New Year, New Tradition

New Year, New “Tradition” Today is Chinese New Years Eve and I consider tomorrow another brand new start of my life. Tonight, I will feast with my friends on  a lot of Chinese dishes, video chat with my family, and wait to “grab” red packets on WeChat, which is a commonly used Chat APP on our cell phones. During traditional Chinese New Year, the people who are relatively older in the family will put money inside red packets and give them to younger kids. The money will be used to buy things that parents usually do not allow us to have too much of, such as snacks and toys. When I was young, I considered those red pockets a huge amount of money, and the Spring Festival is my favorite holiday because of surprising incomes. Sometimes, parents will deposit the money for us in the bank and teach us the idea of saving. In recent years, more and more people use WeChat to send and receive digital “red packets.” The most interesting part is definitely “grabbing.” The number of red packets sent out are usually limited and the money inside varies. I  feel extremely excited when I grab one successfully and get the best luck. When I talked with friends this morning, everyone was kind of complaining that they could not concentrate in class because they were so busy grabbing red packets on their phones. Usually, the red pockets can  be opened in less than 1 minute and leave other people nothing. Later, some of my friends in CS posted Python codes to help us to grab automatically. After a couple tries, I have to announce that it was useless and I would be rather sitting inside Grainger and staring at my phone with some help from the high-speed Wi-Fi. As we grow up and experience many other exciting things, we think our Chinese New Year is more and more boring. However, we always try our best to make it fun and memorable. I really like our new tradition of grabbing packets because people are more connected. This year, I sent a lot of red packets and wishes to my friends and families, and I hope everyone can enjoy this season and good luck for the next year. Here is a red packet from my BFF. Connie Class of 2018 I am double majoring in Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and Statistics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My hometown is a historical and peaceful city called Suzhou, located in southeastern China.