Here's Tenley looking positively evil with glee over the giant pinwheel she's holding. It's a shiny confection of red and hot pink mylar on a bright gold frame with various characters celebrating the New Year and a pair of red metallic flags with dragons on top. We aquired this fabulous $2 trinket last Saturday at the Lantern Festival street fair in Monterey Park just a couple of blocks from USAA's office.
We figured that since Monterey Park has a large Chinese community, and on their website they indicated that the event had offsite parking with shuttle service, was several blocks long with kids crafts, food, rides, wares for sale, and everything from Lion Dancers to Chinese pop groups as entertainment this would be fun and cultural to visit and give Tenley lots of input.
Not so much.
The event was actually about 3 blocks long, and had one stage which we got to see some pre-teens fan-dancing on for a couple minutes (Tenley liked the music!). There were some rides, but nothing of interest for a 17 month old. If you were in the market for DVD's or CD's in Chinese- this was the place to be; beyond that there was the generic Chinese junk stall where we bought Tenley's pinwheel, a booth of knock-off hand bags, and one booth of procade dresses and tablecloths. The rest of the booths were "community service" booths with information for the good citizens of MP about the LA Times, bottled water, Maggi Chinese cooking sauces, LAPD, and various other things of interest to the local community- but not in any way culturaly related. There were a couple food stalls with BBQ and Boba...but that was it!!! We had toured the whole thing in 30 minutes. Rather dissappointing.
On the bright side, the weather was fabulous and it was great to be outside. We popped into the very local supermarket and I got a super huge totally yummy fuji apple and some of my favourite soy milk. We also stopped at this little Chinese conveinience store where I bought red envelopes before our trip to China and bought Tenley some cute melamine bowls and spoons, some green tea for Jeff, and I got some cheap shower caps that work so much better than the Goody ones from Sav-on.
The day was still young enough, and we were starving so we stopped at Victoria Gardens on the way home for a nice stroll in the balmy evening air and some delicious all-American BBQ at Lucille's.
Not quite what we had planned, but a good day none the less.
2 comments:
Should've gone to the FCC event! :)
Going to China? Missed that one. When? Are you adopting another?
Shell
Breathe Shell, breathe!! Do I look crazy?? (Don't answer that!) Yes, we are planning to adopt again- but we're planning on a 2008 DTC w/a 2009 travel (we want a Year of the Rat baby!). "Before the trip to China" as in before we went for Tenley! :)
Would have loved to have gone to CNY at the Empress- we had such a good time last year- but to be honest, we just didn't have our act together on getting the reservation in! Next year, e-mail me in advance so we can sit together & watch our kids cause mayhem!
~M
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