Chinese New Year Events and Tom's B-day

So after the monster truck rally I really did need some culture. :)  Tom took me to Dim Sum in Falls Church.  It was so fun.  Dim Sum is where they bring trays of food around and you choose what you want (if anything) from the cart.  Our favorites were the steamed shrimp and pork dumplings.  The chicken was really good too.  What's even better is that it is Chinese New Year right now and they had a show.  They had three dragons do their 'dance' (not sure what it's called).  It is really fun to watch them.  People give them money in red envelopes which is good luck.  You can see the guy putting his hand in the dragons mouth in the picture above. 

They also did fire crackers inside.  It was a bit loud and smoky, but cool too.  The fire cracker noise wards off evil spirits.   I am amazed at the guys in the back of the dragons.  They have to basically stay bent over for most of the time.  When they are doing their 'dance' they do stand up and the person in the head jumps up on their shoulders, but other than that they are bent.  I couldn't do it.  They must have very strong backs!

We celebrated Tom's birthday on Saturday even though his real b-day was on Sunday.  We went to a place that I thought was go-kart racing.  I had been told that it was the 'funnest date ever'.  I wanted to do something special and memorable for Tom's b-day and this seemed like it would be perfect.  Well it ended up being kind of an intense go-kart racing place--not what I had in mind.  They were also running very behind (and didn't tell us) so we had to wait for about an hour and a half (or a little longer) to even start our race. 

When we did get to race, I thought it was scary.  People seemed like they were out there to beat a racing record and everyone on the track.  It wasn't until we were almost done that I remembered that this was supposed to be fun. :)  There were some fun parts, but some really scary turns where I was constantly afraid of being run into.  I had been run into by two cars.  I realized after a few laps that I wasn't supposed to break around that part, but just turn the wheel really hard.  It would have been more fun with less people. 

I don't know if it was the fumes, the intensity of the race, or the noise, but both of us were kind of dazed when we were done.  I felt kind of weird and undone somehow.  Tom had hurt his shoulder during the race too.  We could have gone another time around the track, but we were not interested!  I felt like we couldn't get out of there fast enough.  It was quite the experience.  It wasn't really what I had in mind when I planned Tom's b-day, but it was memorable. 

Luckily cake--comfort food, makes everything better.  We headed over to Cheesecake Factory and brought our favorite kinds home.  It was a much better ending to the evening than the car racing!  Yum!

Sunday we went to the Chinese New Year parade.  I had no idea it would be so crowded!  Tom found us a good place to stand.  People started to move and shift so after awhile I was able to see.  They had the dragons there and the one you see above.  They would do things like a wave with the dragon and  other things like jumping over parts of the dragon (the people who were holding each part.)  It was cool to watch their performance.

What I liked about the parade is they had kind of a 'show' after the parade.  There were a bunch of dignitaries who gave speeches and then different groups gave a performance.  After the performances they did a ton of fire crackers and the dragons performed again.  We couldn't really see that part, but we could hear the fire crackers. :)