Opa!

In the last two weeks, we have gone to one wedding, one airshow, two picnics, one museum exhibition preview, one doll meet-up, one opera, three long drives and two Greek festivals. I have pictures to post from some of these, but I thought that I would start with the festivals. The first one we went to was at Oakland's Greek Orthodox church. The modern domed church is set impressively on top of a hill and has gorgeous mosaics and painted icons throughout.

At the festival entrance, they had set up a traditional Greek style windmill that actually worked.

I've always felt very lucky to have grown up in San Francisco, because as a child, my parents would take me to a variety of ethnic festivals, from Greek to Indian Powwows and as an adult, I have enjoyed introducing my husband to these festivals.

We go to Greek festivals mainly for two things -- the food and the dancing. Unfortunately, while we consumed plenty of food, it was all so mouthwateringly tempting that we didn't stop to take pictures of any of it. However, we did take lots of pictures of the dancing. Above is the youngest group who started off the festival.

The groups got progressively older, this being the early teens group.

And this is the late teens.

And finally the adults. Some of the men in this group were wearing business suits, which I can only imagine is more common now in modern Greece.

Then this past weekend, we went to the Marin Greek Festival just south of Novato. It was very hot and there wasn't much shade near the stage, so we didn't get any good pictures of the dancing, except that my husband snapped a few of me when I got brave enough -- or had had enough retsina -- to join one of the dance lessons. While Greek dancing may look easy, I definitely gained an appreciation of how difficult it is to remember which foot goes where and how tiring that can get after ten minutes.