CHINESE NEW YEAR

my family.

On Saturday we went to the Chinese New Year parade in downtown San Francisco with our cousins and aunt. There were a lot of schools, bands, and dragons in the parade. I liked the dragons but it was kind of annoying when they would get really close to you and knock your hat off. A Chinese dragon usually means good luck and the longer it is the more luck it gives to the community.

It is now the year of the ram so there were some ram costumes in the bands and schools. I also liked the lion costumes and some of the dancers. It was a really long parade and we didn't get to watch it all because we got hungry.

The parade originally started in San Francisco in 1860. It was started by some Chinese immigrants who felt like they wanted some of their culture from their old home to be in there new home.

SF ART SHOW AT THE ASIAN ART MUESEUM

this is a really cool staff.

On Thursday we arrived in San Francisco and went to the Asian Art Museum for a student art show. We went there with our cousins and aunt and saw my little cousin's art piece. My little cousin Elsie did a Papel Picado.

There were really cool pieces of art mostly done by high school students. My favorites were Digital Medusa, an Anime picture, and a staff drawing. The art was presented by the Visual and Preforming Arts Department of the San Francisco Unified School District and the Asian Art Museum.

GRAND CANYON

Today my family and I went to the Grand Canyon and it was really snowy and cold. At the visitor center there was a lot of snow on the roofs of the buildings and it would occasionally  fall off. While we were there we walked along the rim of the canyon and it was scary because it was slippery. We were at 6860 feet and the bottom of the canyon was around 2500 feet, so that's a pretty far drop.

If we had been here around six million years ago we could have walked from rim to rim. The reason why you cant walk rim to rim anymore is because the Colorado river eroded it into a canyon. Each year the canyon continues to erode about the thickness of a piece of paper.

Since there is so much elevation change there are a lot of different habitats. The main habitats are forest on the rim, desert in the canyon, and river at the bottom. We were at the forest on the rim and while walking there we saw some birds, deer, and Ponderosa pine. Down in the desert you would probably find rattle snakes, lizards, and prickly pear cactus. In the river at the bottom you would see humpback chub, beavers, and great blue herons.

SINAGUA INDIANS!

The Sinagua are Indians who used to live in Verde Valley. Verde Valley is a place in Arizona near Sedona. They lived in Verde Valley during around 500 AD and 1425 AD. We visited Verde Valley and saw Montezuma castle which was one of many castles that the Sinagua people lived. The castle was built strategically so that they could have shade in the summer and so that they wouldn’t get flooded by Beaver creek. They built the castle on a cliff side that used to be a river but then eroded a big hole and turned into a creek. They would farm and hunt deer next to Beaver creek, the kind of things they would farm were cotton, corn, yucca, and agave. They used yucca and agave to make sandals, rope, and rugs.