Diwali

Today is Diwali. It's the biggest holiday in North India. Everyone decorates their houses with lights and flowers and has pujas (prayer ceremonies) and eats lots of good food and sets off fireworks. This morning IES brought a "pundit" to the residence to do a puja with us. It's a pretty elaborate ceremony that involves a lot of chanting and symbolically feeding various gods and building a small fire in a dish of sand. Lata got me all dressed up in one of her saris and all the other girls wore saris, too. I had done a puja once before with my homestay family but it was right when I first got here and there were a lot of things I didn't understand. This time I could ask Cate and Reeta questions as it was going on and take pictures. Tonight my host family is going to do a similar ceremony and then have way better food and set off fireworks. Lata asked me to invite a few of my IES friends to come over for that, so that should be fun. They were allexcited to get to celebrate with a real family.