Happy Chinese New Year~~中国年快乐～～！！！！

It has been a number of weeks since I last posted. I promised that I would post a video of life in St. Andrews, where I am studying at university, so here it is. It is not a great video, but it will give you an idea of what life is like here. If you can’t see the video for any reason, leave a comment and I will put the file online so that it can be downloaded.

Last week I started into the new semester. I have lectures only one day a week, but I have a lot of study to do for the rest of the time, so it is not quite as easy a schedule as it might sound. Unfortunately, my Chinese teacher has had to go back to China and temporarily withdraw from her studies, which means that I am without a teacher at the moment. It is a real pity as she is a superb teacher and I don’t think that I will easily find another teacher like her very easily. I will probably have to try to teach myself from a book, or something like that.

A couple of friends and I made a Chinese meal just under a month ago and I thought that I would post a video of that here. We began the day at 10 o’clock in the morning and travelled to Dundee to look for ingredients in the Chinese supermarket. Having returned to St. Andrews, the early afternoon was taken up with looking for extra ingredients and things for the meal in various stores in town. In the mid-afternoon we started cooking and cooked solidly until just past 7pm. We made dim-sum dumplings, spring rolls, long soup, chow mein, egg-fried rice, boiled rice, Chinese sausages with pak choi and a number of other dishes. The meal was very tasty, but it was the cooking that was the real experience.

I hope that you all have a great Chinese New Year’s celebration!