India 2013!: होली मुबारक!

Of course, the week was filled with so much!

The title translates to Holi Mubarak, which means Happy Holi! Fun fact, mubarak also means Happy in Arabic.

The other day, we did fancy Friday and we all wore our Saris, which was a lot of fun and really great because saris are freaking beautiful. We also made peanut butter later that day and added in ginger and chilli flakes…sounds terrible…actually was delicious.

Sari photos!

Allison, Max and I. Our rickshaw driver loved this!

The Fancy Friday group, Jessie, Allison, Max, myself and Chrissy all lookin great :)

Chrissy and Jessie being their adorable selves

Cue weekend. Saturday morning a small group of us went to the City Palace and Observatory. The Observatory was really awesome even though I couldn’t understand a lot of what the instruments were used for. The City Palace was, as usual, extravagant and beautiful. Part of that family still lives in part of that palace. What? That doesn’t happen in America.

After that it was time for Anokhi. Aka, the restaurant we go to whenever we need a break from the heavy, gui (straight butter) and roti (bread) filled diet we have been living off of. THEY HAVE SALADS. THAT ARE SAFE TO EAT. (This is actually huge, there are very select places where’s it’s safe to have raw veggies. I guess you would call that a direct side effect of so much of the world not having access to clean drinking water.)

Here are photo's from the observatory and City Palace:

This is a sun dial...a hugeeeee sun dial. (This observatory is a world heritage site)

Gemini:

City Palace

After we were satisfyingly full, we headed to MI Road. (It’s now about 2:00pm…it’s hot. Really hot. It’s scary to think it’s still technically winter here.) After gift shopping for myself and others, it was time to head back to get ready to go to temple with my host-mom.

This was actually a really great experience. We went to a temple on the far side of the city, and it was HUGE. There were several smaller shrines to different Gods and Goddesses within the main temple. It is also a place where people hold gatherings, like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. That’s why we were going, it was my host-mom’s friend’s wedding anniversary, so she wanted to bring me to see a temple and what it looks like.

With the entire city/country getting ready for Holi, the colors they were using on peoples foreheads were neon. I had a mix of yellow, pink, red and orange. It was an amazing environment of bells ringing, singing, dancing for Holi and there were a lot of gatherings similar to the one we were going to. The food was delicious, but heavily gui’d (pure butter) that they use on everything. It was a successful evening and I’m lucky that I had to the chance to experience this.

Once the week started, it was crazy. We went on a mini-excursion to the Barefoot College and a village that is renowned for its water conservation system. The Barefoot College is a cool example of a college where the villagers can attend and get training in solar energy, becoming solar engineers, teachers, working with circuit boards, recycling to create things needed within their village. No paper degree is given, everyone receives equal pay and they receive training that will help them and their village specifically versus pushing them to leave their village and enter the global market. This school is known across the world; we visited a class that was a 6 month workshop and there were women from Cambodia, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Nepal and so many other places from around the world. Their governments recognized the need for these skills in villages, worked with the Indian government, and sent the women to the workshop for training. Although this is the only actual campus for the Barefoot College, there are field offices in various places (including Morocco).

Tuesday afternoon we arrived back at the center for our Holi celebration. Holi was actually on Wednesday, but we wanted to be able to celebrate at the program center since not all host-families were celebrating. Background: Holi is the festival of colors. It symbolized the victory of spring over winter and welcomes in the new season. To celebrate, colors are bought, both liquid and powdered. They come in all colors: pink, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, silver, etc. Some colors are permanent and stain skin for several weeks (we tried to avoid those) and others are much safer and chemical free. We were advised to be careful during Wednesday because the holiday (like most worldwide it seems) has turned into a reason for drinking. Women can be assaulted with water balloons filled with sewage, motor oil and colors that will stain them. So as a woman, I was advised against venturing out between the hours of 8am and 4pm for safety reasons. However, I was lucky and my friend Allison, her host sister offered to pick us up and drive us to Max’s house to play safely there. So Tuesday night we all played as a group. (By “Played” I mean literally took hand fulls of colors and attacked each other. Then on Wednesday morning I got picked up and played Holi with my extended host family! Max’s host dad attacked us with a hose saying that this is how you officially end Holi, by getting soaked with water. Lunch followed, which was delicious. They were great and made me foods that weren’t really really spicy so that I could eat it.

After the eventful morning, I came home to wash off the colors, discovered that some spots of color just don’t feel like coming off. I have random spots of pink on my arms and forehead, also my hair is dyed pink. Max has spots on his face that won’t come off and Allison has blonde hair so the color really dyed her hair. It was a fabulous experience and was a great way to welcome spring! (Even though it has already been about ninety degrees for the past few weeks) It’s now officially spring, we ate good food, played with colors AND got time off of school. All great things!

Holi photo's for you!

Pre-throwing of colors