New Year's Day

We joined in the Chinese way and bought fireworks and set them off. By "we" I mean some foreigners here in Weihai. I had no part in the purchasing and a very minimal bit in the setting off. I held two sticks that looked like sparklers but shoot little pencil-nib "rockets." The whole affair was somewhat scary as several guys were setting things off all over the place. After some burning thing shot at my leg, I was pretty much ready to call it quits.

Rachel also made two pinatas per my request (there was a birthday party earlier in the week in which pinatas were present...our bats were chopsticks and we weren't blindfolded, so you can imagine the fun there). This time around we had a proper plastic bat replete with duct tape in all the right places. We played soccer with the remnants before going inside to thaw.