Festival of Lights

One of the advantages of living in a foreign country is being exposed to many different cultural experiences. I find myself not talking to Don in a restaurant because I am too busy listening to the conversations around me trying to figure out how many different languages I hear! My high so far is 4 different languages at once.

We have made friends from all over the world. Last weekend we went with some Indian friends who are Hindu to look at the lights for their Festival of Lights. It's kind of like how we ride around in our cars to look at Christmas lights. The Hindi Festival of Lights is one of their most important holiday observances. If you want to read more about it, here is a fairly simple explanation of the holiday that I found online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/religion/hinduism/diwali.shtml

Many Indians live in Oman as expats. Our friends Monica and Ashwin attend a Hindi temple in the area of Ruwi here in Muscat. We met them for dinner at a local mall and then traveled in their car to look at the lights. First stop was to drive by the temple in Ruwi. We saw families at the temple carrying away food  containers of offerings, which is their common practice.

This is the lighted arch at the entrance to the temple. Pictures are allowed to be taken
from outside the temple but not in it. It was very crowded there that evening.

 Below are pictures of mainly one street where all the residences are Hindu and decorate up wildly for the festival. Sorry some of them are blurry--we were driving past and I was clicking as quickly as I could!

 After driving around for awhile, we went to a neighborhood where some of Monica's and Ashwin's friends live. They live in typical Oman homes where there is an enclosed courtyard in front the of home. Lights, candles and hand-drawn designs decorate the inside of the courtyard leading up to the front door.

Tealite candles are used to enhance these hand-crafted drawing s on the courtyard cement/tile.

Monica, Don, and Ashwin

Don and I

And that, my friends, was our introduction to the Hindu Festival of Lights!