Happy New Year!

For the approximately 1.3 billion Chinese living around the world, Sunday marked the beginning of a new year - the Year of the Tiger! If you're like most people, you learned the Chinese zodiac from the placemat at your local Chinese restaurant. (If you don't know your sign, you can figure it out - and learn your sign compatibility - here. Or, just purchase your own set of placemats here.)

According to this blogger the majority of the Chinese population living around Belleville hail from Wenzhou, a city in southeastern China (this explains why our favorite Chinese restaurant is called Salon de Thé Wen Zhou!).

The New Year's Day parade began in our neighborhood (Belleville) and made its way to the Hotel de Ville in the center of the city. We actually caught up with it just as it passed the Centre Pompidou (Paris's modern art museum). We could hear it coming because of the awesome pyrotechnics you see below (three or four of these guys walked at the head of the parade, each dragging a smoking, popping, sparking crowd-clearing delight!).

The dragons, traditional costumes, and children dressed as tigers were brightly colored and helped us get in a celebratory mood. After all, our friends Katie and Darryl just arrived, so there's lots to celebrate!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I am a pig and Louis and Panda are both rats.