Happy Chinese New Year!

Alright, that was maybe four days ago.  That's alright.  Chinese New Year has been for me, basically, staying at home while it rains outside.  People set off fireworks for a while, but that's stopped, maybe because of the rain.  I remember when I arrived in Beijing at the end of the Chinese New Year, people set them off nearly nonstop to the very last day.  Maybe it's the rain here.

Chinese New Year's is a time for snacks.  This is because you have to go to your relatives' houses and sit around a lot, and then you eat snacks.

I had wanted to go biking and all kinds of stuff outdoors, but this rain, which has lasted about five days (about since New Year's began) has not abated.  I went to my cousins' house yesterday and tried to play computer games, but that mostly did not work, because computers never work in LANs, not any that I've met.  I have mixed feelings about going to my cousins' house.  Almost the whole family has some weird issues with control.  Especially with food.  My oldest cousin also worries constantly about traffic jams and rain.  It's all mostly benign, and done out of benevolence.  But it gets on the nerves, that's all.

That's all that's happening now.  I went to Beijing two weeks ago.  That was nice.  I wasn't there long enough though.  All I can say is that it was really great seeing people I know there, and that it was kind of cold.  A dry cold.  I feel colder in Taiwan though.  It's wet and cold, and there's no heating.  It averages out to be colder here to me.