Inauguration Day is the day every four years on which the President of the United States is sworn in and takes office.

If you like sculpture you are going to love ice and snow sculptures. Somewhere between fairy-tale and surrealism, this festival gives a new name to sculpture. It is one of the place to see in a lifetime.

The festival officialy starts January 5 each year and lasts one month. However, it can last longer if the weather doesn’t melt down the sculptures.

The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival has been celebrated annually since 1985. It had been interrupted for a number of years during the Cultural Revolution until it was resumed in 1985.

It is amazing to see the Historical monuments as well as other themes re-created in ice and snow, colored lighting at night so the sculptures can be enjoyed both day and evening. Ice sculpture decoration ranges from the modern technology of lasers to traditional ice lanterns. Thousands of exquisitely-made ice lanterns, ice carvings and snow sculptures grace the snow-covered parks, public squares and major streets, turning the city into a dreamlike world of pure whiteness and gleaming crystal. These ice and snow art works come in all shapes and sizes. They can be as small as a mouse or as big as a bus. The designs range from life-size human figures, animals and flowers to towering castles, delicate pagodas and many other ingenious creations. Some of the most impressive are the intricately detailed replicas of famous buildings, such as the Potala Palace and the Eiffel Tower.

You can enjoy the Giant ice slide in the shape of the Great Wall and, if you’re brave enough swim in the Songhua River.

 The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival has not only become an integral part of the winter life of the people of Harbin, but has also played an active role in introducing Harbin to the rest of the country and the world, speeding up the city\'s opening to the outside world, and promoting the city\'s trade and economic cooperation with foreign countries. In addition to the famous local and international ice lantern and snow sculpture exhibitions and contests, winter swimming, ice hockey and alpine and cross-country skiing contests are held. A film festival, and painting, calligraphy and photo exhibitions are held. Moreover, there are performances of folk songs and dances and wedding ceremonies performaed on ice. Trade fairs are also organized.

First thing that comes into everyone's mind when they think about Christmas (besides the Christmas list, of course) is probably the Christmas tree. The shiny, glowing tree that gets everyone into the spirit of the holidays, is usualy decorated on Christmas Eve.
But ever since 1933, New York gatthers the Americans for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, at the beginning of December. Because, why not get into the spirit of Christmas earlyer?

The lighting of this famous giant Christmas tree will be televised from coast-to-coast, kicking off the holiday season at Rockefeller Center and features musical performances from a variety of popular artists. Typically, the Radio City Rockettes perform and there are also ice skaters performing in the Rockefeller Ice Rink.
The lighting occurs at approximately 8:50p. The entire area gets extremely crowded, so come early if you want to see anything. If you miss it, the tree is lit every night through December.

The Christmas tree that adorns Rockefeller Center is typically a Norway Spruce. The minimum requirement is that the tree be 65 feet tall and 35 feet wide, however manager of Rockefeller Center gardens prefers the tree be between 75 and 90 feet tall and proportionally wide. Norway Spruce that grow in forests don't typically reach these proportions, so the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tends to be one that was ornamentally planted in someone's front or back yard. There is no compensation offered in exchange for the tree, other than the pride of having donated the tree that appears in Rockefeller Center.

Over five miles of lights are used to decorate the tree every year. Only the lights and the star decorate the tree. The tree is recycled and the 3 tons of mulch are donated to the Boy Scouts. The largest portion of the trunk is donated to the U.S. Equestrian team in New Jersey to use as an obstacle jump.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is typically illuminated from 5:30 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. daily, except on Christmas and New Year's Eve. On Christmas, the tree is illuminated for 24 hours and on New Year's Eve the lights are turned off at 9:00 p.m.

Astronomy has been a concern for the ancient Chinese. It is interesting to look at how they developed a culture for astronomy and astrology. 2500 years ago they were observing movements of the sun with a sundial. This is how they determined the point of Winter Solstice, the time being 21 or 22 of December. As ancient Chinese thought, the yang, or muscular, positive things will become stronger after this day, so it should be celebrated.
The Winter Solstice became a festival during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).
They were organizing celebrating activities. Both officials and common people would have a rest and the army was stationed in, frontier fortresses closed and business and traveling stopped.
In the Tang and Song dynasties, the Winter Solstice was a time for honoring the ancestors. As the emperors would worship the Heaven in this day, common people offered sacrifices to their deceased relatives.

