Happy Deepvali!

So this past week was Deepevali. It is an Indian Holiday, but they got it declared a public holiday here in Singapore! The festival is actually called different things in different places. I always pronounced more like: Depvali, and it is also commonly spelled Diwali. I have never seen or heard it as Deepevali except for here, but if you ask a local Indian, they will insist that is the only way to pronounce it... other Indian friends say differently. Oh well. All I have to say to that is: When in Rome....

So Deepevali is also known as the Festival of Lights... perhaps you have heard of that one? Often times in the US people mistake their Indian neighbor's decorations as an extra early attempt to put up Christmas lights! Not so! During Deepevali there are lights everywhere! They have significance, too. They are supposed to bring good fortune (or something really good, I think) during the next year. I am not really an expert or anything, so I won't go into more detail in case I offend someone!
Anyway, so Deepevali was last Wednesday (although some places, like Bali, haven't celebrated it yet!), but Little India has been decorating for weeks ahead!

So on Tuesday night I headed down to Little India with my family to check out the Deepevali Market. That is this tented market that is set up just before Deepevali each year selling all sort of things. None of that stuff is actually open ON Deepevali, mind you, because that is supposed to be a day spent with your family. Little India was PACKED!! There were people all over the place. They were outside the market, inside the market, hopping, just hanging out...anywhere and everywhere! We checked out the market ourselves, then just walked around the area getting the feel for the holiday. As I said before, the next day, the actual Deepevali Day, is a Public Holiday in Singapore, so nobody had to be up early for work or anything.
Next day... Public Holiday!! Yay!!
I decided to go with my family and check out Istana... the Singaporean equivalent of the White House.

Actually, their President doesn't live at Istana anymore, but there are still official offices and everything there. Istana is usually heavily guarded and closed to the public except for on 5 public holidays a year... this being one of them. A lot of locals will take a picnic and spend the entire day there! We just went to check it out for a couple hours.

While we were there, we also go a free Henna! Afterwords, we ate at this Brazilian place that my parents love and then my mom and I went shopping for most of the rest of the afternoon and got a wok! I am hoping to get to use it tonight when I make dinner... though I am sort of planning on cooking Mexican and not Chinese, but I guess it will work just as well :)