Lantern Festival Activities

Thursday was the Lantern Festival, officially the last day of the Chinese New Year holiday. Just when you though surely no one else had any more fireworks after shooting them off for the past 15+ days, well.....think again!!! It was nearly like Chinese New Year all over again--not quite as bad though! Though there was no sleeping early that night and morning came way too early the next work day:)



Some of the Forever Home girls went to the Lantern Festival with New Day's preschool class, the rest went with me. We had a great time walking around watching all of the activities! There were many fan dancers, ribbon dancers, yo yo jugglers, table jugglers, lion dancers, dragon dancers, Chinese opera performers, and many other performers dressed in various costumes. It was a very culturally rich experience for the girls and us as foreigners as well. It was one of those times where the Chinese were proud and willing to have their pictures taken. They even happily posed:)



It isn't often we get such culturally rich things here--that is unless you count the many other cultural experiences we have every day just living here. I suppose there are so many things that we've become so accustomed to after living here for many years, we don't even realize it until it is pointed out by someone new visiting here. It has just become a way of life for us.



The lion dance was absolutely wonderful! Of course, everything was great, but that was truly a cool and entertaining performance! Not only did I take many, many pictures, I also took several videos, though too many to share all, and I may put some of the best ones on the blog for you all to enjoy too.



These lion dancers were fabulous and I'm sure put many, many hours of practice into their performance--as well as many of the other dancers and performers. With two people in each lion costume, they moved amazingly well together. Jenna seemed to be a bit afraid of them. As long as they were at a distance, she was very entertained by them, but the minute they came closer to us, she'd start backing up.