Greek Fest!

So...we wanted to do something fun with the whole free day on Labor Day, and I saw the perfect thing advertised on the back of a bus--The Annual Long Beach Greek Festival!
I did a little investigation and found out that admission was free from 12-5, so we spent the morning washing our car, and garage door. By the way, have you ever seen anyone washing their car by hand in California? We have not. It worked great, though, and with a little help from Aunt Cinda and Uncle Brian's village car wash materials, we now have a shiny new car! We also took some wire from the fan to the battery and found out that our fan is not broken--it's probably just the coolant temp sensor. Yay!
We left for the Greek Fest sometime after one, and ended up parking in a little mall a few blocks away. Who knew that this would be the cool place to spend your free Monday? Now, we were expecting a lot of costumes and food and booths, and I even suggested that we could dress up like Greeks (shot down), but the surprise was... greek fest, as far as we can tell = county fair

My favorite parts:
1. There were the most random booths! I mean, I guess the Russian booth kind of fits the cultural idea, and the same goes for the Indian clothing booth, but advertising sheet sets? the "tutor doctor?" What does this have to do with Greeks?

2. The tour we took of the Greek Orthodox church. A guy even sang us some chant. Cross your fingers, I'm going to try to upload this one. :)

One funny thing is that we asked what the difference between the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches is. "Nothing, just the language." BUT why, then, is there a different Bible, different cross, different church shape, different iconostas, and different worship service rules? Suspicious. I was dying to go back to our friend at the Russian booth and ask what he thought, but his booth suddenly got very popular, so we never had a chance. Here are a couple of pictures I took of the inside of the church.
















3. We tried some Baklava. Good, but I like our rich american desserts better! Give me a brownie and ice cream any day! Miles agreed--I guess we are just not the eastern cultured type yet!

We came home and to finish off our Greek festivities, I found a recipe for pita bread online, and we had our own version of souvlaki (thanks to some of that bottled elk :)) for dinner. Yummy!