To celebrate the New Year, some of us teachers took a break and went up north to visit a city known for it's ice sculptures. We visited the ice sculptures first at night because they show up better in the dark. All the creations are built in the Ice Sculpture Park. All of the buildings are made out of ice blocks "harvested" from the nearby river. 
Almost every ice sculpture has colored lights built inside of it or projected on it to give the sculpture more color and variety. I liked the blue sculpture the best becuase I thought the blue was so pretty.
You can't really tell from
this pic, but it was quite cold. The sculptures don't melt at all during the day so the festival lasts for several weeks at a time. They even had a giant slide...kind of like a bobsled run. The people rode a sled down the ice slide. They went FAST and then they crashed into a snow bank at the bottom. I was too chicken to try. :)
The next day, we walked aroudn the city be
fore going to see the snow sculptures. This is the St. Sophia church in Harbin. This was formerly a Russian Orthodox church, but now it is an art museum. Kami, one of our students from camp was able to meet us for the afternoon.
Then, i
t was on to the snow show! At the snow sculpture park, there was a parade to celebrate Christmas complete with a float for Santa Claus. The poor girls in the parade looked so cold in their short red outfits...and they didn't look too happy. It was no wonder, they had to go up and down this road all day in the freezing cold. It seemed like the theme for the Snow Sculpture Park was Greek mythology. Unfortunately, I don't know much about Greek mythology but the sculptures were amazing to look at. They were very intricate. Some of the sculptures were gigantic! (The ice sculptures were life-size, too. It's incredible!)
At the snow sculpture park we saw horse drawn carts, dog sleds, and even a small reindeer with a sled. He was a very pitiful looking reindeer. I felt sorry for him. The dogs seemed a bit peppier and more happy. Everyone was wearing as think of a coat and hat as possible!
I saw one pretty cool contraption that I haven't seen before. It was an elevator for a car. The cars are parked in an underground garage. When the owners are ready to leave, they drive onto this elevator and up they go to the ground level!
Enjoy!
Diedra