Our Mandarin class celebrated the spring festival also called the Lunar New Year this month. We are learning the culture and humanity through many celebratory activities in our classes.  Starting with a Lunar New Year greeting on Spring Festival's Eve, I gave our Chinese learners red pockets to wish them all a fruitful academic year.

Watching the lion dance is one of the most important activities during spring festival. Mandarin 7 invited Dr. Ongwae to play lion dance with us today. Later we learned that Dr. Ongwae’s is celebrating his birthday this week. What a lovely dual celebration！

Paper cutting is one of the heritage arts in the culture. The paper cutting is usually flat and used to decorate the windows to block our houses from bad luck. Our Mandarin learners were challenged to create a 3D paper cutting with me in our class. The shape of this paper cutting is the character  for spring in Mandarin. The spring festival usually happens in the winter, but it a festival for welcoming the spring in advance encourages people to imagine all nice possibility in the new year.

This year is very special; it is the gold ox year in the tradition. I wish that it brings more good luck to all of us. We also watched President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Lunar New Year speech together in our class. We liked when he said in his speech, “The year of ox denotes resilience and perseverance. Wish we all find strength and joy in this season of renewal."

Happy Spring Festival, 新春快乐！