chuc mung nam moi!

i went home to san jose yesterday (new year's eve) to help both my mom and my dad with the Tet preparations. it was nice to see Tet celebrations around town (since there isn't any sign of celebration in berkeley). we went to the Cho Tet - new year's market (which i then became very nostalgic.... remembering good times in hanoi). there, we picked up fresh flowers, cay dao - a cherry blossom tree, dried and preserved fruits, banh tet (a rice roll w/ yellow bean and pork fat filling wrapped inside a banana leaf), fortune telling books, the latest edition of Vietnamese Tet/ Mua Xuan songs sung by the current popular Vietnamese pop-singer, 6 batches of firecrackers (which includes a sample letter to send to neighbors to notify them of the noise...), melon seeds, fruits, and lucky candy.

1) lion plaza
i use to go to lion plaza almost daily as a kid. i would bike there/ walk there/ or if i'm lucky, ride there with my uncle and the family for our sunday Pho get-together. the courtyard is always full of old vietnamese and ethnic chinese men playing chess and smoking them pipes... kids running around freely, hopping all over the steps and platforms, and teenagers in the corner trying to act cool with their too-much make-up and too-much-gel(ed) hair. there use to be only one family selling cherry blossom trees, now there's at least 10 other families selling other Tet goods. it's like Cho Dem - Night Market in Hanoi, Vietnam.

2) senter plaza
lucky supermarket ran out of watermelons!!!! so we had to rush over to senter plaza to search for 2 perfectly round watermelons. (unfortunately, my mom and i realize nothing is ever really perfect...)

3) bank
preparing for "li xi" - lucky money in red envelopes for the kids, we went to the bank to change all our old money to new, crispy and *LUCKY* dollar bills. (they ran out of the two dollar bills)

4) ancestor offerings
my grandma makes her yummy cu cai (pickled raddish in fish sauce and sugar syrup) that you eat with the banh tet. we set up bowls of fruits, banh tet, thit co (carmelized pork and egg in claypot), candy, seeds, plates, bowls, chopsticks, and the fresh flowers on the table. we each make our offerings to our ancestors by lighting the incense.... once the incense is dissolved into the sand, we can then sit down and eat the food. :) (we also made offerings to the kitchen god)

5) firecrackers!!!!!!
my neighborhood is 70% viet so no problems here :)

! POW !
Happy Lunar New Year! Chuc Mung Nam Moi Vui Ve!!!