Moon Festival Party!

So I am just now getting around to posting about our Moon Festival Party. Emma really wanted to have a party this year for Moon Festival because for the first month that we were here the only Ni Hao Kai-Lan episode on the ipad was the Moon Festival one. She has the whole thing memorized and really wanted to have a party. So, we did. We had about 25 people here in our not so huge house. One special guest was a woman that I had met that week at a coffee shop downtown. She had just arrived the night before from London. She was visiting Rwanda on her own and asked a friend and I if we lived here. We took her across the street to the craft market and told her some places to visit. It struck me that I am no longer a newbie here...I was able to show someone else around town. It felt great! She was a lovely Jewish woman all on her own so I invited her to our party. It was so great. She was able to visit with lots of our friends and find out information on the gorilla treck and some other adventures she had planned. I just hope that we were a good witness of Christ's love to her.

Emma and I spent the week getting everything ready. We made tons of paper lanterns. I asked at the Chinese restaurants and a store in town owned by a Chinese family if they had them and they said no. The young Chinese man at the store who helped me was great. He was really excited that we were having a party. In fact, he told me that he would be carving a watermelon (like we do pumpkins) for his lantern. He said, "it's more fun that way." I told him that I was going to try to make mooncakes and he said, "impossible! it's much too hard. I tried once and couldn't do it." Well, thanks to my friend Sheri's special recipe I was able to make mooncakes that all the kids loved!

The biggest challenge was making egg rolls and cream cheese wontons from scratch. It wouldn't be so difficult if you could by egg roll WRAPPERS in Africa. Making egg roll wrappers from scratch is quit a challenge. After 2 days and 2 different recipes, I finally mastered it! I was so proud of myself. They turned out Fantastic! I would like to think that Emma's birth mother would be impressed.

So, I always forget to take a group picture because we are always so excited to eat the yummy food! I will try to remember for Chinese New Year!