So Daniel and I have been on our "Spring Festival" vacation, which just means we got two weeks off from work for Chinese New Year. It's been a pretty relaxing two weeks! Experiencing Chinese New Year in China has certainly been quite the experience. Basically everybody in Beijing goes back to their home town and all the small shops down the streets and the food vendors close down. Since the city is emptier, you'd think it'd be nice and quiet, right? False. Chinese New Year here means endless amounts of fireworks being blown into the sky from every corner of the city. For a whole week we got beautiful, nighttime firework shows literally right outside our window and some not-so-beautiful firework wake-up calls early in the mornings. It kind of felt like the city was exploding, but it was really nice to look at, so overall it was a great experience.
The Beijing winter has been very dry, which hasn't been easy on our health (we were sick the entire month of January). However, today I woke up, looked out the window and saw that everything was WHITE! The cars, buildings, streets…This is exactly how things went this morning: I go into the kitchen to get a bowl and spoon for my cereal. I look out the window and discover the beautiful, winter wonderland. I scream, "Oh my god!!" Daniel yells, "What?" I'm still standing at the window, amazed. I yell, "Daniel, come here!" A pretty worried Daniel comes in. "What?" I point, still amazed. "SNOW!"
This is what I woke up to.
Okay, granted, it's just snow. But we're from California! How many times have I woken up to a freshly powdered city? None. So I was really excited (I can see the snow from my window right now and I'm still pretty excited). I tried to calm down and sat down to gain a couple pages in my current read,
Anna Karenina, because the perfect time to read a wintery, Russian novel is when there is fresh snow outside. But of course I can't read, because there's snow outside and oh god, it started falling! Snow started falling from the sky! (An even bigger marvel for this California girl). Have you ever seen snow falling? It's so perfect. You look up and the tiny flakes are flurrying down. You know you have to feel them. So I put on my Beijing winter coat and made Daniel come outside with me.
This is right in front of our apartment building. I loved the feeling of the tiny snowflakes falling!
You're so pretty, snow.
My handsome man. Notice the tiny heart snowflake on his face!
More tiny snowflakes hugging me in the face!
Daniel proposed that we build a snowman (he did most of the building).
Daniel also took this opportunity to throw LOTS of snowballs at me. I forgot my gloves inside, so I was defenseless.
I know it's silly to create a blog post about something so common as snow, but snow is not so common where we come from! Those tiny, adorable snowflakes turned my ordinary day into a really great one, and I'm incredibly thankful for that.
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