Okay...My blog assignment this time is about the festivals celebrated around the world.Straight to the point,I will do the Chinese New Year that is celebrated in San Francisco and also in Malaysia.

The San Francisco Chinese New Year celebration is the largest outside of Asia, and its capstone Chinese New Year parade is one of the few surviving lighted night parades in the U. S., making it an event that draws visitors from many places. We recommend it as one of San Francisco's top festivals, well worth a weekend trip to enjoy the goings-on.
Because Chinese New Year is a lunar festival, its date determined by the moon's phases, the date varies every year. In addition, dates for the San Francisco Chinese New Year activities are determined by the day of the week, with the parade always happening on a Saturday.

Chinese New Year is traditionally a two-week long festival. The annual San Francisco Chinese New Year celebration includes:

1)Chinese New Year Spectacular, a live performance that mixes ancient Chinese traditions with high-tech set design.

2)Chinese New Year Flower Fair which takes place the weekend before the lunar new year so families can buy traditional plants and flowers to decorate their homes and give as gifts. Chinatown Community Street Fair, which takes place the same weekend as the San Francisco Chinese New Year parade and features traditional arts and performances.

3)Miss Chinatown USA Pageant, where a bevy of beautiful contestants view for the crown.

Occuring at the same time as the the San Francisco Chinese New Year parade, the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt is described as an "urban sleuthing adventure." Treasure-hunting teams must solve sixteen clues leading them on a tour of San Francisco's colorful past. If you've never seen the parade, we'd recommend going to it instead, but if you're looking for something different to celebrate the New Year, try it.The piece de resistance of the San Francisco Chinese New Year celebration is the annual Chinese New Year Parade, featuring more than 100 floats, bands and other participants.The parade takes off from Second and Market Streets, loops around Union Square on Geary, Powell and Post Streets and then runs up Kearny Street to Columbus. Be there about an hour early for a space by the curb, but even late-comers can usually see just fine. If you'd rather sit than stand, paid grandstand seating is available along the parade route. Reserve in advance. They usually sell out. The origins of the Chinese New Year celebration are ancient.
Chinese New Year is celebrated wherever there are Asian people: China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the United States. People in every place have adapted the traditional activities, and the celebrations are different in the United States than in Asia. Chinatown is especially photogenic during the San Francisco Chinese New Year celebration. Red is a lucky color and also photographs well. Dragons and lion dancers may be in the street to scare away evil spirits and they make fun subjects if you can endure the firecracker noise and confusion that surround the town.

As well as Chinese New Year in our country, Malaysia also celebrated on the first day of the Chinese Lunar Calendar, this is the most important annual festival for the Chinese community. Each year is named after one of the 12 animals according to the Chinese Zodiac, which started with rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and lastly pig. Every houses are cleaned and decorated before Chinese New Year to prepare for the big day of all chinese.

Debts are settled, prayers and offerings are made. New clothes are bought before New Year. Plenty of junk food are prepared and delicious food are also cooked to serve the guests.

Family members from far will come back for the gathering during the eve of Chinese New Year. New year cards are exchanged between friends and relatives to wish a good luck. A reunion dinner for the family is held on the eve of the Chinese New Year. Bad language and unpleasant topics are discouraged during the eve of Chinese New Year as well as the whole period of Chinese New Year.

There are lion dances during the Chinese New Year to make it more crowded. Although fire works are banned in our country,there is a lot of people still playing with those iilegal things. Red paper showing Chinese characters of prosperity and wealth are pasted either in front or inside the house, the chinese word,福 is used by every family and it is pasted in front of the door in an upside down condition. It means that when guests saw it, they will say your word is in upside down condition,in chinese, we say "FU DAO LE" so the good things will all come to our family. Ang-Pow or red packet containing money is given out to children and elderly. Open house is practised for visiting relatives and friends with various ethnic races.
The new year is lasted for fifteen days which the concentration is on the first three days. The celebration ends with the Chap Goh Mei on the fifteenth day. During Chap Goh Mei, the youngsters will gathered at the riverside and they throw the oranges into the river to seek for theirs'love one. Quite interesting right?

My first post....

Hi...My name is Chai Sin.I am a student who are still studying in S.M.K DPHA Gapor,Stampin.I were now in Form 5.This is my first time created a blog and this blog is created especially for my english class ONLY.Last Wednesday,my english teacher,Mdm Flowrese had taught us how to create blog in our computer lab. with the wireless internet connection.My classmate and I were so curious about the idea that ours' english teacher thought of.Since this was my first time created a blog,I felt so excited and I enjoyed when I created my own blog.Alexandra,my classmate who was sharing computer with me.During that day,our were so chaos and quite noisy too.43 of us were sharing 20 computers and also as well as the wireless internet connection.Therefore,the internet connection were quite slow during that period.I ever wondered how people likes blogging so much,now I realised that.For example,we can post whatever we want to say,as well as our thoughts and idea in our own blog.The aim for creating a blog is to improve our writing skills by using correct grammar and vocabulary as well.So this is my first post in my blog.Hopefully all the viewers can do correction for the mistakes that i could make by leaving a comment.Actually I enjoyed the moments I wrote this post...Thanks for viewing...