Hi everyone, it has been a long time since my last post. Since the Lunar New Year was coming, I wanted to enjoy some holiday after the final exam. I was surprised that not many Vietnamese community and Chinses community celebrated the Lunar New Year in Guildford or London areas. Most of my friends decided to fly back to their countries and celebrated with their families. I kind of miss the Tet holiday. My friend invited me to visit him during the break. So I decided to take some time off and visited my friend in London. We celebrated the Lunar New Year, and tried to cook some traditional foods. In Guildford, I have not seen many Vietnamese restaurants, nor Asian markets. After planning on dishes that we were going to cook, we looked for different seasons and ingredients. Luckily, my friend has lived in the UK for several years, so he knew where to look for things that we needed. We spent almost a full day to walk around the area and collect different ingredients from different stores. The weather was nice, not a lot of sunshine, little winds and rains, and the temperature was kind of cold. My friend said that this year was warmer than last year’s winter.

After getting all the ingredients, we called over some more friends and prepared to cook “Pho noodles” and “Thit dong”.

It took us all morning to try to replicate those traditional foods. Although the food was not really as good as the real one, we tried our best and we satisfied with the food we had. Feel like “Tet” was around. We kind of miss our food and our holiday.

Some small piece of advice: if you plan to come to the UK to study:
Be ready for the cold and the rain.
Be ready for walking and using public transportation for most of the time.
Learn to cook for yourself as you will miss the food.

Anyway, I heard that the flu is getting more serious, so stay warm, and take care. I am looking forward to meet new students this semester.

Good luck, have fun and enjoy the holiday.