Skip to main content

Diwali

Diwali is celebrated different ways at different people's houses, but with the family we live with, the morning begins with making a Rangoli... it's a colorful design that is made with either colored sawdust, rice or rice powder.

The design was really neat looking this year:
At night, the family will light diyas all around the rangoli (little clay pots with oil and a wick inside). The photo below is of the family that we live with.


They love to take pictures :)

Shakshi below:

One of the things that the kids (and grown-ups) LOVE about Diwali is lighting firecrackers!! The firecrackers are CRAZY here! You just can't imagine!! There is no such thing as an "illegal firework" here! You know those big HUGE ones that you go to a park to see on the 4th of July in America? Well, everyone in our neighborhood had those... it was crazy!

The thing that really confused me about the fireworks was the packaging... all of the firecrackers in the picture below are illegeal in Florida... they are crazy ones... one of them is a box of these huge exploding bomb fireworks... they are not my favorite... but the thing I found amusing is that the picture on all of the covers of the fireworks boxes had small children on the front...
Here's a close-up of one of them... this is of those bomb things... hmmm... who's in charge of marketing for these companies?....

Adam has a new blog up: http://www.SouthAsiaRolls.blogspot.com

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florida Gators!

OK, so don't get me wrong by the title... I'm a super proud Florida State Grad and a big FSU fan... but this week here in Thailand, Tim Tebow is hanging out with us :) For those that don't know, he's the quarterback for University of Florida - he's a believer and a really awesome bold guy. So, since he's a Heisman winner (AND the only underclassman to ever win the Heisman) we thought we should get Aashini in a Heisman pose with him :) haha!
17 comments
Read more

Campa Cola & Exploring :)

Today we had some things to do in the Central part of our city, so while we were there, we decided to take on some adventures :) Adventure #1 - the underground market. This market is pretty crazy. It's actually underground and has electronics & clothes mostly. They sell things pretty cheap, so it's an interesting place to go. Today we got an 64 Gig flash drive/pen drive for about $5. Crazy hunh? Here's Adam and Aashini in one of the stores. They're all REALLY small stores - about 10x10 feet I would guess (but I'm really bad at guessing that sort of stuff :)) We go here a lot to get things, so I guess it's not a new adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.
Before the next part of our adventure (the real part of our adventure) we stopped for lunch. Aashini will always eat at McDonalds, so that's where we went :) They just started selling chicken nuggets here at McDonalds, so it's super easy to get her to eat there :) This McDonald's had high chair…
13 comments
Read more

The Hijras are Coming!!!!

Today we had a fun / interesting cultural experience :) Here in our country, there are these people called Hijras हिजड़ा .... or Eunuchs. Most of these people are true eunuchs - they were born without male or female parts. They all live together in their own ghetto. If you have a child that is a Hijra, then they will come and demand you for your child and people here will give them their child. They all live together and in order to get money, they mostly do a glorified sort of begging. They are always dressed to the hilt. They come and visit you when you've had something big happen in your life - usually weddings and.... NEW BABIES. They come and dance and make a HUGE ruckus. They ususally do this until they are given a large amount of money. Some of them can be quite crazy and violent, but mostly they will just annoy you to death, barge into your home (or wedding) and dance and sing around until you give them money (usually around $100-200 is their demand). Everyon…
12 comments
Read more