Tangyuan and Caroling

Today was awesome. I woke up so excited to taste the sweetness of the "tangyuans" that my mom and sisters and grandma made the night before. It's freakin' hard to roll the white dough into evenly shaped glutinous rice balls and it's even harder to roll the red ones into sizes for ants to eat. When we arrived, I was rewarded for my patience during the night before when I wanted to eat them straight away (I couldn't help it, it looked super tasty, I swear, things taste better when raw). The rice balls were boiled and put into plates and the sugary syrup was also boiled and cooled. 

The choice is yours, plain sugary syrup or the one with pandan leaves and ginger (yuck!).

My white rice balls! They look beautiful. YEAH BABY!

The hardest to roll, the smaller glutinous rice balls. I quit halfway.

No "tangyuan" is complete without roasted, powdered peanuts.

PERFECT.

Well, they say that you can only eat the amount of glutinous rice balls (GRB) equal to your age. Ermmm... guess how old I am? 

The person who guesses correctly gets a kiss from me.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sometimes, no matter how old you are, just enjoy the "tangyuan" that is served in front of you.

Later, in the evening, we went to my maternal grandmother's house for Christmas carolings. During the afternoon, me and my younger cousins went cycling throughout the village my grandmother stays in, coming back with sore butts, a couple of bruises and a dead body....... of a chicken, cause: bird flu, I think. 

We had to entertain Sean, my one year old cousin by spinning him in his crib. He got so HIGH, he kept on laughing. Babies are NUTS.

Soon, the carollers arrived. Boy was I going crazy, they sang and sang and sang and sang and sang....... till I got frustrated and snapped a picture of them, then they stopped. Just kidding.

Then, guess who I saw? 

SANTA! SANTA! I SAW SANTA! MOMMY, I SAW SANTA!!!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

And look what SANTA gave ME!!!

A choclate wafer, a chewy chocolate sweet, a very sour grape candy and FUNKY potato chips. And a CALENDAR. Ermmm.... you can't complain what you're given with, right?

Well,  It looks like it's not just the adults that are feeling the global recession heat but the kids too. I guess Santa could be hanging up his boots next year if this problem goes on and no more "HO-HO-HO, MERRY CHRISTMAS!" coming from fat guy dressed in red's lips.

Ahem, at least this Santa has shades on to protect from the recession heat.