Cindy's Blog

This year, Chinese New Year has been really really busy. You wouldn't belive how many relatives we had to visit. The good thing is, we got lots of money. The bad thing is, it was taken away to pay for our school fee. Oh, and we spent, like, 48 hours on the car.

The first day, which is Chinese New Year Eve, we stayed up until midnight playing Majoung at Grandma's Taipei house. I helped Mom and when she won, I got 100NT. Jerry helped Uncle Wei-yu. He also got 100NT when Uncle Wei-yu tsu-mwo and 50NT when he just won. Jerry got 700NT. I only got 200NT. After I took my bath, it was about half an hour before midnight. We played a little more Majoung and when it was finally midnight, plopped into bed, and promptly fell asleep.

The next day, when we woke up Gran told Jerry and I that we were going hiking. But first they passed out the red envelopes. I got tons of money but then Mom took it all away to pay our school fee. She let us keep 1000NT to spend for the whole year. Then we had to go hiking. We hate hiking. And then, even worse, Dad insisted on walking all the way to the mountain, then hike up to the temple up there and then climb back down the long way!  I asked if I could just stay home and play computer but then Mom said, "It's a family event so you have to go, period." So off we went and picked up Louis along the way. Ugh, you'd never belive how long the hiking took and when we finally got up the billions of stairs there was a humongous line just waiting to put the smoke thing in the cup thing! Then we rested a little, ate some sponge cake and candy, and watched the little kids that were there chase the birds. When we got ready to go I asked if I could play computer when we got back and Grandma said, "Yes, for 20 minutes". But then when we got back, the computer wouldn't work so I had an extra 20 minutes to play. We eventually decided to just go to Jongli and feed Black Dragon, our dog. So when we got there I got to play 20 minutes of computer.

The third day, we had to go visit Mom's Dad, Mom's younger sister, Aunt Vicky, Mom's older brother, Uncle Ben, and his 2 year old son Anthony. We spent the whole day there, and had pizza for lunch.

The 4th day we visited the tons of relatives Dad has. I'm not even going to bother naming all of them. Even if you knew how many relatives Dad has, you'd never be able to name all of them. Even Dad can't name all of his relatives. The first one we visited had lots of little kids. THey lived at a temple house. We played a thing where we poke a box and see what prize you get. The biggest prize was a watch. Jerry hit the Jackpot. He's so lucky. Then we drove to another one of his relative's houses and spent the night there.

The next day, we went back to the temple-house that lots of our relatives live in and played the game where you have to pick a paper and if the number is a jackpot, you get  a prize. The second round everyone had to do something like a talent show to pick. Jerry and I recited a Chinese mixup poem. I never hit the jackpot but Jerry did once. He's the luckiest boy ever. Then we visited another relative and went out to a disgusting dinner with them. Then we went back to their house and one of the older boys who lived there let me play thier computer. Then we went home, or in other words went to Gran's Jongli home but Dad dropped us off at our house in Hsinchu instead.