Last year at the time of Chinese New Year In China everything was very peaceful, the day almost seemed perfect. Me and my friends family got together to eat dinner and celebrate the new year. We had a lot of foods like kimchi, dduk gook (rice cake soup), bul go gi (stir fried spicy pork), jab chae, and more delicious Korean foods. After dinner we played Korean traditional games we also got new year’s allowance. I and my friends knew the time was coming, but we waited and played our game. When we finished playing it was about 11:30. We went outside to buy something “special” for our entertainment. We rode our scooters for about short time to the orange tent. In the orange tent they sold a lot of stuff that would blow up which was fireworks. We bought fireworks and firecrackers. The good and bad thing about Chinese New Year is that anyone can blow up fireworks which is really fun but the bad thing is, well the whole 1.3billion Chinese people do it so it’s really loud like if there is a war going on. Plumes of sulphurous smoke covered the streets and the buildings, shower of sparks surrounded me, and the multicolored lights bursting in the sky overhead was very beutiful. But once you get use to it you’re probably going to enjoy it maybe love it. So me and my friends bought a bunch of fireworks and we were ready to blow it up. Other Chinese people started to blow up their fireworks already. So we started to blow up our fireworks, when we blew up the fireworks the luminous light filled the dark blue midnight sky. After about an hour or two of blowing fireworks we went to eat night snack but of course the fireworks were still going on. We went to eat shao kao which is like meats and vegetables on a stick and you grill on a barbeque and it’s really spicy but delicious. So anyway we ate that for about an hour and we went home and played games until the day was bright. It was my best new year for me and it was also probably my last because I had to leave to Thailand.

For me it was a cultural shock because usually in Korea it’s people doesn’t like loud noises. It’s a cool Chinese culture and I love it. There is a story for the fireworks which is long time ago in China there were monsters and evil spirits that took away children, but during that time the Chinese invented gun powders so they used the gun powders to scared away the evil spirits by blowing up fireworks. I didn’t use to like Chinese culture because it was kind of weird to me but as I lived there I started to like more and more, now China feels more like my home because I really didn’t live in China for 9 years and not so much in Korea. The three things that I loved about China were first I loved the Chinese food which is spicy and salty. Second I really like Chinese culture and all their festivals, my favorite one is the Chinese New Year. And lastly I just love China its like a home to me.