Happy Chinese New Year!

Gung Hei Fat Choi! Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Here in Hong Kong, Chinese New Year is the equivalent of Christmas mixed with Halloween wrapped up in 4th of July. Basically, it's HUGE! At HKU, we get a whole week off classes and the whole city shuts down while everyone goes home to visit their families. Hong Kongers eat huge feasts, exchange lucky money in red packets, and enjoy the aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents that they might normally be a bit too busy to spend quality time with.

But where does that leave the ex-pats like me who don't have any (immediately accessible) home to visit for the holiday?

Well, my friends and I booked a weeklong vacation to the Philippines to make up for the fact that we'll be missing our families. So there's that to look forward to...

Until then, Hong Kong has a few other fun festivals to keep the lonely exchange student at bay. One of which is the Flower Market or Lunar New Year Festival. Located in Victoria Park near Causeway Bay, the Flower Market has tons of fun fair food, toys, games, and novelty goods to check out if you're in the mood for celebrating! It actually reminded me a lot of the OC Fair I went to as a kid, only it's a lot cheaper and has a lot more things I don't understand.

I went with a few friends late at night on Wednesday to see the fair for ourselves. Even though it was late, it wasn't too crowded because there were still three days before Chinese New Year. We started our night by grabbing some delicious fair snacks!

This may look just like fair food in the US, because of the Coca-Cola signs everywhere, but don't be fooled. They're cooking dried squid. Which Karen informs me is just delectable.

Linda is really excited about her deep fried radish cake.

I bought a stick of candied crab apples.

This was definitely the strangest dish of the night. Squid puffs with dried seaweed and mayonnaise. Surprisingly not bad!

Next we explored the booths. It was hard getting through the aisle-ways with so many people checking things out, but it was all part of the fun. Though I definitely felt a bit paranoid about getting pick-pocketed.

The orchids were beautiful and even their booths smelled nice!

These windmills were beautiful! They all moved together and reflected the light of the fair!

People were selling Ted left and right (and the salespeople loved to pose for my camera)!

The Gangnam Style guy was also a hot item.

Karen and I went in on some pretty weird candy floss! It was good enough, but reminded me a bit of eating coffee flavored hair...

Doesn't it look festive?!

I ended up making my way to a super cute stuffed animal stand. I promised myself before coming to Hong Kong I could buy one super cute Asian stuffed animal for myself. Because everything is cheap here, and what kind of dork would I be if I didn't buy one? It's Chinese New Year!

The salesman was super happy someone was buying stuff.

Here's me with the Asian looking cat I bought. I was trying to make the same face as the cat, but ended up looking psychotic...

At this point it was getting pretty late, so we decided to head home. But on the way out we saw some adorable plushie street foods that I just had to take a picture of. All of these foods are available on skewers on every corner in HK, so it was really funny to see people carrying the stuffed animal version of them on sticks throughout the fair.

I had a really fantastic time at the Lunar New Year fair and I would definitely recommend it to everyone who comes to HK in February. Tomorrow we're going to go watch the Dragon Dance Parade and the fireworks in Kowloon and Monday we leave for the Philippines! It's going to be a very eventful holiday!

In other news, I just paid my housing bill and I'm starting to apply for summer internships (hopefully I can find something, considering that I'm in a different time zone than what I'm applying for). If anyone is interested in hiring me, send me an email. I'll videotape your wedding! And speaking of videos, here's this week's short video. I made a little stop motion piece when my friends all tried to use the public exercise equipment in Macau. I think it's pretty cute!

Happy New Year everyone! Have a great holiday!

PS I went back to the Flower Market with Ben Chu and Fiona yesterday and I think we're heading over there again tonight. I just can't stay away!

Fiona and I got matching henna tattoos! Mine has fish and flowers (it's good luck!).

We got special lucky calligraphy papers made for us! Fiona's wishes for wealth, Ben's wishes for health...

And mine wishes for me to always smile! The lady made it specially for me because I was smiling so wide :)