The Festival of Colors

I went to the Festival of Colors this year, for the very first time ever. It. Was. So. Fun!!! In case you don't don't know, the Festival of Colors is a traditional Indian holiday, that celebrates and marks the beginning of spring, or Holi. The one that I went to was in Spanish Fork, at the Krishna Temple.

Chad invited me to go with him and a couple of his friends. (Chad & I were set up by our friends, Shayne & Erin.) Anyway, we left at around 1:30, in the afternoon, and it took us about an hour and a half to drive each way. Once we got there, we parked and made our way up to the temple. Before you even get inside, people who are leaving are already throwing and covering you in chalk. I don't really know what's up with the chalk throwing, or what the symbolism behind it is, but it's super fun! Everyone has packets of chalk that you get to throw at one another. They also have music groups that perform and sing songs during the entire, day-long event. Then, every 2 hours, they have a chalk throwing, where everyone throws chalk straight up into the air.

Being in the chaos of the picture above is crazy! At first, it's really cool and colorful, but then everything turns brown, and pretty soon you are in a pitch black cloud of chalk, because all of the light is blacked out. I had to breath through my shirt when they did the throwing, and I was blowing very lovely, colorful stuff out of my nose for almost an entire day after this.

If you think we look bad in this picture, you should have seen what we looked like an hour later. (By the way, our shirts were white when we started.)

In the picture on the right, we have Dave and Alli. They are married, and have a super cute little girl, who's 4. On the left, is a girl who is in Dave's Sunday school class. Her, and another guy in his class, hitched a ride with us down there.

After we were all chalked out, we made the very long journey back home. The freeway was literally at a crawl, and people were doing crazy things. There were guys, who just had shorts on, that were running around, in bare feet, on the freeway, from car to car, getting pictures with people. There were also lots of cars who were having Chinese fire drills.

The best part of the drive home was when Chad was able to make head and hand prints on the ceiling of his car, and any slight movement, by any of us, would unleash a mini cloud of chalk. We were also by a car, with a little boy inside, and every time Chad looked over at the kid, the kid would duck down and hide. It was so funny! He was probably wondering why we were all so colorful.

We picked up Dave and Alli's little girl (she was staying at her grandma's house) and then we dropped off Dave's Sunday school kids, and went back to their house to wash up, or at least scrub off our hands and feet, before we went out to eat, because we were all starving. We went to eat at Olive Garden. Lots of people were asking us if we had just been at the Festival of Colors, and it was like, no way, how did you know?  Haha.

By the time we were done eating, it was 10:30 at night. I said my goodbyes to Dave, Alli, and their little girl, and then Chad took me back to my car (we met at a Shopko parking lot), where we said our goodbyes.

I had such an amazing day! It was really long, but so fun! Everyone was really nice, funny, and made me feel super welcome. Chad is a super nice and great guy. He even opened and closed my door for me, every time. How sweet of him! I'm glad that we were finally able to meet. What a great first date with each other.

When I got back to my grandma's, I had a very fun time washing up. I had to shampoo my hair twice, and really scrub off all of the chalk, with my shower loofa, but it was 100% worth it!