Holi Festival of Colors

Today was the Holi Festival of Colors, and when they say colors they aren't kidding! Rich stayed home with Russell and Graham while Isaac and I went to the district youth Holi activity.

Elder Jackson (our area authority seventy!) had rented two big trucks for $20 and a drummer for $2 to come along for the ride. Each truck had three garbage cans full of colored water and we all piled in the trucks and used water guns (pichkaris), garbage sacks, and garbage can lids to pelt each other with bright colors! I had my cell phone and camera in my pockets and soon realized that wasn't such a good idea after getting drenched with purple and then pink colored water!

We rode around for a while drenching each other, stopping at several members' homes to share in the fun. Then we stopped at several parks to play games with colored powder. Isaac was such a great sport, especially as the youngest kid there, and enjoyed it all as long as I was nearby. He only got upset when someone smeared pink powder on his face and it got in his eye.

Here's the whole group when we called it quits. We were so colorful our driver almost wouldn't let us in the car.

We realized that Indian complexions look much better with the colors . . .

and Indian complexions also hide the color stains much better too! This is Isaac after much scrubbing. My toenails are still purple and I've got spots of purple all over after my scrubbing. But it was great fun. Yet another thing you'd only find in this wonderfully weird country!

Russell's Cool 3rd Birthday Party

We had Russell's birthday party on the same day as the Holi Festival of Colors so we let Isaac and Russell splatter colored sprinkles and frosting all over it in honor of the holiday. We had to do lots of talking and restraining to keep Isaac and Tom away at this moment for Russell to blow out his candles all by himself. Same deal with the presents. It's tough being the little brother!

Perhaps the coolest thing about Russell's birthday party was the monkey man that happened to show up at our gate and offer his services for $4. We invited him in and enjoyed the show! I love India--no need to plan activities, just put out some balloons and see who shows up.

The other cool thing about the party were the fun friends that came. We kept it simple and invited only Tom and Ellie (from Australia, our first and best friends thus far) and Joshua from the ward.

I think to Russell the coolest part of the party was the fabulous gifts--an airport terminal from Tom and Ellie, an airplane from Isaac, a water gun (or as he calls it, a rocket that shoots wa-wa) from Mama-Dada, and a battery-powered train set that plays Indian music from Joshua.

Isaac's View From the Backseat

IMG_5330.JPG, originally uploaded by merindarich.

Eating Chocolate Chip Cookies with Tom

IMG_5296.JPG, originally uploaded by merindarich.

"Madam, *#@!$!!"

So the other night while Rich was at a meeting the kids were in bed, all was quiet, and I was chatting online with Nelee. "What's up?" she said. "Not much here," I said. "NuSkin is doing layoffs," she said, "so I better go." About two minutes later, the doorbell rang and I opened it to find the guard saying "Madam, *#@!$! [something in Hindi beyond what I've learned in my 10 classes]." And I (of course, as usual) looked at him blankly, and he, exasperated, motioned for me to follow him. We walked together to the electrical box which just happened to have loads of smoke coming out the top and a fire inside!

I called Umesh, our baby-faced electrician who comes nearly every day these days. I then tried to call Rich, got no answer, so I text messaged the following: "So there's a fire in the electrical box. Umesh is coming in 20 minutes. I may be in NZ by then." For those of you who don't know, NZ is New Zealand, where my Momma happens to live right now. It was one of those moments. Actually though, I was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. It was immediately funny to me unlike other tense moments I've faced in India. This one was just so over the top it was all I could do to laugh! The gravity of the situation became a bit more real when the power went out (which made the fire finally stop!).

I wish I'd taken a picture of the actual fire. I thought of it immediately, but the guard was so upset I thought it might make him more distressed if I ran inside to get my camera. Anyway, when Umesh arrived I started shooting pictures.

This first one shows the blackened wall where the fire was burning.


Umesh the Electrician and Milap the Driver trying to figure out how to get the power back on.


This is how things actually looked without the flash. The power was out after all! Luckily the walls in the house are all made of concrete so the fire stayed contained! I'm currently on a quest to find a fire extinguisher, but it's slow going, as usual. . . After this particular power crisis we lived on minimal power (no water heaters, no microwave, no A/Cs) for two days.

Our Church Branch in Delhi

This is a photo taken Sunday at the goodbye party for the Halls who are moving back to Idaho. The Halls are the American family on the right. Rich was at home with Graham who had the horrible cold we've all had. Our branch president Gagan John is the man on the far left standing next to his wife Trija in the bright pink sari. The American boy sitting in front of the left pillar is Isaac Pritchett--Isaac thinks he's so cool! His brother Luke is right behind him. His parents are standing in the shadows in the back. The only guy in a suit is President Beesa--the district president and his wife standing with her arm in his. The woman standing next to Merinda is the Primary president Sister Mani with her adorable daughter Stephanie in front of her and her older daughter Carolina in the blue skirt. Carolina is the only fully active young woman and she's as good as gold. Oh, actually there is another guy in a suit--Amrit Paul in the back in a brown suit who was baptized several weeks ago by Rich. There's another girl sitting at the left with a striped shirt who was baptized the same day. New people coming in all the time--the trick is to figure out how to keep them coming . . .