Spring Break 2009 – Prt. 2

(cont...)

27March
Friday morning was not busy for me. I did a bit of reading and school work related stuff. In the early afternoon I picked my sister Michelle and took her to the store and to do errands. She doesn't have a car in Provo, so I thought I'd let her take advantage of mine. Who says I'm not a good brother? We also met up with our friend Melody Splattstoesser at Sonic for half priced drinks. I took Michelle back to her place and I took a nap. In the evening she went with to dinner with a good friends and his wife at Wingers and then we all went to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. After I got back after the the rest of my evening was pretty lazy as well.

28March
Today was the day that made my whole trip. Everything before and after was great, but this day alone was worth everything. A group of us first got together to go to lunch a Tucanos. Brasilian BBQ Buffet; glorious and delicious. We had to rest after to recover and let the food settle, but then we reassembled to head down to Spanish Fork for the Holi Festival of Colors. 10,000 Mormons gathering for a pagan, excuse me, cultural celebration can only be fun. My little group consisted of myself, my sister Michelle, Tina Roper, Ben Hatch, Nathan Casper, Crytal Araujo and Heather Veit. There were sooo many people there. I ran into many, many other people that I knew and that I hadn't seen in a while. That alone was fun. So anyway, the point of the festival: to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring. There is a bonfire where the witch of winter is burned and then everyone throws colored powders at each other. There is story too. There were masses of people at the Hare Krishna Temple, inside and out. We were told this was the biggest Holi Festival in North America, ever. The actual festival took place on a hill side next to the temple where they had set up a band stand. There was a false start at first, but when the actual "bomb" went off it was amazing. We'd fought our way right into the middle of the crowd. When everyone started throwing colors it was all you could see. I'd lifted Heather up on my shoulders so she could get better pictures. Huge clouds of colored smoke covered the whole area. We could hardly breath for a time. Everyone ended up covered, with powder ending up in all sorts of odd places. They had live band music going the whole time after that. It became a kind of Hare Krishna rock concert after that. There was no personal space. People were crowd surfing, pushing every way, dancing, singing and chanting. There were a couple of time we had to protect each other from surging crowds, but overall it was very safe. No one was rude in anyway and tried to help each other for the most part. I'm pretty sure no one got seriously hurt out of the whole crowd. We moved our way to the front and spent the rest of our time up there. It was a blast. I lost my voice by the end of it. I had so much fun. We stayed another hour or so and the made our way back to the cars. We took some more pictures of our colored condition and then fought our way through traffic back to Provo. We cleaned ourselves up as best we could, rehydrated and several of us ended the night with a movie and a game of CatchPhrase, made crazier by our exhausted state. Really, this day was the highlight of my entire trip.

29March
Sunday was church. I really wasn't sure what to expect from church at BYU. I ended up enjoying it. I guess with low expectation its easy to be pleasantly surprised. That's actually how I've felt about my whole experience in Provo: I've enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected. I wasn't put off by Provo. Granted I was only there 4 days, I and I knew I could leave. Anyway, later in the day in the Hotel California we had a potluck get-together with several people from San José. Nathan and Ben hosted, I was there of course along with Robert Bennett, Ashley Mordwinow, Mark Williams, Peter Holt, Jamie Hanson, and Heather (she's not from San José, but she got a pass). We had good food and good times. We even tried to play another game of CatchPhrase, and were more successful. A few of us stayed later and watched Saints and Soldiers. And I stayed up way later than I probably should have, but no regrets. It was a good end to my last day.

30March
Despite ~4 hours of sleep I said my good-byes and was out of the apartment by 9ish, did a few errands and was on the road home by 9:45AM. Besides stopping for gas, and one 20min. power nap outside of Elko I didn't stop. The drive went better than I'd expected. I really hadn't been looking forward to doing it, especially alone. Yet, I was alert and mostly comfortable the whole time. I was certainly blessed. I made in how just after 8PM local time, making my total drive time just under 12hrs. This has truely been rewarding trip. I had great fun, made new friends, had good times with old friends, and feel rejuvinated for life at home. It was worth every cost. :D