Henry was so excited about Valentine's Day today. Anna had already given him her card and he put it on his night stand last night. This morning when I woke him to take the girls to school, he sat straight up, grabbed his valentine and opened it. He has been singing songs about how Valentine's Day is such a special day and I was worried he'd be disappointed that all he was getting was cards (he mentioned in one of his songs that Valentine's Day is special like Christmas).
It turned out that he did get a pretty special treat but it was a Chinese New Year treat instead of Valentine's Day. I decided to attack the art supplies today and wanted to go to DAISO for storage containers. The nearest one to us is in Sembawang so I thought we'd check it out although I had very low hopes for the mall. We got there and I was pleasantly surprised! It is a small mall but has several decent stores in it and is very new inside. What the best surprise was though was that we arrived just in time for a Lion Dance!
We happened to stand next to another foreigner woman (she is from Boston) and she set me up on an email list for SAS/Woodlands people and gave me some good tips about Singapore.
Anyway, this Lion Dance was really great. There were tons of drummers & cymbal players (SO LOUD!!) and there were five lions. These lions were so cool that the ones we saw on Tuesday were pretty lame in comparison! The lion costumes were fancier and the guys jumped up on posts and did some pretty cool tricks (that would be hard to do without lion costumes on, I should think!). Henry still wouldn't interact with the God of Fortune (but did take his candy again). He also declined going up to the lion to retrieve an orange out of its mouth.
At the end of this dance, the locals pretty much started mobbing the lions. We were in the front row but we left when we were suddenly in the 6th row without moving! People were pretty greedy for their good luck! Henry just loved this and was doing his own lion dancing all afternoon (I played the cymbals or drums to accompany his dancing). He is now super excited about the lion dance at his school next week (although he is very insistent that I be there with him).
The girls both exchanged Valentines with their classes and they pooled the candy they received so that Henry could have some, too. He didn't seem too bummed about not getting to do a Valentine party at school which I was kind of worried he would be.
