[Mongolian wedding song]

After our recent trip to Banff, we stayed in Calgary to experience Illuminasia. Loved this Mongolian wedding song performance so much.

[so cool! literally. :)]

Wow! I'm so impressed with the Harbin Ice Festival! They really know how to make the most of winter in China! Sure would be awesome to see this in real life one day.

More pictures of Harbin Ice Festival.

[dance, baby, dance!]

Some pictures from this year's Heritage Festival. 

For new readers of my blog: The Heritage Festival is held each year at a big park here in Edmonton. This year there were 63 tents/stages. Each one for a country or an ethnic group. You can see their dancing/singing/other performances and purchase merchandise. You can also taste food from different countries.

This time my favorites were: Eritrean dancing (always my favorite, I could watch it for hours), Ugandan dancing, Korean drumming (so powerful!) and Karjalanpiirakat munavoilla (kun olen itse liian laiska niitä tekemään).

Gotta love the Heritage Festival!

Here are some video snippets for ya. Enjoy!

Then...
More dancing. Different venue. 
This So You Think You Can Dance performance brought tears in my eyes as I thought of all the misery and pain addictions cause. 
Cole is so wickedly great in this number!

[vaisakhi nagar kirtan]

There are many East Indian people in Canada and these are some pictures of an annual Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan (a Sikh parade).

Here is some info about the Sikh:

* Sikhism started in 1469 in Punjab, India.

* The first Guru was Guru Nanak Sahib.

* In 1708, Guru Gobind Singh Sahib proclaimed Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Scriptures. It is a compilation of the original hymns containing the teachings of the Sikh Gurus.

* A Guru is someone who imparts spiritual enlightenment.

* There are three requirements a Sikh should do: meditate on the holy name of God, make a living through honest means and hard work, share earnings with others less fortunate.

* All males have the surname Singh, meaning lion for courage. All females have the surname of Kaur, meaning princess for dignity and equality. (I think that’s for the baptized members. I’m not sure.)

* The Khalsa (baptized Sikh) must have on their person five articles of faith at all times: uncut hair (Kesh), small wooden comb (Kangha), specially designed underwear (Kaccha), iron bracelet on right wrist (Kara), and a sword (Kirpan). It is also mandatory for a baptized male Sikh to cover his head with a Turban and a female Sikh with a Dupatta (long head-scarf).

* The Khalsa is viewed to be the holy army of the One Supreme Creator God.

* Saadh Sangat = Sikhk religious congregation.

Information taken from a pamphlet given to me at the parade. It is always good to know more about other cultures/religions!

I was chatting with a woman and her daughter who was five. I mentioned I was from Finland and the little girl asked me what language I speak. Then she said "I was born in Winnipeg (which is here in Canada) so I speak Punjabi. Priceless! :D 

{this & that}

On Saturday, we went to watch Chinese New Year celebrations at West Edmonton Mall.

The guy in this picture was fun. He moved mysteriously and kept changing masks so fast. It seemed impossible that he could change the masks without us noticing how he did it. Magical!

Other things we saw: lion dancing, Chinese music performances, kung fu (loved it! so much energy and it's incredible what they were doing), Chinese theatre and dancing.

 

We also watched the sea lion show for awhile. All I can say is: wow! One talented sea lion!



Christmas is over but I thought I'd share with you these. One of the teachers in Sienna's school had charicatures drawn for each of her students.



A theatre group came to Sienna's school and helped the grade 1 - 6 students perform Romeo & Juliet.

These Shakespeare drawings were made by grade 2 students. I think they are so adorable!

{so many amazing things in our world}

ice & snow festival in China



Brugge, Belgium

Molokai, Hawaii

Giant's Causeway, Co. Antrim, Ireland



Nagano hotel's tunnel of light, Japan



somewhere in Croatia



North Coyote Buttes



Sapporo snow festival, Japan

Pfeiffer beach, California



 Cinque Terre, Italy

Ramona Falls, Oregon



Cataluna, Spain

So much beauty in our world.

See more here.

Happy Friday everyone! :) 

{diwali}

In Canada, there are many people from India. Some of the kids in Sienna's school learned about Diwali, the festival of light, which is celebrated in India.

They decorated paper elephants and made little clay lamps. Cute stuff. It's always good to learn more about other cultures. Knowledge is good. It expands our minds and we become more tolerant of others.

If you want to learn more about Diwali, click here.



(the last three images: via google image search)

{this & that}

 one of our christmas traditions is to pile into a photo booth and get another strip of photos to add to our christmas tree. they changed the format from vertical to horizontal though so i need to do some altering with these.

 i've been hoping to find a new comic that i like since there's no more new calvin & hobbes being written. i might have found it. :)

 sigh. my brother&sister-in-law are here at the moment and they got to go to david "angel" archuleta's christmas concert. i'm just a tiny bit jealous. ok, i admit it, i'm quite a bit jealous. but i'm a big girl and i can handle it.

we'll have to take sienna to salt lake city sometime in the future during christmas holidays. the temple square is so gorgeous at christmas time with it's thousands and thousands of lights. what a magical place!

(slc images found via google image search)
here's an article about how much work goes into lighting up the temple square:
http://lds.org/church/news/lighting-up-temple-square?lang=eng