Monday, February 9th

[Paul Whitaker is going back to the US, so from now on, “Paul” means “Xiao Paul” (so I don’t have to type it every time). ] Paul and I met at Gary’s office (as usual) and picked up Armando at the train station because he lives further away in Taiping. On our way to our UWP office, we heard loud noises and Paul told us that a parade was coming! We parked on the side of the road and stood with our cameras ready! Traffic was still going, and there was a policeman in the middle of the intersection directing traffic; sometimes the parade stopped, and sometimes cars stopped.
People were dressed in these huge costumes of ‘protectors’ of things according to the religion of the temple running the parade; I asked why more people weren’t stopped to watch it (because really no one was aside from us) and Paul said that different temples have these at different times, so they occur throughout the year and it wasn’t an extra special sight to locals. While we stood and watched, a few men laid out strands and strands and strands of firecrackers in the middle of the street! The parade walked over the firecrackers and cars drove over them, and it wasn’t until the end that they were set off while part of the parade passed through. It was SO LOUD! There was tons of smoke and noise! We finally made it to our office with busted ear drums ;) and set up our wireless router!! It was VERY EXCITING to finally have internet for my computer, since my host family doesn’t have wireless (they have a computer room on the fourth floor with two computers, but a lot of what I wanted to do involved putting pictures from my computer on my blog)

When I got home I took a nap because I was really tired, and woke up just in time for dinner in Christine’s house next door. After dinner I learned about special customs for the holiday today! After we ate, Jeff came home with two packages of white round things that looked like eggs but weren’t. Christine cooked them and they became soft like dumplings. Everybody got one of each kind. Both were really sweet inside: the dark filling was sesame seed stuff, and the light brown filling was peanut stuff. I learned that they were special for the holiday and that everyone is supposed to eat them today… I wish they were every day, they were SO GOOD, I ate two more!!!!
Jeff put together this Mickey Mouse lantern that looked like it was for a five year old’s birthday party! It was so cute and we all went for a walk and I carried it around the block. I learned that in their culture there’s a superstition that you can’t point to a full moon or your ear will get a cut in it! I sang the “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!” song and ended up teaching it to my sister Jennifer!