This weekend Tim, the kids and I will be celebrating our first Chinese holiday! It is the Mid-Autumn Festival or as it is also called the Autumn Moon Festival (which begins on Sept. 14th).
It is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
- Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
- Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
- Carrying brightly lit lanterns
- Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
- Planting Mid-Autumn trees
- Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
- Lighting lanterns on towers
- Fire Dragon Dances
Here are a couple of links to learn more about the festival.
http://www.chinavoc.com/festivals/Midautumn.htm
http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/heritage/festivals/he_fest_mida.jhtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival
Our wonderful friends and China adoption support-the Wagners have invited us to go out to dinner on the 14th to celebrate with their family-their daughter, Julia is from China (she is 5 and in Jay's class). I plan to take a ton of pics to show our pumpkin some things we did to make the wait for him or her a little easier!
Tim and I also went to a 'waiting family' support group meeting tonight at Bethany. We were able to talk with a young woman (who just became a mom herself in the last year) adopted as a baby from Korea. It was great to hear such a success story of someone adopted and who says she wouldn't have changed anything. We were able to ask her questions of being raised outside of her culture and her thoughts on ways we can help our child with the transition/adding another culture to our family.
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