Moon Festival

The Chinese Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. It's also known as the Mid-autumn Festival. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional festivals. Just like Christmas and Thanksgiving in the West, the Moon Festival is one of the most important traditional events for the Chinese.

The Moon Festival is full of legendary stories. Legend says that Chang Er flew to the moon, where she has lived ever since. You might see her dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is also an occasion for family reunions. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes, and sing moon poems. With the full moon, the legend, the family and the poems, you can't help thinking that this is really a perfect world. That is why the Chinese are so fond of the Moon Festival.

So tonight we joined FCC Tampa Bay (Families with Children from China) to celebrate the Moon Festival in Al Lopez park. We met up with our new friend Kelly, who has a log-in-date (LID) the week before us and she is also with our adoption agency, CCAI.

The little girls were adorable and they had activities to participate in such as making Chinese Lanterns. When the sun went down there was a "parade of lanterns". We did not get to stay for this part, but we heard it was pretty cool. They were selling T Shirts and lot of great children's storybooks.

FCC provided the food and drinks, and each family brought a side dish. The food was really great, and yes, Drew even had a moonpie! Everybody was so nice and we actually knew several couples and their daughters from our monthly luncheons. It was so awesome to experience our first Chinese festival, and of course seeing all the girls was the highlight! We look forward to experiencing these moments with our own daughter some day...