This weekend several of our students were off on another
home stay. The rest still had a fun full weekend in Coimbatore with a big Onam
celebration at our apartment complex. Yes, you may have already read our blog
about Onam- but it is a 10 day festival and our Malayalee neighbors wanted to be
home in Kerala for the actual holiday and then celebrate back in Tamil Nadu
afterward.
The morning was a flurry of preparations to get our sari’s
wrapped properly and get all dressed up. We went outside and found a beautiful
huge rangoli (flower design) that had apparently taken 4+ hours to create!
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| Beautiful rangoli |
Soon
we heard drumming and a horn being blown so we wandered over to the entrance
and spotted… the king! We joined in
the parade of people bringing him into the complex. Since everyone else was getting a
snap next to the king, we decided to follow suit. Now I must admit that I was a
bit disappointed to see that his eyebrows, mustache, and sideburns were filled
in with a marker and that he was not a real king! But he did a good job of looking
stately and important!
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| The King |
There were several traditional dances performed by
little elementary girls that were so impressive performing multiple dances
with several costume changes. There were also several awards given out,
including ‘Best Dressed Couple’ which our director Kirk Ji and his wife ended
up winning!
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| Director and his wife winning the award |
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| One of the little dancers |
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| Just the start of all the dishes they served us |
This weekend was also one of our student’s birthday. It was
definitely a birthday she will never forget-eating a feast on a banana leaf
and meeting the king! When all the students had returned from home stay, we had
a surprise party with cake. All in all, another good weekend in India!
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| Birthday surprise! |
This coming Friday we are heading out on our first weekend
trip to the city of Madurai to visit the famous Meenakshi temple and tour the Mahatma
Gandhi museum!
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