happy valentines day...everyone!

We are just wrapping up our first experience of the week long celebration of Chinese New Year. It has been really fun to see the joy and excitement of our Chinese friends during this time as nearly everyone travels to their hometown to visit family, share extravagant dinners, give gifts and light lots and lots of fireworks. Because of the great Chinese migration to big cities like Kunming for work, when Chinese New Year happens, all the workers go home to their villages leaving things really quiet around here...by China standards at least. With the exception of a few markets and grocery stores, nearly every other store, shop and stand has been shut down for about 10 days. We were so amazed by the ghost town feel on New Year's Eve (February 13) that we let ourselves be fooled into thinking that New Year's Day (aka Valentines's Day this year) would be quiet as well. Not so fast, silly foreigners! Clouded by visions of ourselves lounging on a big blanket in a grassy park around Lake Calhoun (Minneapolis), Elissa and I planned a romantic Valentines Day picnic around Green Lake (Kunming). "We may have the whole park to ourselves," we uttered in sheer blissful ignorance.

As our pictures can attest, we were not on a blanket, there were no patches of grass and we were definitely not alone. All in all, though, it was perfect. We laughed a lot, loved being together and had a great Valentine's Day picnic with all of our friends.