Happy Lunar New Year!
The year of the Dragon will start on Saturday, February 10th. Several of our Asian members will be celebrating the beginning of this year with delicious traditional food, dance, games and, of course, their families.
I am sure some of us are busy getting ready for the celebration. I am told cleaning our houses is one of the pre-holiday traditions, as is buying the ingredients and preparing dishes for the occasion.
I have to confess that my house can always do with more cleaning and, being originally from Brazil, I don’t know which food I should be eating: Should I try Tteokguk (Korean rice cake soup), Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), or Banh Chung (Vietnamese sticky rice cakes served with mung beans and pork)? What about Mooncakes? The wonderful thing about living in Southeast Michigan is that we can find restaurants and markets which will offer most of these delicacies or the ingredients for them, for sale. Therefore, we could try food from a different country at each meal - how is that for a plan?!
To help you plan for your celebration, here is an outside link to a list of Lunar New Year celebrations in our area.
Celebration and new beginnings will continue at our February 15th, International Neighbors Winter Welcome. As Robyn explains, this will be a slightly different kind of event: This time, it will be organized like an English afternoon tea with each table being hosted by a different International Neighbors group. Members will be served tea and treats in elegant table settings and each table will have a slightly different theme and choice of delicacies. Please see the poster for the event below.
Save March 21st on your calendar! While we celebrate the Lunar New Year this month, next month we will celebrate Persian New Year (Nowruz), which starts with the Spring equinox. Mojgan is busy organizing a special event with traditional Persian food and dance.
Even with the frigid temperatures, January was a busy month at International Neighbors. Robyn reports how IN members enjoyed the Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, while Shirley and Mojgan give you a peek of last January’s IN Day, In Case You Missed It.
With all these events, International Neighbors is in need of your help! We would like to become more sustainable by reducing the waste we create. We are in need of your unwanted silverware. We will use the donated forks, spoons and knives at our IN events.
We end on a sad note: Raman writes about Janak Tirtha, who passed away last December. Janak was a respected and loved member of International Neighbors.
We will all miss her.
See you on Thursday, February 15!
Shirley