5th Year Away from home for Chinese New Year celebration

Plum blossom blooming around the temple

Entrance of the temple

Main door towards the main altar

This is my 5th year away from home, means the 5th times I had been missing the Chinese New Year celebration back home...The feeling...I still missed those times when the whole family would gather for a big feast, exchange good phrases for the new year and of course, receiving the red packet for good blessing throughout the year.  I hope that I will be able to celebrate this event with my family again in the near future...

Nevertheless, I had a good and quiet celebration for the new year...A friend invited me over to her place for the so-called reunion dinner where she cooked 5 dishes for just the 3 of us...well...it's always good to have lotsa food...shows that we will have abundance of fortune and luck for the entire year!! 

Then the following week, I visited the Oakland Chinatown Streetfest to feel the CNY mood...it was pretty enjoyable actually....but since the economy is pretty bad nowadays, there were lesser number of stalls compared to previous years and not as crowded as I would expected to be.

I also visited another friend staying at South Bay area. They brought me to a Buddhist Temple near San Jose.  This is my 1st time visiting a temple after 1 year staying here in the USA.  It felt so at home...the atmosphere and the smell of the incense sticks really made me missed home even more...but I am fortunate to have friends here that understood how I felt and including me in some of their outings.  I prayed to Buddha for good health, good wealth and good blessings for the year...Let's hope that the Year of the Ox will bring better luck for all of us!