Festival of Colours 2009

I thought I would take the time to actually write something again, this time about the Holi Festival/Festival of Colours.

The festival was yesterday at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, Utah (basically in the middle of nowhere).  I left with Sarah and John from my ward at about 4:45.  Normally it only takes like 25 minutes to get there, so we thought there wouldnt be any problem.  HOWEVER, traffic was backed up all the way to Provo's Center street!!  so it took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get there.  This means that we missed the main colour-throwing event of the festival, and there were no colours left to be bought once we got there. :-(

BUT

we still had a great time!!  Someone told me that there were around 10,000 people there!  There really were a lot, it was packed!  We got to park pretty close and found some ward friends.  Luckily Miguel saved me some purple colour so we at least got to throw that :-)  After Miguel left, we were enjoying the general atmosphere of the event when I noticed several people (Eliza, John, and Brigham) gather around me and start to pick me up!!  I grabbed on to Sarah as hard as a could, but to no avail--in a few seconds I was CROWD SURFING.!.  Can you believe it? me--crowd surfing.  One of my shoes was quickly lost, and thrown on top of the band's pavillion.  Eventually I was dropped on my head, which is when I realised that I had not only lost my shoe, but also my brand-new camera and phone!!!!!!  I was about ready to die.  LUCKILY both were returned to me within about 2 minutes!!!  Then later John got my shoe off of the pavillion, with the help of the security dude.  So it was rather traumatic, but I'm happy to say that I have crowd surfed and lived to tell the tale!  It was crazy--you don't even feel people's hands pushing you around, you just feel like youre floating on the top of an especially bubbly/turbulent pool of water.  CRAZY!!!

After this experience me and Sarah walked around looking at the llamas, peacocks, ebzu (sp?), and other animals at the temple.  The temple is really pretty inside, and it was a good time!

Haha afterwards we went to Diegos and then watched the new James Bond movie, but we both fell asleep, waking up occasionally for some light conversation such as

SARAH: "Are your eyes open?"

DAVE: "Nope."

SARAH: "Wait who is that?"

DAVE: "I have no idea; who IS that? Do you know?"

SARAH: "Nope, I've been sleeping..."

or something like that.  It was rather amusing.

Here are pics to enjoy!:

me and sarahs and brigham, right after crowd surfing

a shoe being thrown.  mine is on the roof, towards the gold spike, brown with white laces.

me & miguel right before he left

me and mary, from folk dance

me, sarah, and miguel!

the temple at night

part of our ward group

my face!!

there is my shoe.  the one by the banana-looking sandals.