Dussehra: The tenth night of Navratri         

I meant to write this blog post a while ago, because this holiday was actually a few months ago. Oops...  Anyway, Navratri is a Hindu holiday that lasts nine nights, and the tenth night is called Dussehra. My friend Aakanksha from school invited me to the dussehra party at her society. ( a society is basically a bunch of buildings that form a neighborhood.) At the party, everyone does this dance called Dandiya and garba. Dandiya is a dance that you do by beating your sticks with someone else's sticks. Garba is when you dance a repeated move over and over again while going around in a circle. ( I'm not an expert at explaining all this, so if I get a fact wrong, sorry!) anyway, the party was one of the most fun nights I've had in my life! To get girls ready for the party it is a really complicated process that takes about two to three hours. Pretty crazy, right? This is how we got ready: first, we changed into a lengtha choli, which is basically a long skirt and a short top. ( to stay modest, I got one that didn't show my stomach.) 2. My friend's nanny ( they call them their didi here, which means big sister) put my hair into a really complicated hairstyle. This usually really REALLY hurts. A lot. 3. You put bangles on your arms ( funny story: red bangles means that you are single and looking for someone, green means you are married or taken. Guess which color my friend put on me? Red.. I didn't know what this meant until after the party! Thanks a lot.) really heavy necklaces and super heavy earrings that are so heavy they are commonly held up by a chain connecting the earring to a pin in your hair so your ears don't have to handle all that weight. You could also put ankle bells on, but our skirts already had bells on them, so we didn't do that. 4. You apply really heavy makeup. Really really heavy makeup. This didn't really help me as it made me look even paler... haha! 5. You pin a long see through scarf on your shoulders and drape it over your hair. This covered the hairstyle so I was kind of sad about that, but you also couldn't really see that my hair was light in the dark/strobe lights in the party, so I guess that made me stand out less. 6. You put on a ton of perfume ( this made me sneeze pretty badly.. Haha) 7. you are ready to go and dance! When we headed down to the party, I was surprised to see that all the guys were wearing... Jeans and a t-shirt! All that effort for us and they don't have to do anything! I didn't know the dances, but I caught on pretty quickly because most of the steps were repeated a lot. After dancing a ton, we ate dosas.. So good.. At one o clock in the morning, we were so tired, so we said goodbye and went back to my friends house. I was sleeping over and normally at sleepovers I talk and talk and talk... But we were so tired we barely said anything and we fell asleep instantly! That night was so fun and I made a ton of new friends, learned a new dance and it was fun to learn about the holiday and hear new music. I learned some new Hindi too.. After dancing a ton my friend would say "garam! It's so garam!" That means hot and I think I'm spelling it wrong.. Anyway, Dessehra  was so fun and it was a night I will never ever  forget. 

- Laura :)

P.S Sorry I am not able to post the pictures of me and my friends all dressed up on this website but if you are on Instagram, then you can see the pictures on there.