Thursday was the last day of Chinese New Year...AKA...Spring Festvial...AKA...Chun Jie. The Lantern Festival is part of the celebration and is always on the last day of the long holiday. Tim and I walked to Yu Garden this afternoon and took these pictures. The lanterns are very beautiful.

Lanterns and people everywhere!!!

Lanterns in the shape of the zodiac animals.

This is the year of the rat....the rat is standing on top of a gold nugget.

It seems a little nostalgic posting these pictures and feels that we have come full circle. This is our second Chinese New Year as residents of China. The excitement has faded and things that amazed us one year ago now seem ordinary. I feel a little sad about this because we are settling into a comfortable routine (I'm not complaining...I like comfortable!) but the rush of adventure has been taken over by life. It is becoming harder to find interesting things to blog about because it feels a little like "do overs". Part of me wants to turn the clock back and see everything new again and part of me is very happy to be "comfortable". Several of my friends heard this week that they will be repatriating or moving to a different country in April and June and another friend returned to New Zealand last week. Ahhh...this is life in the expat community....constant coming and going.....constant change.

Speaking of constant change.....remember Abi's favorite Japanese restaurant where we celebrated her birthday last year? Well it is now a pile of rubble. One day it was there....the next day....rubble. One of our other favorite restaurants...City Diner....has changed. It is under new management and they have changed their menu. And...we are not happy about it!! A funny thing has happen the last two times we have been there.....they are out of more than 50% of what we want to order. Last night....Abi and Tim wanted BBQ ribs....this should have been a safe choice because the "Friday night special" is....ribs!!! Abi also wanted a chocolate milk shake....note the restaurant's name...City Diner....if anyone in town should have milk shakes it should be them.....but noooo.....they were out of chocolate ice cream!! Tucker and I decided to share a black bean quesadilla...good news they had that! And.....brace yourselves for this one....my soda looked like ice tea....I guessed they ran out of syrup in their coke machine. I showed our waiter my soda and this is what he did.....He pick up my glass in one hand, held the end of my straw with his finger so some of the soda stayed in the straw.....lifted the straw so it would drip into his mouth....and said..."Oh, I see". We were all stunned into silence and then we started laughing and could not stop! The waiter returned with a new soda and I am pretty sure it was in the same glass and had the same straw. And the final blow....we got a chicken quesadilla instead of black bean...I think he was afraid to tell us that they were out of black beans and insisted that we should take the chicken! Needless to say....the City Diner is now our ex-favorite restaurant!