Tag Archives: #Nathancuty

Chinese Wife, Crazy Family, Our cute son

Our Chinese New Year 2016

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I know I know I am a week late with this post but I didn’t manage to finish it until now due to all kind of silly reasons. In the whole past week I could read from so many bloggers how they celebrated New Year so here I go with our tiny “party”.

This was the first time since 2013 that we actually celebrated again as we had just no time for the past years. Even before that we usually never did anything special so we always ended up watching the CCTV New Year Gala. Only once we participated in some bigger event and it was just a few weeks after we got together in 2010. Back then we went to the Chinese New Year Festivities in Helsinki. Let me just tell you that it was very very cold back then and not the most enjoyable experience I had in my life (due to the weather!). A couple of years ago I even wrote a little blog post about it which also shows that not much (nothing) has really changed on how we spend New Year.

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A bit of food for watching the New Year Gala

 

So what happened this year? First of all we kind of messed up the actual date for the New Year. My wife and all her Chinese friends CNY9here in town thought it would be on Saturday the 06.02.2016. Imagine the surprise when my wife heard from one of her customers on that Saturday that there won’t be any New Year Gala as it wouldn’t start until Sunday… this shows pretty well what living abroad for so many years does to someone when it comes to such big festivities. Anyways after a disappointing Saturday we started Sunday with preparing for the overeating day. My wife prepared several dishes while I was busy entertaining our little Monkey/ Nathan. Pictures were taken,  food was enjoyed, the CCTV New Year Gala was watched and many video chats had to be endured during that day. As you can see it was a pretty calm day for us especially as my wife didn’t had to work and thus we spend the entire day together. Besides that Nathan was finally able to wear some of the clothes my wife bought for him in China last year. Only bad thing about the dress was that the hat didn’t fit anymore, Nathan just got too much brain inside.

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Calling his grandparents to save him from the New Year Gala in TV

For the next year I hope that we will be either able to travel to China for this event as I would love to witness it once in my life personally or to celebrate with other people together. Sure it is nice to spend the whole day together as a family but to have some bigger gatherings once every few years wouldn’t hurt either.

Where there some Lunar New Year events near your home?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/

 

Crazy Family, Our cute son

What Winter?

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Currently it seems winter has arrived everywhere in the world. New York is basically drowning in snow, Scandinavia had for the past weeks more than enough of this devilish snow with temperatures dropping down to -40 degrees Celsius, heck even Chongqing is covered in this white mess. It seems everywhere it is snowing except my dear hometown. I am usually the last person to complain about lack of snow during winter time as I had my share of battles in Finland à la digging out the car each morning/ actually finding the car. However ever since we moved to Germany winter has been very mild in this area.

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Grumpy Nathan on December the 24th, what a winter

Northern Germany, especially the state of Schleswig-Holstein where we live, is rarely hunted down by icy winters with tons of snow. The last time there had been much snow here was during the so-called “Snow Catastrophe of 1978” when even in my hometown snow drifts could reach a height of up to 3m! The reason for such mild winters is the fact that this state is located between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. We had each winter some snow, nothing special but usually enough to go to the nearby sledging hill and have some fun or to build snowmen and castles. When my wife visited Germany for the first time in 2010 we had snow. In fact each time we went to visit my parents during winter time we had snow here. However now  we live here and the most I have seen is a layer of perhaps an inch of snow which melted away the very same day.

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Winter of 2010, see we had snow before Nathan was born!

No snow is not a bad thing for me except that we would love to show Nathan what all he could do outside during winter time. Thus far all he could do this winter is wearing his rainboots and jump into puddles. The weird thing is that when Nathan was born we also lacked snow in Finland! We had a thick layer up till a week before he was born and then suddenly poof it’s gone! That week before he was born was the last time I needed any winter clothes or to dig out my car. I have the strange feeling that Nathan is creating an invisible dome around us which does not let any snow in. Afterall I think he even hates snow from what I can tell about his encounters with the pathetic one inch layers of snow in the past two years. Each time he sees snow on the ground he retreats, points with his hand to the snow as says “eew”.

 

Do you have snow where you live?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/

Crazy Family, Our cute son

Our little Christmas celebration

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The Christmas festivities are survived and now the preparation for New Year celebrations are starting. For this Christmas we had for the first time a Christmas tree. All the previous years we had either no space in our tiny apartment in Finland or like last year just no time and decoration as we just had moved in the new place. However once Christmas was over last year we went straight to the next decoration store and bought tons of stuff for our future Christmas tree with a 50% discount (yay for intelligent shopping).

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What is all that stuff?

So what did we do this Christmas? First of all we got the last decorations done for our tree and placed all of the Christmas presents under it. Both of us had never done it before so it was a rather nice feeling once it was all done and Nathan saw the whole thing for the first time. For lunch we had nothing special, as we visited in the late afternoon an old lady to eat some food there together with my parents. The whole day was very uneventful, just a nice peaceful day with much sunshine. As the entire week was just rainy and dark we decided to start the day with some nice breakfast at my parents place and go after that together with Nathan to the nearby playground so he could burn some energy for the day. After that we visited this old lady I mentioned before. She is a friend of my mother from back in time when my mother first arrived in Germany to work here in the 1960s. My mother also lived at her place for several years and ever since I can remember Christmas we went to her place to have a simple dish “Potato Salad with Wiener Sausages”. Doesn’t sound like a fancy Christmas dinner does it? Well it is simple and pretty much tradition in my family to eat this every single Christmas. Usually we have some more German traditional food the following days such as turkey with red cabbage, potatoes and savory dark sauce but on Christmas itself we always keep it very simple.

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At the playground with a very happy Nathan

After we arrived back home the exciting part came when it was time to exchange the Christmas presents. I won’t go too much into detail but Nathan got some Lego Duplo with which he is playing non-stop currently and I got from my wife a quadcopter which I successfully crash-landed already. I think my wife got a pretty awesome gift for me as she can just cart me to the nearby park with the quadcopter and I can just sit there and let this monstrosity fly around/ crash around plus scare other people.  As you can see our Christmas has been very uneventful but something like this is nice as it allows you to relax a bit and enjoy the whole day more. For my wife the most exciting part besides receiving her gift was to decorate the Christmas tree. At this point I have to thank the old man to help getting this tree into our apartment as I wouldn’t have been able to do so on my own. For next year I need to remember to buy only what I also can carry!

How was your Christmas?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/