It's 2005! Where does all the time go?
We went into town last night to join in with the 'First Night Vancouver 05' celebrations. This was a family event and therefore it was alcohol free in true Canadian style. This was a bit different from our celebrations in the past - in more ways than one ;-)
The first show we went to see was entitled 'Kung Haggis Fat Chow' which was a joining of the Scottish and Chinese cultures. The main character was a short Chinese man dressed in a kilt playing an accordion. The mixture of Scottish and Chinese players and singers performed various traditional songs from both cultures with funny bits for the kids such as 'My chow mein lies over the ocean....'. It was quite a bizarre show, but really indicative of the vast mixture of cultures here.
We lined up for an hour to see the Circus. This was a truly magical show. The performers were like our Swamp Circus (vegans of the world unite - sorry I know I will get told off for that...). They had to do 4 shows on the trot which must have been a very punishing schedule as some of the tricks that they performed needed a lot of strength I can tell you! The kids stayed awake which was a feat in itself as it went on until 11.40pm.
As we had to get back to the sticks for the last bus up the hill we had to hot foot it down to the SkyTrain station as soon as it ended. This meant we welcomed in the New Year to the automatic announcer's 'ding dong - the next station will be Burnaby Lake'. We didn't feel too badly done by as they had had an earlier countdown and fireworks display for the New Year in Montreal which happened at 9.00pm Pacific Time.
We had spoken to many of our friends earlier when they were celebrating their New Year in the UK. It was a great day and it signals the start of something new in our lives.