Kung hei fat choI

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. And of course, in the Vancouver area, we have a whole lot of people with Chinese ancestry, so Chinese New Year is kind of a big deal here. I believe that it’s traditionally the most important festival of the Chinese calendar, so it’s a big deal in a lot of places.

And elementary schools are quite excellent at making a REALLY big deal out of any holiday, regardless of the culture. So all over my school are dragon-y and lion-y art projects and little red envelopes (with fake money, unfortunately) and chopsticks and literally anything to do with Chinese culture. The kids who actually are Chinese are loving it all, and are teaching everyone else little phrases in Cantonese or Mandarin – which is really quite interesting in the French Immersion classes. Talk about multi-culturalism!

I was taking a little group of Grade Twos from their class down the hallway to my class first thing this morning, when we passed a bulletin board outside one of the Grade One classes. It was beautifully decorated with the cutest Chinese dragons that you ever saw, similar to this one I found on Google Images:

The ones on the bulletin board at school just had slightly different heads: they were several cutout pieces of green paper, glued together to make a 3D effect and garnished with googly eyes and pipecleaner tongues. They were just adorable, and the kids and I stopped to admire them. One boy wondered aloud how they had done the dragon mouths. I replied that I had no idea, and I touched one of the dragon heads to perhaps get a little closer look.

The head fell off in my hand. Apparently it hadn’t been glued on well enough. The kids looked at me in horror. I looked slowly from the small green dragon head in my hand to the kids to the rest of the dragon’s paper body that was still securely stapled to the bulletin board. I honestly didn’t know what to do!

Finally I said, “And this would be a lesson in why we don’t touch art on walls.”

The kids started to giggle then, and I did too. I quickly popped into the school office across the hall and asked to borrow the secretary’s tape dispenser. She just looked at me quizzically, so I explained the situation. She too started to laugh as she handed me the tape.

I retaped the dragon head to its body, while telling the kids with a grin that this was our little secret, that they were never to tell anyone what a klutz I was. They knew I was teasing, and a couple of them responded with comments that of course I was a walking disaster, but of course I would have to confess what I had done to the teacher of the class who had made the dragons.

So my morning started off like that.

At lunch, Chinese food was brought in for the staff, which was a very much appreciated treat. We have lots of plates at work, but we seem to be always running out of forks (I think people eat them along with their food. Or else they take them home by mistake. And never notice that they have one fork that is completely different from all their other cutlery. Or maybe ALL their cutlery is mismatched?). Anyway, knowing this, I had brought a fork from home.

After I finished eating, I put my plate in the dishwasher and washed my fork by hand. At this point, because I was afraid that if I put it on the table, some zealot might pick it up with their own dirty plate and fork and it would be gone forever, I put my fork in the back pocket of my jeans.

Now, you probably think you know where I am going with this narrative of the fork in the back pocket. But you are wrong! That’s not at all what happened.

What actually happened was that when the bell rang, I quickly went to the bathroom before heading back to my classroom. The fork fell into the toilet. I had to fish it out – but fortunately, I hadn’t peed yet.

So that’s how my afternoon started.

Please tell me that my Year of the Dragon is going to get better!

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