So it’s true, China’s pretty awesome. Yesterday they celebrated their New Year in Milan! In the morning my host dad drove me to the city Ghemme, where I met up with Cinzia, an AFS volunteer, and she drove me to Novara where we met up with 5 other exchange students – Tomoyuki from Japan, Siyi from Cina, Itim from Thailand, Cameron from Alaska, and Yuzhu from Thailand. We met up in Novara and then took a train together to Milan. The only problem, it was raining the WHOLE day. And it was freezing outside.  But that didn’t stop us from having fun! First, when we got to the little Chinatown in Milan, we found a place to eat lunch because we were starving!! We found a tiny Chinese restaurant on the side of the tiny street and ate there. But of course we had to wait half an hour in the rain for a table since there were 12 of us total (exchange students, volunteers, and a family of one of the students). The food was magnificent! I had “spaghetti con brodo e wantans” which was a really yummy soup with noodles, vegetables and wantans (ravioli type things). It kind of reminded me of eating pho with my mom at a Vietnam pho restaurant she likes :) After lunch we watched a parade in the center of the Chinatown. There were Chinese people dressed up in beautiful outfits, dancing, etc. It was nice, but it would have been much nicer if it hadn’t been raining because everyone was holding umbrellas and it was really hard to see the parade. But I did get some videos in the end that I will share in my next youtube video for February ;) After the parade we kinda just walked around in the cold rain for a while, talking, trying not to trip over tiny kids or get tangled between the non-stop parade of umbrellas coming straight for us. We stopped in a cafe for some coffee, but literally only for 1 minute top because that’s just how they do it here. You go in a cafe, order a coffee which takes 10 seconds to make, drink it in 20 seconds because it’s in such a small cup, pay, and then leave after one minute. It’s so crazy how different it is here! Anyway, after the one minute taste of paradise and a little bit of warmth, we headed out to the train station to go home. I would say that it was a really fun day even with all of the rain and cold weather. As long as I’m with friends and eating good food.. I’ll always be happy! :)