Butterfly in the oasis in the desert: Celebrating Chinese New Year in Saudi Arabia!

On Sunday, which is a weekday here, the ladies celebrated Chinese New Year, the Year of the Horse. As with everything here, planning a party takes several more steps. And then in the end, you need to be flexible, because you are not going to find everything that you want. You make do. And this became quite the group effort. I had wanted to have red plates, gold napkins, red forks, chopsticks and Chinese New Year decorations, normally not a big goal. I went to the mall and 2 grocery stores-no red plates or forks. I did find gold napkins. It is not trivial getting to the mall/grocery. You can take the morning bus and spend the whole morning there, or take a cab, or bum a ride with an Exxon wife if you find out they are going shopping. A friend and I went to a stationary/party/craft store. Although they had two decorations displayed, they did not have any for sale. My friend said that she had 14 sets of chopsticks and New Year decorations from when she lived in China. Another friend, whose husband has a company car, went to a store and found red plates and then to another store and found the cutest red and gold glasses and a golden stuffed dragon. A third friend, whose husband has a company car, found circular and rectangular doilies that could be used as placemats. (As you can probably tell, I have "car envy". Our company doesn't provide drivers or cars. :) I am hesitant to take cabs by myself, just in case the cab driver is not there when I am finished and I am the lone woman amid the men waiting outside the mall. Not a good thing here.) Also, I find myself becoming a pack rat and saving everything, "in case I might need it". For example, the raffia used to hang a decoration on the front door was from a flower arrangement that a friend gave me when I hosted a birthday party a few months ago. I am usually a tosser.

This is the year of the Horse, so we had to have a Horse centerpiece. It just so happens, I bought a statue of a horse in Athens. One online site that I looked at said that you should have a Tray of Togetherness which included tangerines and 7 other things. Well, there was no way I would be finding this stuff here. I thought that I would get by with the tangerines to help hold up the horse in the tray. Of course, there were no tangerines at the market. So, I settled for oranges. It was a Tray of Simplified Togetherness.

I read that you should put the "Fu" symbol on your front door upside down. That brings good luck when people enter.

I asked everyone to wear red. One of the ladies suggested that we all wear red flowers in our hair. She told me the location on the compound where I could find pretty red flowers. That morning, I went out early to snip 14 of them. I had no hairpins, so I borrowed 14 of them. As each person came in the door, our "multilingual" greeter met each person and put a pretty red flower in their hair. These were the leftovers:

Then, we sat down for our feast. Everyone brought the most wonderful dishes. We had Hundred Corner Shrimp Balls, Spicy Sweet Potato noodles, Sweet and sour chicken, Lion's Head Balls with a sauce, Szechuan noodle salad, fried rice, sushi made to look like little pandas, Kung Pao chicken, BBQ chicken wings, Spicy Shrimp, Prawn spring rolls. And for desserts Almond cookies, chocolate covered lychees and homemade fortune cookies!! The lady who made the fortune cookies also came up with the funny fortunes.

Since they are not legible here, here are a few that are most appropriate for Saudi Arabia:

Keep calm and pretend you like it being 125 #&*!ing degrees

You can always find happiness at work on Friday-(Thursday KSA)

When everything's coming your way, it's likely you're in the wrong lane.

Keep calm and keep telling yourself shopping at Panda is just like home.

Keep calm and stop trying to guess what part of the goat this is.

Keep calm and ignore that car passing you on the sidewalk.

Keep calm and put on your @#$!in abaya

Again for the food, you have to be flexible here. After 3 grocery stores, I could not find water chestnuts for the Hundred Corner Shrimp Balls. So, I used shredded cabbage. I could not find panko bread crumbs, but my friend who almost runs a grocery store from her place had exactly the 3 cups that I needed that she had brought from the US. The lady making the Lion's Head Meatballs got the cornstarch from me. I got the lychees for another lady. The lady who did the Panda sushi has a special mold for it and uses the seaweed wrapper to make it look like a panda. Here is a picture of them (but not with the lady who made them). I asked her to hold them up so that I could take a good picture.

Here is a picture of the food spread:

I can not believe this, but I did not get a picture of the desserts! They were so good! I have decided that I need to appoint a person to be the photographer because I get too busy and I forget to take pictures. I didn't get a picture of the ladies getting done up with the flowers in their hair, the decorations, the desserts, the ladies reading their Chinese horoscopes. One lady had printed out the index of the Chinese Zodiac with the corresponding birth years. We determined who was which animal and then read the corresponding horoscopes. Very insightful! :)