was entertaining. There were dancers one year that were slightly alarming. I wanted to cover my boy's eyes. But overall, the employees prefer games that get people on stage having fun together. Because the company has only 2 foreigners (Andy and an intern), all of the games were in Chinese. Some I didn't quite get everything that was said (understanding Chinese through a microphone is hard much like over the telephone). But one was a game that a team of 2 people had to make various letters of the alphabet. They started out with easy ones like A and D. But the grand finale?

T.

Here they are thinking about how they are going to pull it off.

The end result?

And yes, the picture quality is terrible. But I think I was laughing too hard to keep my phone still!

Becca so wanted to be part of this game. A bit later, she got her chance as they asked if any kids would like to participate.

Can you tell the letter? I really enjoy the mom (who is the HR manager) giving directions in the front.

As we are down to just days before vacation, I am wondering if we are going to get our medical check done for the adoption before going. [sigh] We are still waiting to hear about to-notarize/not-to-notarize.

I continue to furiously gather papers and put things in motion in the US. Thankfully, all of the things I need to do right now are just on the US-side. Because nothing is going to be happening in China for the next couple of weeks. This country shuts down for a couple weeks around CNY. Just as an example, Tori's Chinese school gets 3 weeks off!

While I know that delays are part of the process, I so want things to keep moving forward. One thing I know this journey is going to teach me every step of the way is patience.