Today's New Year's Eve, the first day of the Chinese New Year holiday. The last day of the vacation is the fifth day of the new year. Some year, depending on when the 6-day span falls, we get 9 days in a row off due to weekends. This year it's only 6 days in a row. Oh well...
The weather sucks royally - it's been raining constantly for about 3 weeks. Tomorrow we're going hiking rain or shine, so I have all my rain gear packed, plus I have a change of clean clothes wrapped up in a plastic bag for after the hike. I'll bring my oldest shoes for slogging though the mud, and a pair of clean shoes to change into afterwards. We also got the car jump-started, charged up, gassed up and ready for tomorrow's drive to the trailhead. It'll be in Wulai.
Right now I'm at Kitty's parents' house for a holiday family get-together.
So why "Gong Xi Fa Cai" and not "Kung Hei Fat Choi"? The latter is what the Hongkies* say. The former is good ol' Mandarin. 恭喜發財 means roughly "Congratulations for making it through another full year, and may you prosper in the next."
* People from Hong Kong
