Grandma Chen's Panda Food: chinese new year

I've got a lot of catching up to do. I wish I could share each moment here with all of you.
Yunnan

Wood and Water in Lijiang

A main square in Lijiang with Naxi people in costume

Grubs with a hint of blueberry...

Piggies in a basket

Teddy and I stayed here at Lugu Hu (lake)

Friends from Lugu Hu in a 'pig trough'

Interlude

I survived my first Chinese New Year in Chengdu...but just barely. Let me tell you about it (adapted from an IM conversation with Heather:
The night before the new year, I was going home on one of the last buses, and I was excited because i found it and it was cheap. I sat there riding
for quite some time, and i didn't recognize anything. Finally, it was like 10 minutes until the bus was supposed to stop running. I looked up again and saw IKEA. IKEA is on the absolute, complete opposite side of town from my apartment. Chengdu is about 20 miles in diameter. so i got off, ran across the road, and waited at the opposite bus stop. However it was pretty iffy because of the time. while I was waiting a police truck drove up, stopped, and asked what i was doing
With some pointing and broken chinese I explained to them that I needed to go to the other end of the bus line. They pointed to the time and were like, 'no buses,'so they hailed a cab for me and told the driver to take me home across town! My conversation with the driver ended up being probably the the best conversations that I have had in Chinese so far.
Imagine doing this in a foreign country on christmas eve--it's kinda the same, because everything stops on the new year.It seemed like a good opportunity to panic, but i didn't very much. I prayed and then the police drove up.

Thailand