Beaches, bonfires and butterflies

What a good weekend! Saturday we loaded up both my and Dave's trunk's full of firewood and went to the beach and had a bonfire! Look at all the wood that fits in my trunk!
It was a beautiful night, the fire burning brightly on the beach, a full moon casting its light onto the rolling waves, just a few clouds obscuring the stars. Sirius is huge now, and Orion was about halfway above the horizon. He's a winter constellation, so I won't be able to see him for much longer. Dave brought his mechanized telescope, and it gave us a tour of the skies. We got a gorgeous view of the moon and Saturn, good enough to see the rings clearly! I brought marshmallows and roasted and ate them with brownies, better than s'mores!


Sunday we went to the Songkran festival, a Thai New Year's festival at a Buddhist temple in Sugarland. We met up with some friends I used to work with, and enjoyed delicious Thai food with them and their family. One of my friend's Aunts, who is Thai, was surprised that I ate all the authentic Thai desserts. I said the key word there was "desserts" lol.

After we ate we lined up to be blessed by the monks for luck in the New Year. We filled golden bowls with water from an urn filled with water and flower petals, then poured the water over a statue of the Buddha and over the hands of monks who held their hands over flower-filled glass vases. They sprinkled us with water in turn, blessing us and wishing us health and luck in the New Year. There was a lot of running around sprinkling water on each other afterwards, it seems like a fun tradition. Then there was a cermony releasing 99 doves for world peace, harmony, and love. It was a beautiful ceremony, I wish more people could see it. Maybe if everyone could spend a sunny afternoon eating good food with their friends, being blessed, and watching doves fly, there would be a lot more peace in the world.
We also released hundreds of Monarch butterflies, to remember lost loved ones. Everyone in the audience got to hold a box with a butterfly in it, and we released them right after the doves were released. I thought about my grandfathers.
It was really a very good weekend. Exhausting, though, we came home and took a 4 hour nap. Back to work tomorrow, and homemade pasta and roasted tomato sauce for dinner tomorrow night.

I took all the pictures here on my phone, they came out pretty nice, I think. There were a lot of people taking pictures, and the whole ceremony was filmed, so I didn't worry about offending anyone there.