Household supplies

This year we didn't take the kids with us to the Foreign Staff Bo Bing Night. We had a pleasant enough dinner - here is a photo of what the tables looked like before they changed for Bo Bing.It is one of the habits that I find hard to stomach that Chinese deposit bones, rubbish and anything that is inedible (which isn't much) on the table - and sometimes onto the floor. I'm definitely of the school of "leave it on the side/edge of your plate" and am trying, seemingly in vain, to teach Alex this too. Then we got down to business. This seems to be the event where you get your household supplies for the year - or at least, we seem to.

Typical prizes include boxes of tissues, toothpaste, toothbrushes, toilet paper, clothes washing soap, hand soap, washing detergent, shampoo and conditioner, blankets, cooking oil and hand towels. Alex managed to win a gallon of cooking oil and was mightily unimpressed to learn it wasn't apple juice. I won another blanket (Alex won one last year) and enough "stuff" to ensure we aren't buying household cleaning products for at least six months. Shh - don't tell Brett, but I ended up giving away the ginormous bag of rice, the gallon of cooking oil, a couple of packs of toothbrushes and the laundry soap (used usually for handwashing). We just weren't going to use it.