"opa!" - greek festival 2009

we went to the greek festival again this year. once again, it was a fantastic time. and once again, it was hotter than hades. and once again, the food was a-maze-ing. apparently they had to cancel the festival on sunday because i ate all of the food. i'm only half kidding (festival was apparently cancelled on sunday, but there was at least one other pregnant person, my friend alexis, who reports she also ate plenty as well). this year, jack and charlie and "jen jen" (party of 5!) came with us and we've decided that this may well be an annual tradition. this year, hana also got into saying "opa" and repeated it everytime she heard someone call it out (like when they lit the flaming cheese - de-licious!).

for those that don't know, the greek festival in oakland is thrown at the greek orthodox church and is part of their easter celebration. we visited their chapel and it's pretty amazing. we did not get a good picture, but it's hard not to be impressed by the inside of the structure. you can see glimpses of the exterior of the dome in many of these shots. traditionally, the exterior is pretty simple (symbolizing our earthly existence) and the interior is pretty ornate (symbolizing your heavenly existence). i was pretty impressed by the exterior so, you can imagine how blown away i was by the inside... neato!

after the chapel, and a lap around the festival, we hit the bounce house - not so greek, but the ya just can't go wrong with the bounce house. i think that's like an internationally accepted truth.

here, charlie is requiring a little coaxing before going in. jenny eventually had to get in with her.


after the bounce house, and some loukemides (honey dipped fried dough thingies... can't go wrong with that), we hit the play ground. hana pretty much stuck to that sing thing you see in the top picture (and video below), but jack and charlie were more adventerous, exploring the entire play structure.

this video captures to most fun part of the day in my opinion. it starts with the kids on the play ground, but you can hear the music in the background. the kids seemed really interested in the music so after the bounce house, playground, and a couple of meals, we went to the main stage for a little dancing. the kids really got into it. hana was especially taken with the musicians. the video shows her thwarted attempt to get on stage, but then you see her scampering off to the other side of the stage and then the video cuts to the next scene. what's not in the video is that after she sprinted to the other side of the stage, she climbed on it and proceeded to run around macauley culkin style until she was cornered and carried off by her unamused father. it was a little embarrassing, but still pretty funny to me, because the musicians thought it was so cute. in fact, in between songs, hana engaged the musicians about their various instruments and she (surprising) could name quite a few of them (violin, drum, guitar...). the kids really got into the dancing. while we were dancing around, a greek woman came up to me and invited me to hold her hand. she proceeded to teach me the syrtos (pronounced seer-toes). hana made for a complicated dance partner but by the end of the song, i got the hang of it even though i had to carry her part of the time. it was really fun to have all of the people dancing around and the kids twirling to and fro...

after the regular folks cleared out, these adorable kids came in and did some traditional greek dancing. they performed for about 30 minutes or so and hana, jack and charlie were totally enthralled (that is, until jack fell asleep). hana seems to think that when ever she sees a dance performance of any type, she then should have "my turn". in fact, this has dissolved into a tantrum on a couple of occaisions, but because she got to dance before, and it was blistering hot, she was easily redirected with ice cold lemonade. i think we need to get that girl into to dance classes likety-split! anyway, while the kids performed people threw money and festival tokens (worth $1 a peice!) out to the dance floor (and sometimes, directly at them). they were so composed through it all, but it was all they could do to get through the bow before they were scrambling to collect their dance booty like that candy that falls from a pinata. that's gotta be pretty fun for them. made me wanna take up the greek dancing, i tell you what...

hana's only nap that day was the 20 minute cat nap she had on the car ride home, which occured right after she said "mommy, i not tired". as soon as the car stopped when she got to the house, she perked right up again. so she was nap free... that is until about 6 p.m. when she passed out in her chair while watching sesame street. we moved her to her bed without incident and she slept straight through until 7:30 the next morning. that's pretty unheard of for this one, who will go to bed between 8:00-8:30 every night but talk and sing to herself for at least an hour after that before conking out.

apparently, she was all festivaled out. last year, there's a picture of hana all passed out at the greek festival too (it would be in the blog archive in may 2008). must be something in the lemonade.