So last Sat (2/19) a bunch of Borders peeps and Chris and I went to San Francisco for the Chinese New Year's Parade! We met up in Prunedale at 9am and arrived a little before 11am. We arrived to it pouring. Luckily, I was prepared. I had fleece, rain jacket, and umbrella. Chris didn't have an umbrella (lost it a year ago and hasn't replaced it) so I gave him my umbrella, wore my mini-backpack underneath my jacket and tromped around San Fran's Chinatown in the rain with everyone else. Everyone, but Carmen, Chris, and I bought an umbrella in Chinatown at one point or another.
We walked around Chinatown because it was also the Chinatown Community Fair, but we mostly store hopped to get out of the rain. Before lunch, we did see the performance stage and see the Lion Dancers Club. They were AMAZING. The costumes are fantastic too and they can blink the eyes and it was just fantastic to watch. I wish my camera and phone wasn't buried in my backpack underneath my jacket or I would have filmed it. We had lunch at this restaurant and ordered the meal for 7 people. Oh wow. WAAAYYY too much food. I think Laura and Eric will be eating Chinese for lunch and dinner for 2-3 days. It was good and it was also nice to get in out of the rain and dry off.
After that, we went to the Chinese Cultural Center where we were for quite a while. They were doing different demonstrations an had a mini-scavenger hunt we participated in. They also had a stage for people to perform so we watched some. To say the least, it was very enjoyable to be in out of the rain, in a warm place, with a nice bathroom. :) The USPS was there selling cachets of the Chinese Lunar stamps. I bought one with the Year of the Rabbit picture on it. After we finished (and the center basically packed up), we ventured back out into the rain and went to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. That place is probably smaller than my bedroom in Marina, but oh man you could smell the baking cookies down the alley. When you go in, they give you the flat cookies as samples to eat. Sooo good when they're still warm. I think I ended up eating like 6 fortune cookies by the time I left. I also paid $0.50 for a photo and bought their small almond cookies. The cookies are amazing. Oh goodness. You can taste the butter, but they are fantastic. Best impulse buy I've had in a long time. While standing to get my photo, the smell of the baking cookies enticed me to buy some and I'm glad I did. Afterward, we found the Golden Gate Fields table (racetrack in SF) in the community fair, but they had left. It looks like they were giving out calendars (soggy ones were left) and they were also giving out vouchers to go to the racetrack for free on Sunday. Oh well. We tried, but it was pouring still. McDonalds was there and there were SOOO many Asians lined up. They were giving out reuseable bags, gift certificates, and calendars. VISA was doing a spin-the-wheel prize thing and it also had a short line.
Eventually, we got tired of walking around and went into Little Italy to find someplace warm. We found a little cafe, sat for a while, then went to a bakery, and delicatessen place. By this time, it was 5pm and the parade was supposed to start at 5:30 so we headed back to Kearney to find a spot. We ended up near the bleachers and MC spot at like 5:10pm. It's still raining and we're standing, waiting for the parade to start. Then someone told us that the parade typically starts 20-30 minutes late (which it did).
When the parade finally started, we were all VERY excited; however, by the last hour (especially last 40 minutes), we were definitely over the parade. It's a very LONG parade and whose bright idea was it to have it as a night parade in SF?! It's cold! They had just about every person imaginable parade (they even got down to the budget person for SF...) and they had schools from all over (SF, San Jose, etc) parade, and sponsors paraded (McDonalds, VISA, Wells Fargo, Hyundai, CA Lotto, etc). I got to see the Giants' World Series Trophy in person! Not up close, but I've never seen one in person. They had the seal dude hold it up in a convertible. There were lots of dragons, which were always neat. The problem with being in a spot right before everyone stops to perform is the dragons would sweep over the crowds on the side. It's okay maybe once or twice, but after the 5th+ time, it gets tiresome. In addition, some of those dragons had hard things on them that hurt! However, it's good luck to touch the dragon so I suppose I should be having a lot of good luck for a while considering how often I touched a dragon in one day. By the last 40 minutes, we were just tired and cold and wanted to leave, but we wanted to wait till the LAST dragon because it was supposed to be amazing and something the parade is known for. It got so bad that we were all looking down the road hoping we didn't see anything AFTER the next thing. The parade was supposed to go from 5:30pm to 8:pm. We first arrived at the parade street around 5pm and the parade didn't finish till 9pm. It rained from the moment we arrived to about 6:15pm. It was in the low 40's at night. We were SOOO cold. We also hadn't really eaten since noon. We had been standing/walking for so long that day and it was so cold that I was limping for a good 15-20 minutes after the parade because my feet were so cold. It felt WONDERFUL to move.
After the parade I wanted to get a Year of the Rabbit t-shirt since I felt like I deserved it after enduring the parade, but all the stores were closed. I could have gotten one earlier, but didn't. It's not a big deal, but now I want a t-shirt (and am thinking of designing one) that says on the front in the pocket spot "2011 Year of the Rabbit") and on the back has a Chinese rabbit image and says, "I survived watching the San Francisco Chinese New Year's Parade." Honestly, it's how I felt. :P Although it was cold, I did have fun and I'm glad I did it. It's something I can say I did and it was fun, but I will NEVER do it again! LoL It was just wayyyy too long of a parade and it was wayyyy too cold at night in San Francisco.
Anyway, it was a good day (very long -- roundtrip it was 15 hour day).
Photos: SF's Chinese New Year
Videos: Some string instrument performance (really quite nice)
Fire crackers string (1 of 3 we saw -- last 2 were 2+ stories long -- in photos)
Lion dancers in the parade
School...is school...There is 3 weeks left of the quarter and then 1 week of finals (I have none). Our GP final paper is due March 18th (last day of finals). It's almost done. My other group papers (3 others not including GP) are coming along...slowly...Most of all my mundane schoolwork is all complete, though. So the next 3 weeks will be turning in draft papers, presentations, and final papers. I get my coastal zone law final tomorrow and I get a week to do it, which is nice. It's also nice it's not at the end of the quarter. Well...with that said...I should go write some part of one of the 4 group papers I have to write.
Oh yeah, registered for classes too. Not sure what I'm exactly taking (few advanced classes I'm unsure of), but so far I have classes only on Monday and Wednesday and Wednesday I'm finished by 11:15am :P It will be a very nice quarter!
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