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Some of my Indian friends invited a bunch of us over for a celebration of Holi a spring festival. Apparently the tradition is to throw colors, colored powder, at other people along with water and other things. Since it was snowy and cold here I thought they were not going to throw colors.

When I came back to the party after going out to look for some of the people who were bringing food, I didn't want them to have to carry everything in the snow. I was greeted at the door by a smack of red color to my left cheek. It looked like I had been hit really hard. Apparently after more people got there they decided to get out the colors and have a small color fight. Everyone who walked in the door after that was greeted with colors. Hopefully one of them will post photos somewhere. Thanks Sindhia. Above is a picture of me right after being hit by the color.

They prepared a nice meal for everyone and introduced us to a few snacks which I unfortunately don't remember the names of. One of them involved taking a semolina puff, poking a hole in it, putting something like dried chickpeas in it and then dipping it in a sweet and then spicy sauce. It was pretty good. The photo is of me trying to put the whole thing together. The second thing they shared was a sweet milk type ball. I didn't care for it but appreciated the experience of trying it.

The only bad thing about having the color on my face was that I had promised a friend I would go see a movie with him so I felt weird showing up with this big red blotch on my face. I kind of smeared the color to make it not quite as obvious and then went to the movie. I explained what was going on when he got there even though it wasn't that obvious.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the theater it started to snow again and I got worried that it would snow so much that I wouldn't be able to get home. Thankfully it didn't and I was able to get home after the movie without much trouble.

BTW Zodiac, good movie.

*Update* The color came off of my face and hands with no problem. The only issue now is the stuff that got in my nose when someone put it on my face. I realized also that when the color was smeared it kind of looked like I was using sunless tanner and had done a really bad job of putting it on.