Athens Marathon and Zhua Zhou

I ran a marathon today! Just kidding.
Today I actually witnessed two firsts in my life - the Authentic Marathon and the Zhua Zhou tradition. I have not actually ever seen a marathon race at all, but today I saw the Athens Authentic Marathon in which the runners run the actual course that was supposedly run by Pheidippides, a messenger in Ancient Greece, who ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Greeks were victorious in their battle against the Persians. The race begins in the town of Marathon and is uphill from the 10km mark to the 31 km mark. It goes slightly down hill towards Athens and passes a statue of a runner in the center of Athens before ending at the Panathinaiko Stadium. I found online that 16,000 people ran the marathon last year, but I don't know what the numbers were this year.

there was a set of drummers drumming the entire time

zoom in on the drumming

apparently Powerade is a sponsor

I had to take a pic of these two dogs playing

This is the running man statue. We sat on the grass here to watch. Many runners snapped a picture of the statue as they passed. They were over 20 miles in at this point, and I'm not sure how they had the energy to get the picture.

The Zhua Zhou is a birthday rite practiced in East Asian countries. It is a fortune telling right in which a one year old baby is presented with an assortment of objects and what the child picks indicates a future career or personality traits. Some examples are money for fortune, books for a scholar, pen for a writer, and tape measure for designer. Prior to the choosing, there is a procedure where the child does a few other things to sort of bless them with gifts.
The child steps on a rice cake for luck, gnaws a chicken leg for wealth, bites an apple for safety, hugs spring onions for intelligence, hugs celery for diligence, holds garlic for good mathematical skills, and touches two eggs for perfection without regret.
I so much enjoyed this rite. She was so straight faced and stoic looking at everything like "What is going on here? Why am I hugging this celery?" The chicken leg was my favorite - it was KFC.

The box of things for the first procedure. Note the KFC.

kind of blurry, but these are the items for the choosing

here she is with her items spread out

her cake

Some other snacks. I'm not really sure why I took this picture. I think I was just too excited.

In other news, last night we had a Mexican food night since we all love it and don't eat it much here.

Almost none of this was left, and it was delicious.

The dessert table. Yes, that is an ironing board.