This past weekend was the Chinese Lantern Festival in downtown Auckland, New Zealand.  This annual festival celebrates Chinese New Year and is a big deal around these parts.

Photo taken from the main room of our apartment

We were bums and didn’t actually go, despite its proximity to our place.  This is because I had to work the first 2 days of the festival (which means being gone from 6:30a – 7:30p).  Working + being 25 weeks’ pregnant means that I go to bed by 9pm on the dot.  We were planning to go on day two since I didn’t have to work the following day – I even called Chris after I left the ER to remind him – but by the time I walked home, I was exhausted.  I went to change clothes, looked in my closet, thought, “I have nothing to wear!” and started to cry.  Pathetic.  I put myself to bed for a mini-nap (yes – a nap at 7:30 at night) and when I woke up at 8pm, I didn’t want to go out.

Sunday was the festival’s final night, but we had church that evening.  However, we did have a front row seat for the fireworks finale!  Here’s a video taken from the main room of our apartment.  Chris starts talking at one point and I whisper to him that I’m recording.  His favorite part of the video is around 2 mins 11 secs – total length is ~3 mins 30 secs.  I filmed it using the closest thing that I could find, which just so happened to be my old point-n-shoot camera.  It’s been a good little camera, but great at video-taping it is not!

Anyway, here’s the video – check it out if you have any interest in seeing Chinese fireworks being set off in Auckland, New Zealand as filmed by an American ex-pat 🙂