The Winter Solstice is nowadays a time of family gathering. Some say that if you eat dumpling soup on this day, it will keep you from frosting in the upcoming winter. In parts of South China, the whole family will get together to have a meal made of red-bean and glutinous rice to drive away ghosts and other evil things. In other places, people also eat tangyuan, a kind of stuffed small dumpling ball made of glutinous rice flour. The Winter Solstice rice dumplings could be used as sacrifices to ancestors, or gifts for friends and relatives. The Taiwan people even keep the custom of offering nine-layer cakes to their ancestors. They make cakes in the shape of chicken, duck, tortoise, pig, cow or sheep (each with its own significance) with glutinous rice flour and steam them on different layers of a pot. People of the same surname or family clan gather at their ancestral temples to worship their ancestors in age order. After the sacrificial ceremony, there is always a grand banquet.

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday, which is a form of harvest festival. The date and whereabouts of the first Thanksgiving celebration is a topic of modest contention, though the earliest attested Thanksgiving celebration was on 8 September, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida. Despite any scholarly research to the contrary, however, the traditional "first Thanksgiving" is venerated as having occurred at the site of Plimoth Plantation, in 1621.
Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.

The United States presidential election of 2008, scheduled for Tuesday November 4, 2008 will be the 56th consecutive quadrennial United States presidential election and will select the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States.

The Republican Party has chosen John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona as its nominee; Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois, has been chosen as the nominee for the Democratic Party. The 2008 election is particularly notable because it is the first time in U.S. history that two sitting senators will run against each other for president, and because it is the first time an African American is a presidential nominee for a major party, as well as the first time both major candidates were born outside the continental United States - Hawaii for Obama and the Canal Zone in Panama for McCain. With African-American candidate Barack Obama, who is of mixed African and Caucasian parentage, as the Democratic Party nominee for President and John McCain\'s selection of female Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Party nominee for Vice-President, the eventual winning ticket is virtually assured of having a historic context. Barring unforeseen events, this will be the first time in American history in which a candidate on the winning ticket is either a woman or an African American.

The election will coincide with the 2008 Senate elections in thirty-three states, House of Representatives elections in all states, and gubernatorial elections in eleven states, as well as various state referendums and local elections. As in the 2004 presidential election, the allocation of electoral votes to each state will be based partly on the 2000 Census. The president-elect and vice president-elect are scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2009.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses", carving Jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories and watching horror movies. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in Ireland (where it originated), the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and occasionally in parts of Australia.

The Chinese National Day is the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Celebrations usually take the form of parties in amusement parks by day and fire-works and grand TV ensembles during the evening. Employees enjoy two paid days-off. It is also a good occasion for many people to take a short excursion to enjoy the beauty of the golden Fall.

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節, zhōng qiū jié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival. The Chinese Lantern Festival is held on the 15th day of the first lunar month. [1]

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

• Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
• Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Lighting lanterns on towers
• Fire Dragon Dances

Session BX23 Start: 19:00 End: 21:55
19:00-19:14 Men's Fly Weight (51kg) Final Bout; 19:24-19:35 Men's Fly Weight (51kg)

Medal Ceremony; 19:36-19:49 Men's Feather Weight (57kg) Final Bout; 19:59-20:10 Men's

Feather Weight (57kg) Medal Ceremony; 20:11-20:24 Men's Light Welter Weight (64kg)

Final Bout; 20:34-20:45 Men's Light Welter Weight (64kg) Medal Ceremony; 20:46-20:59

Men's Middle Weight (75kg) Final Bout; 21:09-21:20 Men's Middle Weight (75kg) Medal

Ceremony; 21:21-21:34 Men's Heavy Weight (91kg) Final Bout; 21:44-21:55 Men's Heavy

Weight (91kg) Medal Ceremony