Holi Krishna

It's that time of year again. You know the one...when thousands of college students get together to party up Hindu style. I went to the Festival of Colors two years ago and I swear there was maybe 2000 or 3000 people total. However, this year there was 20,000 that came. Ridiculous! but amazingly sweet at the same time.

So lets start out the story of this amazing day. It began by me not having anyone to go to the Festival with. Janna wasn't going to go because her sisters were in town, and that threw me off because we had been planning to go together. I eventually texted my freshman roommate, Ari, and I ended up going with her and her friends.

I'm going to skip forward past the meeting up and driving to the festival because nothing really happened except meeting up and driving. On the walk up to the temple, some random drunk guy walked up to me, Ari, and Ari's roommate Jordan and started talking to us. This guy was super wasted and was saying the strangest things. About a half mile later he ran off and started to talk to someone else. He friend who was with him walked over to us and apologized saying, "I'm sorry about my friend, he's a little intoxicated." No, really?

When we finally got to the temple, I saw some friends and I went to talk to them. On my way back to my group, I started walking around this small roped off area. When I say small, I mean it was a small circle with stakes about a foot high connected by a rope. As I walked around it, a guy started walking towards me. I tried to move a little out of his way, but I managed to catch my foot on one of the stakes causing me to trip (does this surprise anyone that know me? I think not). Since the guy was about a foot away from me, I tripped right into him. It would have been cool if he caught me but I managed to just stand there as I slid down his entire body. I'm not even lying about the sliding. My hands started at his shoulders and ended at his feet. Awesome. I just knelt on the ground and laughed and felt embarrassed for about a minute. All he did was look down at me and asked if I was alright. I said I was because I didn't want to tell him I was actually in a lot of pain after landing on rocks with my knee. I walked off laughing and in a lot of pain, but the pain was worth it because it was so funny.

After we got our chalk (aka colored cornstarch) we went into the big old crowd and started playing and talking with people we ran into at the festival. At one point, the announcer asked us all to sit down for some reason. There were two boys in front of Ari, Jordan, me and Ari and Jordan started drawing hearts on their backs. Both of the guys were mightily attractive. I think the guy in this picture had a little crush on Ari because he whipped out his iphone and added her on facebook immediately so that he could be tagged in the picture. After they left, we just ended waiting in a group until the countdown happened when we could finally "officially" throw the chalk.

The announcer guy finally announced we were about to start the countdown but he was retarded and started at 20. Who starts counting at 20? And he counted so slow. Here is a video of my group. You can tell people got annoyed with the 20 seconds and started throwing really early. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEHlTM83Grg I was in the group that started throwing around the seven second mark and I got absolutely plastered (not in the drunk sense cause I'm a good girl :D ). The guy that is in the this photo was literally six inches from me, and the other people who are invisible in the pink dust were no more than a foot. It was insane how much powder there was. I'm pretty sure I will have purple snot for the next week.

After the throwing, we hung out at the temple for a little while just taking pictures and talking for about 45 minutes. We got bored because everyone ran out of chalk and so we headed back home. We hitched a ride in the back of a friends truck to our car so that we didn't have to walk a mile or so even though it would have been faster.

On the car ride back, we took the Center Street exit and there was car full of boys in front of us. One of the guys wrote his number down on an envelope and kept on pressing it to the window. When we pulled up behind him in the left hand turn lane, he put the envelope back up but the paper folded down and we couldn't read it. We kept on yelling at them to fix it but they didn't understand us. Right after we turned, however, the car they pulled over into the next lane and started driving next to us. The driver took the envelope and started handing it through the window as Andrea, one of Ari's roommate's friends, reached over and grabbed in while we were on state street. We slowed down traffic and almost came to a dead stop in the middle of the road, but we got the number and that's all that matters. Andrea immediately called it and the guys invited us over for a party later that night.

Before we went over to the guys' place, we went out to eat at In n' Out for dinner and eventually got cleaned up. I went over to Ari's apartment so we could all head out together and while I was waiting for the girls to finish getting cleaned up, Ari's friend Alan came over just to hang for a little while. He and I got to talking and I found out he's in a couple of bands. He was with us at the festival so I have a couple of pictures of him...he was kinda cool. He was cute in an Indie type of way, but he is a super skinny white boy...but for some reason I'm okay with that. And p.s., he's awesome on the guitar, just sayin'.

So over at the boys house, wow. It was so much fun. There were 7 girls and 9 guys. Jared, Jordan, Jay, Graham, Mark, Brian, Nick, Kyle, and Christian (yes mom, I remembered all of their names. Be proud of me. And don't worry to much about us going over to random boys' house...please. We were safe. I actually knew one of them because he's the older brother of a boy I work with and Ari also knew one from one of her classes).

I ended up talking to Mark most of the night. He was nice but a little strange in an overly friendly way. Jared, Jordan, and Graham were beautiful. Pretty sure I crushed on Graham a lot. Anyway, back to Mark. Mark and I ended up talking and he leaned over and asked me what I thought of the dynamics in the room. What he meant was he wanted me to analyze the boy-girl relationships forming. I was right back in the place I'm always in when I meet guys. I observe and tell things how they are. So I went around the entire room and gave my view on every guy there. Mark was suprised that I nailed every single one on the head. For some odd reason I can read people and situations really well and that's why I've always been the "go to" girl. Graham in one of those guys that is good looking and can get numbers but has no follow through when he receives said numbers. Christian is really open and great conversationalist even though english is a second language since he's from Paraguay. Mark is happy-go lucky and like to make friends and goof off. Kyle is the smooth mover and always has a plan of attack when he wants to pick up a girl (it worked because Andrea was wrapped around his fingure by the end of the night.). Nick wants a girlfriend but he can be a little heavy handed with his flirting, but he is super friendly and open. I can go on, but I think you get the picture. We stayed at their place until a little after two and Ari managed to come away with two numbers (Christian's and Jordan's and she didn't even talk to Christian). How that girl does it I will never know.

So that was my adventure at the Festival of Colors. And here are some more cool pictures from it.