Ganesha Overload...

Where to begin, where to begin...how about this morning when my sleep was totally interuptted by a lot of drumming and carrying on outside my window....early....! I am all about Ganesha, until he wakes me up....fyi!
So, the past few days have sorta been a blur. I have been teaching and that is all going well. I was asked to stay after school and teach a few girls the "American" accent. They think it is sweet...they also think I am sweet as well....I have them all fooled. I am not sure how to teach an accent, so I am going to work on that....other than that, it is all about Ganesha.
Tuesday evening, Ganesha Eve, so to speak, Shyamala and her husband invited me to their friend's home for dinner. They live pretty close to my house. The meal was typical Gujarati...the state north of here. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, everyone is quick to identify food region and people region....none of which I can remember, but they keep telling me....bless them all. Dinner was fabulous, quite spicy and many, many types of sweets, (I am continually amazed at what they can do with chick pea flour and lentils around here) including kulfi, Indian ice-cream which rocks. Sort of nutty and minty and way, way creamy.....hard to describe.
After dinner, we all walked around the neighborhood to check out the "spots" where Ganesha would be arriving. They are sort of make shift temples that are elaborately decorated. People would be working all night long to get them ready for the arrival. We also stopped at a friend's office where they were creating an amazingly elaborate piece of artwork (for Ganesha) out of little beads of grain, all of which had been dyed many, many different colors. Each little tiny piece was hand glued onto a large sheet of paper in this sort of Ganesha battle scene....quite impressive. I guess they work all night and day for about 3-4 weeks straight....and when the festival is over, into the sea it goes as well.....
Early Wednesday morning, afer I was roused from my slumber by drumming, I came over to Shyamala's home around 11. They had just finished their pooja (offering) to Ganesha. The food had been "blessed" and bestowed upon him first, they we could take the food off of the altar to eat ourselves. Ganesha is fond of his sweets, so they say, a lot of sugar cane and other stuff like that....also, all dishes had 5 ingredients, not sure why and no one seemed to know, just the way it is. We then went down to the public pooja near their condo. There was much singing, praying and waving of candles in front of the altar, all very festive. I was encouraged to particiapate and I am not one to turn down any sort of "potential good karma," so what the heck.....the statue was quite large....and there are many, many more parading around the city awaiting their poojas to begin. Tonight, I am to go to Savita's home for her families pooja. (I really just like saying that word, fyi)!
Tomorrow morning, we wake early, head to the Arabian sea for the first submersions of the idols. The idols may be submersed as early as 1 1/2 days after the start of the fest, or the 3rd, 5th, and finally, 11th day of the fest. Some people choose to submerse early because of the vast amount of work involved in maintaining the pooja. All food must be freshly made every day, the sweets, flowers, tumeric (yellow root powder) and kum kum (red powder that you often see on the forehead) etc. Nothing, I mean nothing, can be leftover....so as you can imagine, after 11 days, that is a lot of work......the large public statues do remain all 11 days however.....
So as I sit here typing, I can here the drumming, dancing, and fireworks.....over and over and over again......and only 10 more days of it....sigh.....Ganesha.