Be prepared for some crazy photos!! I went to the Indian Festival of Colors- "Holi"- today, and it was madness! Which corresponds with great fun of course. Holi is the Spring festival that is celebrated all over India (and in Singapore of course because of the large Indian population here). Holi welcomes in the coming bright colors of Spring and also seeks the blessings of the Gods for good harvests and fertile land. Holi is celebrated with many many colors- covering ourselves and others with those colours actually. At the entrance of the festival we were handed a bag of a brightly-coloured chalk like substance.... this became very important as the evening progressed! First we ran around a field with a ton of people throwing buckets full of dye at each other (the little kids had a fun time specially targeting Sabra and I- I think we looked especially ridiculous because the dye showed up so vibrantly on our pale skin). After we were fully doused in dye, wet to the core, and our clothes had turned from white to a muddy mixture of every color of the rainbow, we proceeded to smearing the chalk substance all over each other- hair, face, arms, etc. All these cute old ladies kept coming up to us and streaking our foreheads and cheeks with chalk, and random men would run up and dump chalk over our heads. And then small kids would run up to us and douse us with the liquid dye again, and it would start all over again with the chalk, and the dye, and the chalk, etc. It was totally fun! Of course, now my entire body is dyed blue and I can't seem to get the color out of my skin. It has soaked in so deep. I have a feeling I am going to be walking around looking like a smurf for the next week.... sheesh, I even got dye in my eyes and they started to turn purple! (no worries, no last effects).

Here I am before and after- what a disaster!





check out my hair:



During, with two friends- Martin and Sabra. Martin is especially unrecognizable! Ha ha.






And, just a reminder, here is Sabra and I "before"- well, almost. We'd already been "blessed" by a couple of the local grannies:



And here is Martin and I on the metro home- yes, we had to take the metro looking like this! People were doing double-takes left and right (but Singaporeans would never actually "say" something- i.e. "why the hell do you look so disgusting?"). And just one last reminder, all of our clothes were WHITE to begin with! And so was my skin... I am so blue now! (still, after scrubbing and scrubbing- and my hair is still streaked with bright colors! ahhhhh.)