We Celebrated Chinese New Year!

Yes, after having to do without the last 3 years, our ESL class at church, where most of our students and even some of the leaders are Chinese, we celebrated with a Dumpling & Pot Luck Chinese New Year's Party again. In-person!

I recall, back in 2008 or 2009, when I attended the first one, a Saturday night in February. I came rather early and found the church kitchen FULL of Chinese people dressed up - standing room only - but rolling, cutting, filling/folding and then boiling hundreds, no, I believe they said 3,000 dumplings! That pot luck party was held in the fellowship hall, which is where our Advanced class usually meets, but with the folding dividers pushed aside. I heard we were 200 out that night!

We "helpers" were told we could bring desserts if we wanted for this one, but the Chinese wanted to bring all the main courses (lots of options if we didn't care for dumplings) and treat us as guests.

I'd asked my students the Sunday before, at our table, what Canadian dessert they liked, and was told that Cheesecake was a good one. Ah, I have a recipe for torte that is mostly a cheesecake but with about 4 layers. So I had made two 8-inch glass pans, starting with the bottom two layers on Saturday, and the top two layers on Sunday afternoon.

When I arrived at 5:30 I found they had set up for the party in the Gym, which is easily three times the size of the fellowship hall. It was already full! People everywhere! And kids running around in dressed-up clothes.

I let someone carry the one pan to the dessert tables are the far wall, and I took the other with me to the table where one of my students, Cecile, had saved a place for me. Her landload and landlady were her other guests. My three other students had already found other tables to sit at.

I explained to all who asked that the one on our table was to make sure "my students" got a piece as the pan at the dessert tables could be all gone before they even got to see it. Which was the case. After we'd had the main course I served up a piece for each person at our table and then carried the pan to where my other students were, and made sure that people at their tables got one too.

(I'd cut them 4x4 at home, so I'm thinking there were 16 + 16 pieces or 32 altogether.

I believe I've heard the gym seats 250, but I suspect we were 300 or more there! I feel so rich thinking of all these as my friends, even though there were some strangers in our midst.

P.S. I just remembered that Hongru gave me two large chocolates as I was leaving. I've just enjoyed them as a delightful snack!

<*> TIPS & SOLUTIONS: <*>

Try a LIVE Tour Before You Install

There are times you want to send an email to a number of friends and relatives at the same time. But some spam filters will block your emails if you send to lots and lots of people at once.

You can get around this by learning to use Bcc - which means Blind Carbon Copy.

Beside the To: label is usually a small arrow, click on that and you will see some other options, such as Cc (Carbon Copy) - or Bcc (Blind carbon copy), etc. If you are sending something to a group, like members of your Board, then you would choose Cc and list the emails there, separated by commas (,) If you want to protect the identity of the others getting this email, choose Bcc and again, list the email addresses, separated with commas. (,)

This can be done with your Gmail address too.

All that is left to do is write the body of your email, and click on "Send."

If you are in the habit of doing this a lot, I recommend that you research how to send mass emails without running into filter problems. Some people set their filters to block any emails that are a mass mailing that they did NOT subscribe to.

Watch out also for those (even friends and relatives) who will find those other recipient email addresses and add them to their address book, and soon they are spamming all YOUR contacts. This is where a proper mailing list service is a much better idea.

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