While living the rural life has its pluses (many of them), there are times OmegaMom yearns for the gifts a more urban life would give to OmegaDotter. As I said in my last post, the Omegas went down to Big City for the Chinese New Year celebration. It was wonderful. One of the things that was most pleasing was seeing so many Asian people; it was pleasing because OmegaDotter didn't stand out in the way that we have become subconsciously accustomed to. In addition, it wasn't artificial. OmegaMom has good feelings and praise for FCC (Families With Children From China). This is an organization which is devoted to (duh) families who have adopted from China. The raison d'etre for this organization is to give these families (and their children) a large group devoted to encouraging an appreciation of the cultural heritage of our children. Thus, there are festivals, gatherings, parties, interactions with folks from the local Asian community, connections to dance schools, language schools, researchers. You name it, they've got it. The Omegas have driven down to Big City a few times for some of the bigger fests put on by the not-so-local FCC organization. They're great. But. But. In the end, they are somewhat artificial. You encounter lots of parents who dress their kids up in ethnic costume for the fests, and lots of parents who dress themselves up. Local color, as it were. The best thing about going to the Big City Asian community's New Year festival was that...well...most of the kids were just kids. They weren't all dressed up. The parents weren't dressed up in "ethnic" costume--they were in their usual Sunday dress-up gear. Or slacks. Or jeans. There were Asian teens in teen-style clothes, with teen-style hair. There were kids with hair in ponytails, pigtails, down, long hair, short hair, messy hair, neat hair. In an odd way, it was a more diverse group than the one that shows up at the FCC fests tends to be. OmegaDotter was enchanted with the dancing. She was also enchanted with the fans for sale in various booths. So, I purchased a cheap one for her, and she played with it, dancing around a bit...OmegaDad, who was out and about making contacts for volunteer work he's doing for his agency, skedaddled off to join up with one of his contacts, and OmegaDotter and I wandered around. At one point, OmegaDotter was playing with her fan, and I caught sight, down a corridor, of a group of women dancing with big fans in a courtyard. "OmegaDotter! Look!" (Of course, she didn't, so I had to scooch her around to see.) She looked, took in what was happening, and had to run off to see them. We watched them dance, and OmegaDotter began imitating them. They would flip open their fans with a big FLUP!, and OmegaDotter would try to open her itty bitty plastic fan the same way. They would snap the fans shut and slowly swing them across their bodies, ending up in a tai-chi-like move; OmegaDotter tried the same thing. At the end of the dance, the ladies gathered OmegaDotter up to show her how to do some of the moves, and one of the ladies graciously allowed me to take a picture with the Dotter. Though OmegaDotter looks somewhat subdued, OmegaMom assures you that seconds before she had been grinning widely; the problem with digicams is that, while you get instant gratification in terms of the pics being available immediately, you have to accept the fact that clicking the shutter doesn't mean you're about to get the picture you wanted, sigh. But after all was done, OmegaMom was sad: these are things that OmegaDotter will not have up in our semi-rural area. The OmegaParents discussed this later on, with OmegaMom chiming in (once again) that it would not be The End Of The World to live in Big City. OmegaDad reluctantly agreed. Something to ponder. (Unfortunately, right now, all the jobs OmegaDad is looking at are in places like Bemidji, Minnesota. Very pretty, lots of lakes and pine trees, and an awesome position for OmegaDad, but...right back where we started in terms of diversity.) We finish this post with OmegaDotter over the moon--Silver Moon, to be exact: