Visit to the School

Last week and again today my friend Paige took me with her to teach English at a local public school.  She has been teaching there for a few months and the kids got so excited when they saw us walking up the street!  Each one greeted us by shaking our hand and saying Good Morning Mam!
We work in the 6th and 7th grade classrooms.  We try to focus on making sentences and using proper grammar but by the end we were singing and dancing!  We are still India after all!  All in all the kids did very well with what they have been taught and were able to tell us a story about a game they play called Lagori.  My mom's many years of teaching me school songs and teaching strategies really paid off!  Thanks Mom!!  I will try and get a video next week of them doing the Hokey Pokey!

 The kids are having an end of the school year celebration this week so they showed us some of the dances and skits they have prepared for it!

Maha Shivaratri

Maha Shivaratri is the celebration of the Hindu God Shiva.  Most Hindu festivals are during the day but this festival is a night long vigil of Shiva because he is believed to have saved the universe from Darkness and Ignorance.  We went to an amazing temple that is set up to look like the Himalayas where it is believed Shiva lived.  You can see in this picture the "mountains surrounding Shiva."

Inside the "mountains" there was a portion of the temple that was created as a replica of the 12 sites in the mountains where the Shiva Linga sprung up by themselves and then temples and places of worship were built around them.  You can see a replica of one here

This temple is very close to our house and we had no idea that it was so extensive once you entered!
There are different rituals that are incorporated into the celebration

We placed gold coins in 108 in gold dishes while saying "Om Namah Shivaya" which is the mantra of the day.

We tied orange strings to areas near the Ganesha god and made wishes for the next year.

Sandalwood was placed on our forehead in a horizontal line in honor of Shiva.

This is a picture of the ritual of bathing the Shiva Linga with milk which represents purification of the soul

We burned incense in order to yield wealth

We lit candles which represented the attainment of knowledge

There is an element of purification and taking a holy bath which here they had us run through the water falls.  We got soaked and not everyone did it but it was fun!

We finally sat and listened to the musicians sing and celebrate.  It was really incredible to see and such an amazing experience.  Aaron's co-worker Bijal took us all and explained everything to us and helped us understand all the rituals.  She was a fantastic guide but I still probably got a lot of this wrong!!  Did the best I could to understand everything :)