The Lunar New Year

Our Chinese/Lunar New Year is basically over... Well, nobody warned me about anything: "What, Ange? You didn't know that all banks and everything else is closed for an entire week?" Uh, no, there's no way for me to guess something like that -- I have to be told. As normal as that may be here, it's just not "normal". At least Jesus had foresight and everything happened to fall into place perfectly, business-wise, the day before CNY, even though I hadn't planned it that way and even though we'd been waiting for weeks for things to "fall into place". God bless Him. :D So, I roamed the streets on Chinese New Year's Eve. They were silent, dead. I could've counted the people I saw. This is simply not normal. The number of shops that were open were so few that I could've also counted them. This, as well, is not normal. Over the next few days, things slowly came back to life. By the first day with no rain, the streets were so packed, nobody wanted to be out. But we went out anyway. :) It was the right time to have our Feast, though, since commerce has all been shut down. I noticed that a lot of different people and different sorts of people were on the routes I usually travel, which was rather interesting. I also noticed what a good and friendly mood people were in, generally. People here are generally pretty friendly and helpful, but the overall mood definitely felt like a much more relaxed version of "friendly and helpful" than the usual sort, besides being much more talkative. That may have had something to do with possible drinking over the holiday (?). :D These people work so hard the rest of the year, they deserve this week off. They really should do this more frequently... :)