chinese new year! (down under part 2)

(Production Note: Yes we are aware it is not February anymore when these pics were taken, but we've fallen a bit behind schedule)

so here i was in the new country of australia, in the new city of melbourne. i'd just gotten a call from ms. rhonwyn to meet her at the melbourne museum, and so that was where i was going to go.

along the way i bumped into some fun festivities...

as i tried to cut through chinatown (i always thought china was a country not a town? and how do you get a town in the middle of a city?!?) on my way to the museum there was a HUGE crowd.

something big and, by the sounds of it, fun was going down ahead.
so i decided to take a few extra minutes to check this out. its not like i had an evil god chasing me anymore or anything!
there were tons and tons of booths and kiosks. some try to sell stuff, others advertising it. this nice lady was giving out pamphlets for a chinese opera, but it wasn't playing while i'd be in town (or at least i hoped! the show was in 2 months, and i'd like to get back home before than).

from around the street corner came the sound of approaching drums and fire crackers. suddenly a progression of drummers and a really fluffy monster came dancing/marching towards me and the surrounding crowd...

now i'd taken on whiro maori god of darkness one on one (and though i maybe didn't beat him by myself) a fluffy creature wasn't really all that scary in comparison. so for the first time i can think of people of the web wide world i wasn't frightened by such a sight!

well okay i may have let out a slight eep when it turned straight towards me and opened its mouth...

it was a chinese dragon making its rounds for the chinese new year!

neat.

i have to confess i don't understand why humans made or keep track of years. that alone why you can't all agree on when they should be. new years was a while ago, but yet here these guys (and dragon) were celebrating their new year.

this dragon had a pretty great group of keepers. not only did he have a dragon clown (just like those rodeo clowns at the stampede in calgary!) but a whole band of drummers who provided him with his own soundtrack everywhere he went!

i have to say my lack of getting freaked or scared at the dragon turned out to be smarter than i thought for a few reasons. first he was a herbivore, and wandered eating the lettuce that seems to grow rampantly on the front of every store in chinatown... funny as i've never heard of urban lettuce before!... and second of all he's so lazy that part of his keeping staff has to carry him around on their backs. look at them there lifting him up to his food!!!

well with the dragon wandering away down the street, and my having looked at all the kiosks it was time to go meet my boss for the first time since she'd sent me on the museum quest...