PONGAL!

So, on January 14-16, we celebrated Pongal--the biggest Indian holiday next to Diwali. It's a three day celebration all about renewal, cows, agriculture....all kinds of fun stuff! Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated only in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Pongal takes place right around the winter solstice and is a holiday dedicated to the sun god, Surya. Each day of the festival there are different traditions and meanings but in an effort to not be too long-winded, you can go read about them in depth here.

The main traditions we celebrated at Rising Star were making Kolums and eating sugarcane and Pongal. All of the kids and volunteers also attended a function on the second day of Pongal in the village near Rising Star, Thottanaval. The function in the village celebrated cattle and having a prosperous year this next year. All of the cows are washed and dressed to impress with painted horns and big flower wreaths around their necks. It was a great little field trip taking all the kids into the village to see the decorated cows and all the Pongal festivities.

The kids dressed in their very best walking into the village

On our way, we passed TONS of beautiful Kolum outside the village houses.

Here's a closer look

All the housemothers also dressed to impress for the Pongal function

We had to wait awhile for the function to start...it was the perfect time to take pictures of the kiddos all dressed up! From left: Theresa, Pavithra, Jessy, Jennifer, Tamilselvi and Theerthi

The boys were lookin mighty handsome :)

I have said it before but I will say it again, Kala is awesome. Case and point: she dressed all the boys in her house in matching outfits (the old Rising Star uniform) to go into the village for the festival. They all looked so nice!

Tamilarasi (a housemother) and some of the girls hangin out waiting for the function to start.

These drummers played throughout the whole function. They definitely kept the party goin.

This cow was especially decked out with balloons on its horns.

A proud villager showing off his cattle.

Another proud villager showing off his fancy cattle.

They have even modernized Pongal a bit by also celebrating and decorating the tractors that help for a successful harvest. The two tractors in the village both had big flower wreaths across the front.

My walking buddy on the way back to Rising Star was Mr. Sanjay in UKG--he sure is a cutie.

It was tons of fun to celebrate a new holiday with the Rising Star family. On the last day of Pongal we had a big water fight with the kids that was AWESOME!! We had music and dancing and water balloons....it doesn't get more awesome than that! Pongal was the last big holiday/break from school until the kids go home. My time is really starting to wind down here and I'm getting more and more nervous everyday about saying good-bye to the kids and people here. Hopefully the next three months don't go by too fast :)

Vanakkam