Happy Chinese new year! Part 1 of many

I've been wanting to celebrate Chinese new year ever since I learned about it in second grade. That was like five years ago and each year as hard as I tried I couldn't convince my family to do anything but buy a box of rice paper candy or eat Chinese takeout for dinner. Yesterday was Saturday and we weren't doing anything so I asked my dad if he could bring me to the nearby China town. I told him it was Chinese new year, I've been trying to celebrate for five years, all we where doing was staying at home today, we couldn't go there on a school day and we might have something planned for next weekend so we should go today. Then I went to my room and got dresses as Chinese as I could and packed my notebook, camera, and other stuff in my woven bag with flowers painted on it. Then I told my dad he should get ready to go and he told me that we weren't going. I said I'd been wanting to celebrate in some way or another for the last five years but he didn't change his mind. Then I started crying and I walked off to my room thinking I would never, be able to celebrate this wonderful Holiday with my family.

After I stopped crying and emerged from my room thinking I would have a depressing and boring day at home my Dad told me he was going to get a keg of beer in the city, said he would bring me and we could stop by china town. I was still sad from what he said earlier so even though I was grateful it was hard to say thank you so just I hugged him. Then it was decided by my parents that the whole family would go.

We all ate at a restaurant in the city then got the keg. After that we Left for Chinatown. On the way there, there was whining from brothers who would rather spend all day on their virtual wizard game than go to Chinatown, But I was so exited to finally be celebrating Chinese new year that I didn't care.

When we drove through the giant front gates with a lion statue on either side, one holding a lion cub, the other a fancy decorated sphere I noticed that each of the lampposts looked The same as the rest in the city but they where painted red. I believe they where red because it is associated with happiness and joy in china. We found a parking spot and had a bit of trouble getting the parking meter (or whatever that thing is called that takes you money so you can park somewhere) to except our credit card but we finally did. At first when we saw the small old looking town we "thought what are we going to do here?" Because there really only seemed to be Chinese restaurants there and we already ate so we walked over to the gate take photos of the grand Chinese style entrance...

To be continued...