Holi

What I saw of Holi was quite nice...it just wasn't much.  My roommate and I were under the impression that the festivities lasted all day and that we would not be safe to leave our flat before noon.  We set out in the early afternoon to have a little fun, only to find that nearly every Indian we passed was finished and fast asleep.  This made for wonderful pictures of dozing citizens, but didn't exactly allow us to engage in the festivities.

Check out those feet!

Seems that we had turned our backs on Holi...and Holi turned its back on us.

Except, of course, for the elders of a community near our office.  They insisted upon giving us a taste of the day; a.k.a. smearing dampened dye powder on our faces.  The powder looks like this at market:

These men couldn't imagine why in the world that wasn't a palatable notion to us.  We picked up our pace...

only to run smack into these far more convincing citizens.  While we were able to stave off the dye,  we couldn't outrun their requests for a Kodak moment.  These guys set out a stool, gathered around it, and asked us to take turns posing with them. 

Personal space was not a valued commodity.

 Later we ran into to of our fellow IJM interns, John and Danny, whose morning had obviously been more productive than ours.

Smear your neighbor's face with dye?  

Best way to welcome spring.