New Year pictures

[Tulip]

I took some pictures of the activities I did for Vietnamese New Year. There are lots more to tradition but what I took were the only things I did. I didn't label the pictures, so I'll explain briefly. In the morning, I went to temple and there was a New Year brunch meal. Afterwards, there was lion dancing. The apartment complex where I live is only a block away from the temple, so after the lion dance, many of the members of the temple went back to the apartment complex to visit each other's homes and socialize. As a note, everyone in the apartment complex are members of our temple. It is considered as good luck to have the lion dance in your home so we invited the lions in. Yes, that is my apartment in the pictures. As tradition, we gamble on New Year. We here only gamble three days of New Year. In one of the pictures, you can see we played right in the courtyard because a bunch of people were just hanging around. In some pictures, you can see people everywhere and kids running around. This is a scene you can only see during New Year. It's only during New Year that we visit each others homes. And since we seldom see each other during the year, people often hang around in the courtyard to talk and catch up. We decorated the complex with lights and lanterns to show festivity of New Year. The tree with pink flowers normally blooms in the spring and usually just in time of New Year. So, typically that plant signifies New Year, so people normally have branches of them decorated in their homes. I have a nice vase of it but never got around to taking pictures of it this year. I vainly posted many pictures of myself to show the traditional Vietnamese long dresses. This year I got two. Normally, I just have one made. Usually, there are performances of singing, martial arts, or whatever. This year, we didn't organize one. However, other temples and establishments organized them, but I didn't go.

Well, okay, ask if you have questions.

http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...view=slideshow

Oh yeah, during the lion dance, these old women walked smack in the middle trying to li xi the lions. It was so funny I stopped taking pictures and videoed it. And people were laughing because the smallest lion tried to yank the li xi off the stick but it couldn't so it continued to dance with the stick hanging from the mouth.