Our Chinese school had a New Year's festival; it must have had 5 times as many people as it did last year. I was completely taken aback by how many people were there.
Last year the parking lot was a pretty sad sight - it was mostly an expanse of grey cement, a few people meandering from booth to booth, some homemade carnival games, and not much else. This year the parking lot was craMmed - Red paper banners and lanterns hung in multitudes in every booth and everywhere you saw there were people crowding to see the food and wares displayed.
In the background the heavy beating of the lion dance drum and the clang of cymbals made it so festive and so traditional that just taking in the sight made me start to get really excited.
The weather was perfect - a light breeze, clear sky, and we sold so much food and trinkets for fundraising. It was impressive how many people spent their whole Saturday out there volunteering. I am very grateful to my parents for always doing stuff like that for the community so that I could learn to do it too.
There were SO many cute little kids all dressed up in traditional Chinese clothing.. they were so adorable. Then the little girls went on stage to sing and perform their song, hopping and clapping out of sync, but they were so cute it didn't matter.
I also liked how many non asian people were there asking about the different traditions and stuff. There were many Caucasian couples who just adopted a Chinese kid (usually a girl - I dunno why) and I was glad they brought their daughter there to learn about these traditions.
so.. basically it was a very Chinese weekend. Count how many times I said Chinese in the past 2 blogs.