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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Dusshera 2012

This year, our neighborhood was quite active for Dusshera. At one end of our street, one of the major political parties here, set up a Dusshera celebration. Here are some guys putting the effigies together and filling it full of fireworks! They had quite the political statement for their celebration. (Basically that expensive water, fuel, electricity, diesel, gas, etc and FDI (bringing in foreign companies like Wal-Mart) are like Raverna (the demon god)... and are the evils of today....) Here's their set-up at the end of our street.... you can't see it very well, but they had all three effigies there that they burned.... They burned VERY quickly at this one... So quickly that by the time I pulled out my camera, it was already on the ground!! Our street looked like those CNN videos of rioting cities :) haha!! There was burning stuff all over the street :) Many people will get a piece of the leftover wood/bamboo...

Funny Things 2 - American Fair Edition

We just got back from Roadtrip #8 in Macon, GA. It was an awesome trip!! So, before we head out on the next trip, we went to the North Florida Fair! The fair is always famous for it's fried foods... they fried everything!!... They had fried/breaded zucchini, Mushrooms, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Onions, green tomatoes, okra, pickles, etc :) I had a lot of it too - YUM! Now, I'd heard of fried Snickers & twinkies (which they had) but they also had FRIED OREOS & PEANUTBUTTER CUPS :) The fair was cool. They had a shark show and a sea lion show... but our favorite was the pig races :) haha!!! It was hilarious!! Aashini was close up to the race until the pigs came - then she crawled up into Adam's lap really fast :) (as seen below) :) Pig races! haha! Cracks me up!

In Thailand!

We flew to Bangkok, Thailand today! The flight went well :) Aashini cried a little, but did awesome! We got the bulkhead seat and they even had an extra seat next to us! Aashini really only set in it for a pic or two, but it was fun anyway :) You can see the Buddhist monk in red behind Aashini. The guy that set next to us was a Monk also, he was actually the translator for the Dalai Lama ! Cool hunh? It was funny because he was typing on his laptop the whole flight (and Aashini was grabbing at his robe - haha!) This picture below cracked me up so I had to post it :) When we got here we had to go get a few things at the grocery store :) Aashini went to her first grocery store in the Middle East, but this was her first time getting to ride in a cart!!! She LOVED it!! She was swining her legs, babbling up a storm and looking at everything! Thai people LOVE babies!!! She got a lot of attention today! I have a feeling she's going to get a lot of attention the next coupl...

..SouthAsiaRocks..

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