On the 16 day of August, 2009 in the season of summer. Swami Vivekananda Shaka and Subramaniam Bhartiya Shaka had sports event held at Lake Boren Park in New Castle.
The sports event started at 10:30 a.m will lots of fun and joyful games. Mahila, Tarun and Bala had separate games. Each game was conducted by Khel Parmukh. Everyone had fun and it was a great apportunity to meet different familes from other Shakas and perhaps some new families were also there. Not forgetting Butani familes who were transported by some of our Karyekartas. Thank you very much for providing that wonderful service for Bhutani familes. I believe that Butani families also got a chance to see how we conduct Shaka every Sunday.
On the first Sunday after the Full Moon on the month of August, which translated to August 8th, we held the Hindu festival Raksha Bandan in Balagokulam. Raksha Bandan was supposed to be on August 5th, but since that was a Wednesday, a workday, we celebrated it on Sunday. We had our usual activities at the usual time up until the boudhik. We talked about Raksha Bandan and its qualities for 20 minutes, and then called the Balas over. After a few minutes of instructions, we got the rakhis and actually started tying them. We tied them to the people sitting next to us. At 12:00, Balagokulam ended and everyone left, but not for long. Read the rest of this entry »
So finally we made it to StoneGardens. We were all excited to start climbing but it took some getting used to wearing really tight shoes. After putting on the shoes and the harness we climbed the walls belayed by the trainers from the gym. Man, what looks so easy in videos can be super tiring. Your forearms get pumped in no time. Climbing is a great workout, no doubt about that. We were a group of 12 and all of us got try different routes a number of times. Some of us tried our luck in the bouldering section too. Feels weird to hang from the ceiling, not to mention the strength and stamina required. In short, all had a great time and we look forward to go there again.
Holi - the Indian festival of colors. The sheer name of this festival brings into mind a splash of colurs. So, when Hindu YUVA, UW decided to organize Holi celebrations for the first time, it had to be special. A flood of colors that Seattle’s grey skies has never experienced. An addition to the American red, blue and white. An event full of enthusiasm, joy, wonderful colors and some delicious food. Can you expect anything more? Oh yes you can. The event was organized at the Golden Gardens beach in Seattle. We decided to hold our weekly gathering - shakha at the beach too. We played some traditional Indian games like kabaddi and kho-kho. Playing these games on the beach sand made them all the more fun. We decided to light up some real holi fire near the beach. The lighting up of the holi fire turned out to be a good idea given the cold seattle weather. Read the rest of this entry »
Seattle HSS for the first time organized and conducted the Sakhi Sammelan, an exclusive event for women on March 14, 2009. The goal was to have an exclusive event for Hindu women. So, the program was open to public. Arranged for the first time in a short span and blessed with bad Seattle weather on that day, the turnout for the program was amazing - there were 60 participants. The event lasted for 4 hours from 1:30 to 5:30 pm, and in those four hours, the women undoubtedly had a great time enjoying a beautiful geeth, a relaxing yoga session, arts and crafts, games, and quiz and more, the program was an obvious success.