Poya Day!

Hey guys!  As promised I wanted to share pictures with you from Poya Day.

Poya Day is considered very auspicious by Buddhists. As I said before it is celebrated during the full moon. This is a day of prayers, beautiful lighting, and a day to refrain from drinking and eating meat. Each Poya Day has a different name and some are celebrated in grander ways than others. In Kandy (the cultural center of Sri Lanka) there is going to be many celebrations leading up to the Poya Day in August.

Currently, in Unawatuna (a city about 15 min car ride from me) there is a 7 day festival going on that started yesterday. I am not sure what the festival is for exactly but I know it culminates with a visit from the Sri Lankan President on Monday.

Anyways, here are some pictures and a video from the celebrations!

Leading up to the temple are multiple little shops selling anything from shoes to plastic buckets to decoration for the home to food. These are beautiful clay pots.

These are like wind chimes minus the chiming. I think they are suppose to bring peace.

There are many coffee places around Sri Lanka using the Starbucks logo and fooling me into thinking I may get a delicious mocha! They have various different names.

 My friends! You met Mirna in my other posts; her family is originally from Bosnia. Sean is in the middle: he is an undergraduate student at Hopkins who is thinking about going into Medicine. Xiao is on the left and he is a Global Health graduate student at Hopkins who is originally from China. We are a very diverse group!

 The first smaller temple we passed. They have Buddha on the right (not seen in this picture) and some Hindu Gods that they worship as well. See the video below.

The larger temple on the beach that we walked to. So pretty!

 Drummers lead people carrying rice and sweets to the big temple.

 We stopped for a delicious bite. This is vegetable kottu- vegetables and roti minced on the stove.

 The beautiful temple by the water with Buddha at the top on the right.

Large, simple Buddha statue at the top of the mountain

Finally to end here is a video of the praying a the smaller temple. I don't know if you can tell from the video but the priest (? I think he's a priest) is dancing to the drums while doing prayers. I've never seen that before. Very interesting!

But the video is not loading! Sorry! I tried for 2 hours, and I am sleepy. Will try again later.