New Year's Eve... Cooking Lunch, Playing Mahjong and Watching Fireworks.

On Thursday, we had the family (Vicky's parents, Tiger's family, along with her Godparents and an aunt's family) over for lunch.  I was given the task of cooking the rice cakes (under supervision from one of Vicky's aunts, of course) and helped by Demin (Vicky's cousin)

I should point out here that Demin is not married yet, and is willing to consider western men.  If a qualified guy wants an introduction, holler at me!

We we cooked lunch, the older adults played mahjong on Vicky's balcony, and after lunch the women chatted in the dining room.  I had some time to fool around with photography (catching up on working up many photos), and do some reading.

We later went out with Demin and ran some errands (I finally got to photograph the New Year's light display at the entrance to Agile Gardens), before meeting up with the whole family for an New Year's Eve dinner.

Following dinner, we returned to the condo with Tiger's family... we had to get their photos.  Demin stayed with us overnight and we had snacks and watched TV.

Finally, again somewhere around 11:00... maybe 11:30, the din started.  There were a few bursts of firecrackers early in the evening before some of the younger kids went to bed, but starting closer to midnight, it really started sounding like I imagine a war zone would sound.  Firecracker bursts were followed by blasts from commercial grade fireworks being set off around the development.  For many of these, I missed them... the camera being aimed at the wrong spot, but I was able to capture a few.

We went to bed, exhausted, a little after 1:00 (had to wait for the fireworks to die down), but even then many times throughout the night, we woke up to a few small explosions.  Happy New Year!