Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy New Year!

One our biggest bright spots of what was otherwise a dark, dreary and dreadful February, was the Lunar New Year.  Prompted by Ellie's interest in her friend Ella at school who is Chinese, as well as the a chapter at school that she must have done, we decided to celebrate the Lunar New Year in full force.  Honestly, it was actually quite fun since we had not much else planned.  We probably went out on the coldest day of the year since we had been fighting sickness and cabin fever so badly and we were all going crazy.

But thankfully the Queens museum pulled through with a Lunar New Year Chinese dance celebration.  We walked in and they were practicing and Ellie sat down and zoned in immediately.  It was like magic.  There were several various dance routines in elaborate costumes that were very interesting to watch.  Afterwards the kids ran around the museum like crazy people while Mike and I attempted to see some of the sights of the museum.

We continued the Lunar New Year Celebration the following weekend by making homemade pork dumplings and going to the NYC Chinatown parade.  The dumplings came out pretty well, except the 2 plus hours that it took to make them.  But it was good time spent with Ellie and she was all into it so no loss there.

The following day was the first relatively nice day of the winter, thankfully, since there had been predictions of snow and rain. We made the trek down into Chinatown for the parade.  As we pulled into the area, Ellie exclaimed that this must be where her friend Ella lives, since she is Chinese. Hilarious.  I must admit I was expecting a bit more out of the parade, but there were still lots of randoms in it.  Like the guy driving the Ferrari--what was that showing? We had a great afternoon out in the city, and completed our Lunar New Year celebration with pizza at Lombardi's.

Some of our dumplings

All ready for the parade!  Thanks Ms. Marcea for the outfit!

Year of the goat. or sheep.  or ram.  Depending how you translate

I expected a lot more of this

It's pretty impressive how animated they make them look

This one was on the border of scary/creepy

Ellie zoned into the dancing at the Queens Museum

This little kid was amazing.  Flipping all over the place

Zack zoned into not paying attention to the dancing

Mongolian dance.  It was interested how these costumes and dances had some Russian attributes to them

Fan dance

Ribbon dance

Pretty impressive what you can do with a scarf on a stick

Paper cutting activity