Thanksgiving Parade

Thanksgiving had just passed, and aside from being stuffed with turkey it also led the way for a long series of official and non-official holidays in United States.  Official holidays are the ones we all know about, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  Unofficial ones are the ones we all came to know as we got older, such as the New Brown Thursday, Black Friday Deals, Cyber Monday deals, McDonald and Macys Thanksgiving Parade.

I was fortunate to experience one of those unofficial holidays this past Thanksgiving.  No, I'm not talking about the Brown Thursday shopping, although I did do that as well.  I marched down States Street in the McDonald Thanksgiving Parade.  My friend Julie's Dad has a Kung Fu school, and they were invited to the parade this year.  They had been to the parade for the last few years, and I was more than happy to join them this year on state street. 

We woke up at 6:30am to got to the parade by 9am.  Although we were 36th in line, we had to get dressed and be ready to go.  We were all concerned about the weather for the parade, but fate just like how it put me in the parade gave us a beautiful bright sun to keep us from the cold.  I, along with eight other people paraded down the state street with our dragon dance.  Each of us held a stick to control a portion of the dragon body, and with our control we were able to manipulate the dragon like a puppet, creating snake like movement that made a wave from head to tail.  When we do stop, we also created varies formations, such as mountain where we piled up behind each other to create a mountain formation.  Or under or over, where the dragon ran toward it's body and either jumped over or went underneath.  That was a difficult stunt as we had to support the weight of the dragon, while paying attention to where we are jumping or went underneath the dragon body. 

At the end of the 10 minute march - pass the huddled crowds, pass the "Smile, you are on camera" sign that indicated we were being filmed, and passed the live broadcasting that announced we had just passed by - I was huffing and puffing soaked with sweat, but couldn't wait to be invited for next year.  I knew I was going to be spending Thanksgiving with my family, but I never imagined to be marching down state street in a thanksgiving parade.  This spontaneous experience made life so much more interesting and fun.

Below is a picture collage we took before the parade, I'm in the top left picture in the brown scarf.

Thanks for visiting my blog!! Thanks for reading.
Jennifer