Parade Time!

On Friday Feb. 14th (Valentine's Day!) we got to be in a parade! (My camera was buried in my bag so all pictures courtesy of Chrissy) I'm not positive what the parade was for, but it was some sort of large city/charity parade. All I know is that someone asked Bond (they run the schools we teach at) if some of their foreigners could be in the parade. They basically just wanted to show off the fact that they have foreigners :)

The group (Kayryn, Emily, Noor, Abby, Larkin, Chrissy and me)
with Fanny, the Chinese coordinator tasked with
taking care of us for the day :)

Before the parade they took us out to lunch at a nice restaurant. They had several dishes to eat, including spaghetti :) It was quite yummy.

Oh, and do you notice the sunshine? It was the first sunny day in like a week and we were all so excited to take off one of our five layers of clothing!

For the actual parade we ended up walking with a bunch of other foreigners who work for/with Bond. Most of them are from Britain and Australia, though there were also a few Americans, some Sri Lankans and an Irishman. They were all very friendly and we chatted with them through the whole thing. One of the Australians' name is Lin and it turns out that he lives in the same area of Zhongshan as us while teaching at a middle school. He was hilarious and loved playing to the crowd throughout the entire parade.

The point is the pretty girls on the left.
They walked past us going to their spot in the parade.

We had to wait a while in line for the parade to start and while waiting we had several photo ops with people. One of the other American's said that his picture's ended up on a billboard before!

Since it was a city parade, there were also official cameramen all over the place. At one point a man with a video crew came along and filmed us looking happy and waving our flags. He told us to 'smile and look beautiful!' He then came back a little while later wanting to interview someone about the Red Cross. Somehow I ended up being volunteered (something to do with having the most experience since I signed people up once...) It turned out that all they really wanted was a foreigner saying they loved the Red Cross and that Zhongshan has a great Red Cross program. Again, not sure what it was really for, but I eventually did it to their satisfaction. For all I know, I'll end up on Chinese TV!

A few of the other girls in our group and the other foreigners we were with were also interviewed about their feelings about the parade.

Finally the parade started and moved forward! The parade went down both sides of the street and we couldn't see the other side very well, but we did get a peek at some dragon dancing. Along the route, once and a while there was a performance group set up. We saw some drummers and some cute kids singing. It was funny because our group was taking as many pictures as the people watching :)

Once we reached the end we wanted to stay and watch the rest, but we had to find a bus to take us back. So us and the other foreigners found a bus and we went back to Bond Institute (Bond's HQ).

Celina, one of  the other Chinese coordinators, is looking for pictures and newspapers about the parade to see if we ended up anywhere. I'll let you know if she find's anything good!