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HUGE party!!!


I can't even begin to explain the party that took place in front of our house on Monday night... Sooo much happend and I took sooo many pics... I don't know if I can describe it all :) but I'll do my best! The family that we live with had a big party that is called a Jogrun. It is a HUGE event. They invite all of their friends and family. The Kumars (the fmaily we live with) just moved from another city a few years ago, so most of their close friends and family live out of town - so needless to say, there were many out-of-town guests. In this culture, if you invite someone from out of town, you are also offering them a place to stay at your house :) Which means that people were staying in our part of the house also! Yes, it was crazy!! In one area of our house, we took out all the furniture and they rented mats to cover the floors for people to sleep on. It was awesome!!


The party began with a pr time to the g0ds here. There was a HUGE stage set up in front of our house that had images of the g0ds that they pryed to. The picture on the left is the Kumar famliy. They offered up some of the food that we were about to eat and they did some other rituals.

The next thing was the dinner :) There was sooo much food! At weddings we've been to, there has been a lot of food, but this party topped them all! It was awesome! The food was in a tent at the park at the end of the street. The tent was sooo big! I ate tons of food! (and I was throwing up all day yesterday.... hmmm). The pic on the right is of me and Shakshi in the dinner tent.

We had no idea what to expect next. After everyone was done eating, everyone went back to our house. There were about 200-300 people there at this part. It was so crazy!! Everyone started to sit down on mats that were on the street (the street was closed down).

At this point, the h*ly man came to the front with the Kumar family and they begin a the "ritual" for this party. I can't explain this very well, because I couldn't really understand it very well, but the did a lot fire and water. Then came the next part....

There were two singers... This picture is of the second singer. He was the main guy. Almost all of the songs were about and to the g0ds here. The ones that wern't, were about giving money. While the singer was singing, people would bring up money and he would sing their names and they would all dance. We didn't really understand the whole thing, but the money was offered for the gods, but the singer got to keep it.
The Jogrun went on all night. It ended at 5 am. It was quite an interesting experience. Some of the family that came to vist were great. We got to meet some really interesting people and we really learned a lot about the culture. Although I got pretty sick, the food was good too :)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hey! It's good to hear from you guys and see some of your life over there...looks pretty fun, which isn't a shock, wherever you guys are...fun is sure to be as well :-) I added you so you should be able to access my site now.
7:22 PM
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