Chinese New Year

Last weekend was Chinese New Year! I was invited to Chumpon with P-Noy (the woman I tutor for) to celebrate with her family. We left on Friday afternoon and piled into her husbands truck for the 3 hour ride. On the way to Chumpon we stopped at a rest area that according to Noy is a tourist attraction because it has clean toilets. I found that not only does it have clean toilets but it is actually a park type thing dedicated to toilets. They had a couple cement toilets that you could climb through, they were building a sky toilet, and working on a sculpture of a pigs bottom. The kids had a blast running around and playing on the playground.

After we played for a while we finished our trek to Chumpon where we had dinner in the unfinished apartment complex her family is building. Then we spent the rest of the night making Chinese noodles for the next day. I got to be the motor for the hand crank noodle press :P The children also helped me with the crank. We made noodles till about midnight and then it was time to get some sleep before the fireworks woke everyone up at 3am and kept being set off every half hour for the rest of the night.

On Saturday we went back to the apartment complex to cook. During the day Aear asked me to show her how to hula hoop because I could do it for a really long time and her's kept dropping after 3 spins. Then I got kidnapped by a family friend to go talk with her 15 year-old niece who's going to study in Seattle next month. After talking to her and watching a movie they took me back for crab and noodle dinner.

On Sunday we went to the sea to play in the water. When we got there the children only wanted to play in the pool because they were scared of the ocean since they can't swim. After a little bit I convinced Aear to play in the ocean. We went out to where the water hit her knees and played jump the waves. After my arms got tired from lifting her we went back to the rest of the group. Then Aom wanted to play with me so we went back to the ocean. Aom was even more scared so we played tag with the waves. We would run away when they were coming in and then chase them when they went back out. After playing we went to collect seashells. Aom likes to grab every shell she finds and then dumb her cup out. Then Aear joined us until she got distracted by finding and catching crabs.

Chumpon was a blast and I had a great time. I'll put up some pics tomorrow after I download them off my camera!

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