Deepawali Beginnings

Today was the beginning of Depawalii – everyone celebrates it differently. The family we live with celebrates 4 days of it. Today is the beginning, and tomorrow is the main day of the holiday with fireworks and crackers going all night – VERY LOUD ;) Tomorrow they will decorate the ground (I’ll take pics) but today was just many lights and shopping and a few fireworks (all night). The green stuff that Shakshi is playing with is to decorate the floors with tomorrow. It's sawdust from cleaning the floors that has been dyed...

It looks like Christmas here – almost EVERY house has lights… it looks cool! There are tons of stores set up on the side of the roads that have statues of their gods in all shapes and sizes. Another thing that they do is to put candles around their house. Eleven is the lucky number. They put the candles around the doors and in the front of the house. They make the candles with cotton rolled into a wick and then they pour cooking oil into the little mini clay pots.
Our house is decorated really cool - tons of lights :)

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Cooking!

Cooking is sooo much harder here. THis is how you "puree" vegetables when you don't have a blender or food processor (or power). Some people have those things, but most people don't. This is my friend Gita. She's mashing up some onions. It's a marble slab that's not polished and they use a big rounded rock and just roll/mash! It's cool!!

Protesting

There's some political stuff going on in our city (and now the country) right now. People are peacefully fighting against corruption. It's been very interesting to follow. Tonight there was some protesting in our neighborhood. Here are some more protesting pictures. There will probably be more protesting to come... we'll see what happens!

Jaya's Engagement!

My good friend Jaya (Mayank's sister that lives in M-town) - just got engaged! On Sunday, I took the trip to M-town to go to her Engagement Ceremony (or Ring Ceremony). It was a lot of fun :)! First Stop - Beauty Parlor! We walked a little ways down the street to a lady's house. The beauty parlor was in one of the rooms in her house. Jaya had already been to her house that morning to get her hair done, but now it was time for the makeup. This beauty parlor was interesting because it only had 2 light bulbs in the whole room (and they were the energy saver kind that were dimmer than the regular ones), so it wasn't that bright inside the room. Here's a pic of Jaya in the chair getting her makeup done. Notice that her hair is crimped. They use the crimper on people's hair when it's a special occasion - awesome!!! They put a bindi on her head and then the lady painted more and made it super fancy. Here's the finished product (after 1.5 hours)! She...

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