恭喜發財! (Chinese New Year)

Chinese New Year: Year of the rooster

Kung Hey Fat Choi! (恭喜發財!/Happy New Year!)

According to the lunar calendar, 28 January marks the first day of the lunar year, which kicks off the Chinese New Year festival, the most important festival in Chinese culture.
In the following I will share with you my first time celebrating CNY.

Before the festival begins, many HK people like to visit flower markets, where you cannot only buy flowers, but also rooster-themed gifts and loads of traditional snacks.
Additionally, people start decorating their homes with traditional decoration like red banners with messages of good luck and fortune on them

These are the red banners I made for my host family.

The left one says "Kung Hey Fat Choi", wich means "Happy New Year".

The right one says "Hey Hey Yeung Yeung", which means "always happy".

The first two days of the Chinese New Year are traditionally spent with the familiy, where Children and unmarried adults will receive red pockets (called lai see), which contain money.

This is me with some of the red pockets I got from my hostfamily and their relatives

The third day of Chinese New Year is usually spent at temples, where people pray for good luck and good fortune for the new year.

Lion Dance 

Another important part of the Chinese New Year festival is the Lion Dance, which is a dance performed by two people in one Lion costume

During the Chinese New Year, Lion Dancers will visit homes as part of a traditional custom called "cai qing" (採青), which literally translated means “plucking the greens”. In this custom, the lion dancers will visit peoples homes and pluck vegetables hanging from a rope in front of the premise. This custome is believed to bring luck to the family living is the home.

A lion eating te vegetables in front of our house

My Hostfamily and my hostbrothers cousin (right) in front of our house 

I wish you all good fortune, good health, wealth and safety. Thanks for checking out my Blog.

Happy New Year!

2016 was an awesome year for me, especially because I started my exchange year in August. Four amazing months of my exchange have already passed and to this day I’m extremely happy that I chose to come to Hong Kong. I made many new friends and had many great experiences, some of which I shared with you on this Blog. However, these four months have been so eventful that I couldn’t share all the things I did so far. That’s why this post is about some of the smaller thing I did in these four months.

Taking pictures in an old estate in Tai Koo, wich captures the
living conditions in Hong Kong very well.

My friends from school brought me to this place. It is called "Choi Hung
Estate/ 彩虹邨", which literally translated means "Rainbow estate"

Hanging out with my friends from school in Yuen Long

This photo was taken on sports day. There are not many pictures from my school life, because my school doesn't allow us to bring our mobile phone to school. But on sports day I took many photos with my friends from school

This is a photo from my school camp. Me and my classmates had to build a boat as part of the camp activities, which are ment to improve our teamspirit

Me and my hostfamily at the Ladies Market in Mong Kok

Me and my hostfather went cycling in Sha Tin a few times. This photo was taken at the end of our tour on the dam in Sha Tin

Exploring Central with my friends from AFS

Visiting the "Deutsche Bank" in the ICC with AFS

These three photos are from a hike on the "Dragon's back". The view was really amazing

Typical Hong Kong graveyard

Hong Kong's skyline by night