New Years 2006

It's probably about time I write about New Years in Beijing.
I have to admit that it's probably one of the best new year celebrations ever.
On New Years Eve, I woke up and was pottering around the house. I went downstairs to find that it was snowing. To me it looked like real proper snow, big like a 20 cent coin so I ran and got Simon to get up. Much earlier on we had made a deal that if it snowed we both call in sick and go to Houhai and hang out. Well unfortunately it was a Saturday so we just went. By the time we left the house, it was only 5 cent piece snow and the fall was slowing which was a little disappointing but Houhai was still lovely. It was our first experience on the frozen lake and we ran around and slipped and slided everywhere til I fell on my ass and decided to stop. We moved on to a cafe in the hutong(alleyway) where they make awesome coffee and started on our souvenir shopping. By this time we had less than a month left in Beijing. We met up with Pei San who was visiting from Shanghai and had lunch overlooking the frozen lake.

and then the party....
The night started of at Souk for dinner, drinks and shisha. It was meant to be a small dinner of 5 but we ended up with a long table and 20 people. A couple of kids from Simon's school are from Tonga and their parents work in the Tongan embassy. They decided to hold a party there to welcome in the new year so we went to that with heaps of the kids from BLCU and most of the AIESEC trainees. A a couple of genius remark from Dom "What the hell is tonga?" and "is the Tong An Embassy a chinese place?"
Woah man what a craaaaaaazee night!! I cannot even begin to describe it. It definately was a great party and everyone was in wonderful spirits (literally)