Chinese New Year comes wrapped up in weeks of festivities known as Spring Festival. During this time, the majority of the 1.3 billion people retreat to hometowns near and far. Businesses, restaurants and stores go completely dark or have limited hours. University campuses - ours included - remain hushed except for a few lingering students who are too poor to afford the train tickets home. Even the basketball courts - the last outposts to be deserted - are gilded in snow that remains undisturbed for several weeks.

In the quietness of life here, I've revisited some pleasures that usually get lost in the shadows of teaching, grading and making time for friends and students outside of class. I've started (yet another) blog, made granola from scratch, burned a batch of that granola to within seconds of being considered a new Olympic sport, tested a biscuit recipe, and even processed some digital photos. And speaking of Olympics, I've also worked in a healthy dose of the Vancouver games. I actually got teary-eyed when a Chinese couple took home the gold in the pairs skating division. Any married duo who, after 18 years together on and off the ice, breaks retirement to compete under the world's microscope deserves a little athletic bling. I'm also partial because they're from....drumroll, please...Harbin. 祝贺!

Lest I forget home, the biscuits that I made earlier reminded me of my aunt, whose sphere of culinary influence spans as far as the icy northeast corner of China. I thought of her while cutting in the shortening, and then I thought of who taught HER to do that. It was my great-grandmother, a petite and simple country woman who could've probably built a Gulf Coast armada out of dough, if she had felt like it. I hope that my amateur biscuits would have made her proud.