新年快乐

Happy (Chinese) New Year!!

Before going to Taiwan Chinese New Year was just something that I heard in passing, but since being there and celebrating in person it is something that I will celebrate for now on. My roommates were just as excited to get involved with it so we went all out :)

It was Anna's night to make dinner and she went with chicken fried rice...

The rice had to be completely cool according to her recipe so we rigged up a good way to get the rice cooling while we went grocery shopping :)

The finished DELICIOUS fried rice!

All the food...not only did we have fried rice but we added dumplings (potstickers) and egg rolls.

We even took our hand at chopsticks (Candace and I may or may not have ran to Panda Express and asked for several sets of chopsticks while the car was parked illegally so that I could run in :D). I was so impressed with how long Candace was willing to try the chopsticks...she had said that she was going to last all of 5 minutes trying them and she almost went the whole meal!

Anna had a creative way of using her chopsticks

Janet had a little more experience using chopsticks and looked like an old pro!

Ciara was the first to dig into the yummy fortune cookies!

This cracked me...I'm taking suggestions

Our "Asian-y" picture

We ended our night with a good ole classic from Disney... got to love Mulan :D

Tie-Dye Fun

Last Friday we had a Relief Society activity, we were tie-dying...with onions as our coloring! Crazy! When they told me that I didn't really know how it was going to work, still not quite sure how but it did and I have some really awesome silk material to make into a skirt with the help of my Mom when I get home.

It was a super fun relaxed night, I didn't even do that bad considering that there wasn't really anyone around that spoke English, Sis. Goa was in charge of babysitting, Stephanie was at the other end of the room we working hard on her project and Yuling didn't come later and had Daniel to take care of.

One of the Sister's helped me tie chopsticks and other knots in my material to make cool stars and circle designs in my material.

Oops! I almost forgot to add my finished product, but for some reason Google Chrome won't let you move the pictures around, so they get to stay at the top :D

The Relief Society presidency (at least for the week--Sis Goa left to return to the states this week and so wont be in the presidency any longer)

This is going to sound really weird but I think that I really have my Dad's side of the family nose in this picture, I haven't ever really noticed before, but it's really obvious here.

I asked one of the Sister's daughters to take some pictures for me, I hardly ever get pictures of myself and I wanted some of me doing my tie dye (to prove that I actually did it this time :D)

Someone's completed project (well the tying part anyway)

Working, working, working, and don't forget talking :D

In this project we needed two or even three hands sometimes, some of us resorted to using our teeth (it worked quite well if I do say myself)

The beginning stages of the dying, we soaked it in the onion dye from Friday night to Sunday afternoon after church.

Part of the group that was there, not bad for a branch on Friday night.

Stephanie working until the very last minute (and she had been working all week on her's), her's came out really cool with butterflies and flowers--beautiful!

After everyone got their material in the dye we had a lesson about dressing modestly, no one was there to translate it for me, so I got distracted by these two (they are chasing each others fingers)

What the pot looked like right before I went home.