Happy Holi!

If you haven't experienced it before- Holi is the festival of colors. It's celebrated in India and I don't know where else.  Here in the states, you can see it celebrated at Hindu temples. While I always knew about it during my years at BYU, I never actually made it down to Spanish Fork to experience the goodness.  This year, I made it to a celebration in Potomac, MD with a bunch of friends from church. It was glorious!  The weather was a little chilly, but overall beautiful. I loved the celebration.  It was a welcoming setting, people everywhere were so friendly.  You walk by people and they reach up and brush your cheek with color and say "Happy Holi"...or they throw it in your face or on your clothes and say it.  Either way, I was laughing and smiling the whole time.  I decided I needed more celebration in my life. Love my church and the culture that it offers, but...frankly...it's not nearly as fun and happy as this was.  I'll have to find other celebrations to participate in!

 This is Emma and Spencer- two counterparts in the day. They were friends in my car for the trip. :)  Spencer doesn't like to be dirty.  He tried to stay away from the color, but was unsuccessful. He did an excellent job tolerating the dirty and I think he even had fun!

 This was one of the many small children experiencing Holi. I laughed as I watched the reactions of the kids.  Some were very excited, but a lot of others were really unsure about the people and this whole color thing. I also laughed at the kids as I assessed their sensory processing skills (being the nerdy therapist that I am).  I could tell some of them definitely had issues processing and t'was a challenge. 

 This is me, Laura, and Kara- my friend who organized the group.  My poor camera had a splotch of dirtiness on it! And I couldn't see anything through my glasses, but Laura wouldn't let me wash them because she thought it was so funny!

 This is what happened when you walked into the area nice and clean.  A crowd of people dashing you in color!

Kara and me

This is what we looked like after a while. The color just all blends together and you look nice and camouflaged.

Laura and I right after a good attack of color.  I got a whole mouthful on that one.  Gross!!

Still gross.  I had a sore on my tongue the next day!

The Group

Me, Joe, Emma

 Another part of the celebration is the burning of the witch. I didn't know anything about this when we went to the event, but from what information I could gather when I got home, the witch is symbolic of this evil sister who tried to kill her brother.  She was "immune" to flames, but when she tried to kill the brother with fire, he was protected and she was burned because the god that he worshiped spared him for being righteous.  It's supposed to represent evil loosing- burning, and good winning.  I also hear tell that it's supposed to be like the winter witch being burned and spring coming with new life.

 So we waited for the burning of the witch. 

 And we waited....and we got a little bored.  So, Laura started "flying" with Emma's help...

And eventually our hunger ran out. So we left to go get Cafe Rio.  People thought we were extremely weird.

The rest of the group was originally right behind us, but apparently right after we left, they finally burned the witch. So, we sort of had separate lunches. And people still thought we were weird. :)