India Week

It was India Week recently at the boys' school. I always love the colors, crafts, dances and smiling faces. Such a fun week!

Arthur watching the dancers:

Tie Dye:

Kite-making:

Well-balanced dancer:

Happy Dorian:

More crafts:

New play place...

Recently when we went on an ice-skating outing, we came across the new Stellar Children's Museum. And true to its name, it is quite stellar. It's not huge, but it is clean and everything works. The boys had a blast.

Painting on glass:

Water construction:

Arthur was soooooo excited:

And busy building:

The serious chef:

Spring Flowers

I think I post about this every year, but it's worth repeating. When the weather starts to warm and the flowers start to bloom, the colors are just amazing (and the dahlias are gigantic!). 

Beach time!

After the caves, we headed...

straight to Goa, meeting up with some good friends, for a few days during the school holiday. As always the boys loved digging in the sand and splashing in the waves. The sea was pretty calm, so I taught them how to body surf.  

 Morning digging:

 Dorian body surfs:

Arthur body surfs:

Afternoon digging with the parents:

Happy Arthur:

Sleepy Dorian:

Our little beach house:

Good times!

Faces of the Caves

At the Ajanta Caves we saw countless numbers of the Buddha. At Ellora, we saw Buddha faces, painted faces and many, many other interested and smiling faces.

Beautiful paintings:

The bat that scared me:

Buddha:

This cute boy followed us taking our photo and gave a sweet smile for my picture:

Singing monk:

This little girl kept crossing our path, smiling and waving each time:

Some friendly faces in the temple:

Ellora Caves, Maharashtra

Much closer to Aurangabad (30 km or about 45 minutes by car) are the Ellora Caves. Like the Ajanta Caves, they are a World Heritage Site but geographically, stylistically and even thematically, they are different. The Ellora Caves are Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. They line a gentle, sloping hill which allowed for courtyards to be built in front of some of the temples. Of the 34 caves, the Buddhist caves date from 600-800 AD, the Hindu from 600-900 AD and the Jain from 800-1000 AD. Personally, I found it amazing that not only these three religions coexisted but were co-constructed. My mom and I were in awe of the huge Hindu Kailasa Temple. It is labeled as Cave 16 and it is the first one you see upon entering the grounds. It has a large facade and once you pass through the entry way, there is the enormous temple and, as stated in my Lonely Planet guide, "the world's largest monolithic sculpture, hewn top to bottom from the rock by 7000 labourers over a 150-period." As I said, we stood in awe.

There really was no way to capture the beauty or size of this cave, but here are some shots:

And, that's just Cave 16....here are some photos from the other caves: