Year of the Dog
So much has been going on, I almost forgot that this is the Year of the Dog. I just ran into my little buddies, Maggie and Kelly, two Chinese girls, ages 4 and 2, who live next door to me. They were off to visit relatives to get their packets of money for the holiday. "Hey," I told them, "bring back some money for me." Fortunately, they didn't understand English that well, so my lame joke fizzled in the rain. I went to the Chinese New Year festivities in New York when I was in college and it was a blast, literally. I was tutoring English back then and one of my Chinese students, Cathy, had invited me to come along with her and her friends to watch the celebration. It was fabulous; Cathy took me to a neighborhood restaurant, where the waiters counted the plates rather than wrote down our orders. And Cathy told me the dragons represent different villages in China. She said that a lot of planning went into the appearance of these dragons, making sure none of them r...