Life-Size Barbie Time!

Alina and Me

So, tonight... it was an experience.

Today was some sort of holy day, especially for recently married women. The ACM students all went to a festivity to watch some of the ritual games. According to some of the people there, the origin of the games started back when women were married off at young ages: 11-13. Because they were so young, the wives would get together and have sort of playdates, doing things like patty-cake, red rover, and spinning in circles. Even though women get married at much older ages now, they still have the traditional games. After the new wives did their games, everyone had the opportunity to join, and I'm still dizzy from all the spinning.

Despite all the excitement of the night, one of the coolest parts was that I got to wear a sari. My aai told me it was traditional to wear saris to this kind of event, and she brought me two or three of hers to choose from (all green, because it's my favorite usually). After that, she pretty much spent an hour playing barbie with me... dressing me up, wrapping my sari, finding necklaces and earrings for me to wear. And once I was all dressed up, out came the camera for photo-time. It seems like quite a few of the girls had a similar experience... about half of us showed up in elaborate saris and jewelry (I, however, thankfully missed out on the long and tedious experience of having flowers braided into my hair). I ended up wearing a forest green sari with the traditional gold trim. I'm pretty sure, despite the fact that I was wearing six yards of fabric, I showed more skin tonight than I have in years.

Anyway, I had a good night and a fun new experience.

Curate ut valeatis,

Annie