Happy Mid Autumn Festival

Today is the 15th day of the 8th Lunar month and it is a Full Moon day. Every year on this day, Chinese all over the world will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. 

The legend involves a woman who flew to the Moon.

Traditionally, people would give food offerings to Heaven and the Moon, and recite poems to praise the beautiful Moon. There are several versions of legends linked to this festival. If you are interested to find out more, see here.

In my family, we stopped doing food offerings to the Moon after my grandparents passed away. We just gathered as a family to enjoy mooncakes and sip tea while chatting and having a good time. Being together with family is something that is so easy for most of us to take for granted and I only realised how much I miss this after I left home to study in London.

Lanterns, tea, fruits are all parts of this Festival

Every year that I have been away from home, I get very nostalgic on this day. I remember when I was in London and feeling terribly lonely, I stuffed myself with mooncakes and cried. Those mooncakes are really tasty but extremely high in calorie, hehe. Do try it if you ever get the chance.

Mooncakes, best enjoyed with Chinese tea

I usually celebrate this day with my family and people I love (friends and relatives). When we were younger, our parents would buy us paper lanterns and we would walk around our housing area with our little, cute lanterns. I remember I had many differently-shaped lanterns when I was a young child e.g. a rabbit, a butterfly, a fish and the typical round type (see photos).

I had a lantern very similar to this

The most typical type of paper lantern. I always burned up mine because I was careless.

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An alternative is to use battery-operated lanterns. Safer for children and careless kids, hehe.

During this time, lanterns of all kinds of shapes and sizes are on sale

My mummy always asked me to choose my own lantern. I want to be a great mummy too.

Tonight, when I was walking back from playing badminton, I took these photos of the full moon while thinking of those I love back home. 

View of the full moon from my flat

Isn't she gorgeous?

When I looked at the moon, I saw these:

My first baby, Rich Boy

My second baby, Sasa

Piggies are actually out in the 'wild', on their FIRST ever camping trip with Cindy and Bill. I really hope they are admiring the full moon too. I can almost hear their wheeking sounds :) 

To my family, I want to say I love you & I miss HOME!

To my babies, mummy loves you very very much! 

Please forgive me for not being with you now.

Hope you are enjoying the beautiful Moon too. 

Sankissjuice

Disclaimer: Many of the photos used are not mine. I found them from a google search and most of them are labelled. Only the last 4 photos belong to sankissjuice.blogspot.ca