Deepavali!!

Today was Deepavali! We woke up early, at 6. The first adventure of the day was getting dressed. We wore our sarees that we'd bought in Chennai and got fitted with Chandra in Patti. They are very sparkly- Paige's is blue and black, and Kelsey's is green and teal.
Little Karthi's mom and Anushia, Joseph's wife, helped us get dressed and laughed as we had put everything on backwards. Oh so typical us. It was great though. We walked outside to a chorus of 'super sister!' from our sisters. Dhana Packiam braided our hair beautifully, and we put jasmine flower strings in it which smell amazing. Everyone was wearing their nicest clothes. Relatives arrived throughout the day bringing new outfits for Deepavali and plenty of special Deepavali sweets, which the kids loved to share with us. The boys were also dressed up nice and everyone was 'super excited happy for Deepavali!' At breakfast we were showered with Happy Deepavali gifts and cards. Carefully colored drawings and sweet gifts rained down on us and it was better than Christmas. One particular one from Nandhini wished us a happy Deepavali as well as new years, Christmas, "Ramazan".. Very economical to have such a multipurposed card. All of their messages (usually involving Jesus, sisters' names, and Deepavali) and pictues of houses, churches, people, peacocks, etc were so sweet.
Everyone ate their idly and tomato chutney for breakfast quickly, eager to begin the festivities. Starting last night fireworks began to go off and had continued into the morning. We played music in the dining hall and everyone danced while we handed out candy, toy cars for the boys and bracelets for the girls. Muniyappan was the DJ for the morning as the hall filled with dancing children and games of Uno and Chess sprang up in the corners. 'Gasolina' and 'Right Round' were two big hits. Muniapan also really liked 'Smack That' by Akon, so we listened to that a good 10 times, but no one seemed to mind. Kelsey's little digital camera was passed around and we got hundreds of beautiful, hilarious and all around awesome photos of the children. Everyone loves to take pictures, even if their pictures generally are missing someone's head. Ramya, an older girl, comes us with good poses and arranges everyone. We went around to take pictures with our favorite baby cows too, of course. Several hundred pictures and one full memory card went by fast!
After lunch at 1, we passed out the personalized cards we'd made for everyone with lollipops. This was a lot easier than passing out the cars, bracelets and candy, as each kid clearly had one card, with their name on it. We should work on having everyone line up and not yell or fight when we give presents out, but everyone was way too excited for that today, understandably. We took a lot of nice pictures outside with all the smiling faces and their lollipops. We gave some out to a lot of the siblings and cousins who were there too visiting. We took pictures of the kids with their visiting family. Its so heartwarming to see how happy they are to see their parents, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles grandparents.. We hopefully can print these pictures out when we get home and send them to the kids for Christmas. They were so proud to show us their family members, and it made them so happy.
After a short rest, we played the "hopping game" outside for a while (now dressed in a more practical shurida- we were having some technical difficulties with the sarees!) After tea at 5.30, it was movie time! We watched a movie called "Villu" staring our favorite "movie hero" Vijay! Yaay Vijay! He was quite dreamy, parachuting into boats, karate chopping bad guys, singing and dancing with beautiful women and of course never showing them kissing! Thanks to some occasional English lines and over the top dramatic effects, we were able to follow along in the story.
When it became dark, the real fireworks began at Bethania. Bethania where the kids all have matches, labeled 'kid matches.' Yep. Matches designed for children to play with. Everyone was lighting firecrackers, even little 5 year old Akash was running around barefoot lighting the firecrackers. All around us were sparks, fire, boom boom, boom. The sounds are still ringing in our ears. Children screamed happily and their dancing silhouettes stood out in the night against the bright firecrackers spraying sparks in fountains of fire from the ground. It was hard to know where to stand, boy tossing firecrackers into the air all around, landing and exploding in every direction and girls running everywhere with sparklers. These are Indian sparklers, different from those American sparklers that aren't designed to burn your hand. Needless to say, Paige was stressing a bit in all the excitement. It was so fun, but also scary around fire. Kelsey caught her shurida scarf on fire. A rogue firecracker shot off, hit her neck, and burned a nice souvenir in her scarf. It was pretty exciting. Luckily a few good whacks put that out and stop drop and roll didn't have to be enforced. Paige was ready though. Its amazing no serious injury occurred with flames flying in all directions. Firecrackers were literally aimed at the trees and shot. Half a bucket of water was standing by, which wasn't used. Sparklers that spiraled around in circles were lit on the front porches of the buildings, spraying sparks everywhere. Most kids loved the loud, dangerous excitement (though I doubt they found it dangerous). Peanut, the dog, did not find it so much fun and we later realized has spent the entire night hiding in our bathroom, scared of the sounds. After the crackers and sparklers were finished, we had a late dinner, completely exhausted!