Hidrellez Festival

Yesterday night I went to the Hidrellez Festival. I don't really feel like paraphrasing what the whole thing is about, so you can click here for full info. In fact, I don't really feel like talking at all, so we'll do this with lots of pictures.

We met near the Blue Mosque and walked down to a park on the coast where the festival was taking place. There were these handy signs everywhere to guide us in the right direction!

The festival is all about wishes! There were many spots and ways in which you could wish for things at the park, and this is the first and most traditional. Each rag or piece of cloth tied to the tree represents someone's wish. Some people wrote on their rags, some people didn't. At the beginning of the festival, it was just this area covered in wishes, but by the end of the night all the trees in the park had stuff hanging off of them.

There were these nets of cloth hanging between trees too, and those were for people to take. You were allowed to rip a section of the fabric off to use on one of the trees. It was rather entertaining, since no one had scissors. I used my keys.

Here I am tying my wish to the tree. Isn't it funny that I'm wearing a scarf to a festival about summer? I can't be Canadian...Here you can see the sunset and the people and the stuff hanging from the trees. There were activities all around based on the idea of making wishes. I spun a wheel of fortune and fed a huge painted pelican. We threw notes in a wishing well and tied cloth to things. After all that we listened to some turkish music and danced and ate really good food. The photos after the sun set are kind of dark, and I was kind of doing a lomo thing minus the part where the photos are cool. I got home around 2 am and still got up in time to get to school. Go me!

Love

Maeghan

Ps. Second trip starts on Friday night. Hilights include Cappadocia and the first church (near Syria!!). It's directly followed by the district conference in Antalya. Weather forcasts for some of the places we're visiting include 55 degree Celcius days. Yes, I'm going to DIE. But at least my icecream will die with me.
I'll be bringing a seperate bag just for sunscreen.