Back To School
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
These past few days have been the big grand finale of the month-long holiday. Tihar and Diwali festivals. Groups of children, women, men, and teenagers all go house to house singing and dancing and playing instruments (some even came with their own sound systems) They sing songs and bless your house and family and then, in the end, you give them a plate of rice, beans, chillis, and a few rupees (depending on how good their dancing/singing was.) On the last day, they take everything they collected and have a big picnic feast celebration.
As you can imagine our house was a major attraction, especially since when the electricity goes out, we run on solar light. We had group after group coming by the house and performing. Jordyn, Marky and I all decided it was like a combination of Christmas Caroling and Trick-or-Treating. FUN FUN FUN! One teenage boy with a crowd of 30-40 came, made up a song and full on serenaded me. He had everybody laughing. Afterward, K and N whispered into my ear "Maggie, he was REALLY cute!" which of course made me laugh even more.
Today was the children's first official day back at school. Of course, there was about a half an hour of absolute chaos this morning: lost homework, missing pencils, hair combing, nail trimming, mismatching socks, etc. After the kids were gone Ubji and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's so quiet," she said.
It really really was quiet in this house for the first time in over a month. No drumming, no dance groups, no singing, no children running around, no radio or television blaring.
Just quiet.
It was only a half day today but it's nice to be in a routine again. We closed off our holiday break last night in a family meeting talking about our favorite memories from our vacation. Then we all went around in a circle with a candle and talked about what our goals would be for the next few months.
And lastly here's a photo of two sweet little boys named P and U. Thank you to Sean Coleman and family for helping us to re-enroll them into school. They are truly two little gentlemen.