{my favorite festival, once again}

The annual Heritage Festival. My very favorite thing about Edmonton. I LOVE this festival! The big Hawrelak Park in the river valley gets filled with tents and stages. Each part of the world is represented with dancers, music, food and merchandise. Thousands of people gather to celebrate everyone's heritage. There are people in Canada from all over the world. Canada is a great cultural melting pot. We all live in peace with each other. Some minor squabbles here and there which is to be expected as the world has it's turmoils. But no one looks at you weird whether you have a tourban or a muslim scarf or a cowboy hat on your head. All goes.

I love it!

The festival started on Saturday, first of August. Jay was working that day so I had planned to go to the festival on Monday so he can come too. Could I stay away from the festival? Nope. I found myself deciding to go on both days.

Saturday was a really hot day (+33C, very humid) but there seemed to be a breeze so I thought it would be fine. Wrong! After just an hour or two, I had to give up and we came home.

We went back on Monday with Jay when the weather was much more tolerable. Perfect actually. Cloudy, not too hot. Here is a sampling of pictures from the festival. My favorite again were the Eritrean dancers (the last pictures). There's something I really love about their music and I love the rhytmic, simple dancing they do. I did miss seeing the older girls dance though. Hopefully next year again.

Our Church's missionaries get to do a great service project during this festival. They are the official Food Bank donation people, taking people's food donations. Another thing I love about Canada - Canadians have big hearts. There's lots of charity work here. Every year at Heritage Festival they collect tons and tons of food for those who are struggling. Just one little part of the charity work that is done here.

I only have one complaint about the festival - some countries' music was way too loud. It blared so loud you had to cup your ears or they'd hurt. Someone needs to check the noise level so people's ears won't get damaged. Next year I'll bring ear plugs I guess. :) Oh, and I didn't like that on the Chinese stage they had breakdancers. How is that celebrating chinese culture? Jay loved it though as he used to breakdance himself. So I guess I shouldn't complain - something for everyone. :)

Jay bought some food from the Fiji tent. It was supposed to be chicken curry but they gave him goat meat by accident. I had to snap a picture of this girl as I thought she was so beautiful!

I wasn't sure whether to frown or laugh about these. Superstitous emblems mixed with Christianity. Just seems like such a contradiction.

This little Eritrean girl was so cute dancing on the stage before the actual performance started.