Spring Festival: Part 2

On New Year's Day, we were invited to attend an all day group gathering at a sister's house.  We arrived around 11 in the morning, just in time to begin helping with dinner preparations.  The chickens were freshly killed and ready to be plucked, but I wasn't going to be much help there, so Susanna and I joined in with cutting up the pumpkin squash.

Caleb, however, found the whole ordeal quite interesting...

After a simple lunch of noodles and rice porridge, the dinner preparations continued outside and the entertainment began inside.  David was asked to organize a couple of games for the adults, so he introduced them to "Musical Chairs".  After much prodding, thirteen brave souls agreed to participate in their first ever game of musical chairs (stools actually). The rules were simple.  Each round there was one less stool than there were participants.  Whoever was without a stool when the music stopped had to sing the song for the next round.  From the first round, it was a hit!  Here's a round somewhere in the middle:

Musical chairs 1 @ Yahoo! Video

As the game progressed, the excitement built until they weren't even waiting for the music to stop before they'd begin snatching up the stools!
Here's a clip of the last few rounds...

Spring Festival Musical Chairs @ Yahoo! Video

So after twenty minutes of hilarity, we moved on to charades and then hot potato--another "you lose, you sing" game.  This group loves to sing so much that eventually the games faded into performances--individuals or small groups singing favorite songs for the group.  This lady sang a minority song in her language, and here's a clip of some other minority ladies dancing:

Spring Festival ladies dancing @ Yahoo! Video

Later on, a huge dinner of pork, chicken, fish, tofu, beans, and vegetables of all kinds followed, and we were so thankful to be there enjoying the fellowship and festivity of the holiday together with our brothers and sisters.
The Spring Festival holiday continued on, and as is custom during the first two weeks of the year, we paid visits to friends and enjoyed opportunities to continue building relationships.  On the third day of the new year, our family visited one of my friends overnight in her hometown just an hour away, and a few days later David was invited by a new friend to take an overnight trip to visit family as well.  Throughout the week, we were able to connect with several people and are looking forward to more opportunities in the coming months.