What Can We Say, We Live in India ...

... and yesterday, that was SUPER obvious.

We've had several weeks of regular working weeks at school with an in-school middle and high school music assembly and lots of Stomp-esque music coming out of the 5th grade music classes. Many of the Friday nights were spent at home with a movie and in bed by 10pm with long weeks of work and we have several great weekends checking out Mumbai. Until ...

... bam! Holi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi) is a great "here comes Spring" holiday here in India involving colorful powder, lots of super soakers, and a ton of people out in the street. Kids and adults alike outside dousing each other in water and colored powders (we got, via Twyla, the non-toxic versions of course).

We first had a potluck brunch with some friends, then partied it up with our neighbors down in the parking area who had a wading pool set up for re-filling the water guns. Then, our highlight, we walked into the local fishing village. We ended up dancing in the middle of the closely tight neighborhood where there is about 4ft between the houses and huge speakers pumping out Bollywood music. They were so happy to have us whities to dance with. They literally had buckets of colored water and were pouring them all over us as we danced. Wow.

After that we went to the beach where the crowd was much more subdued (read: more drunk) with the speakers propped up on, yes literally, garbage piles. The best part of this exchange was when one especially drunk guy made a move for one of the ASB ladies and a few of his buddies quickly slapped him around in protection of their new white friends. We danced a bit on the beach, but headed back through the village where kids were waiting to ambush us from the various levels of windows. Some of us even got hit by eggs!

Basically, it was a "yes, we definitely live in India" kind of day -- one of those days that make our time here very unique, special, and very exciting.

ps, because we didn't have our camera, you'll have to just imagine a lot of the action in your head or go to Twyla and Greg's blog at http://gregandtwyla.blogspot.com/2011/03/holi.html as they have a water proof camera -- thanks to them for that!