PURIM

Last night was the Jewish holiday of Purim that started at sundown and ended at sundown today. During Purim they celebrate the story of Esther from the Bible, but then there is a whole part of it where everyone dresses up (kind of like halloween, but with more of a carnival feel) and goes crazy partying. We heard from our Jewish Modern Near Eastern Studies teacher that it's a fun holiday and would be fun to go out and experience. So we all decided to dress up and go. So we decided to go out and take West Jerusalem by storm. Here is some of the group:

We got down there pretty early and nothing was really going on since most people were in synagogue. We did see these two guys who were juggling with flames, which was cool. 
Since nothing was happening we all just wandered around, got some gelato (mmm...dark chocolate and pistachio were such good choices!), and stopped in shops to stay warm. During the night the groups continually changed, so here is another group shot. Check out all the face paint on the girls! Thanks to Moon for doing all of it for us!
Finally, it started getting crazier. There were people lighting and throwing this firecracker, really loud popper things all over the place. They were really loud. Then they were selling all these cans of like spray suds that someone kept spraying all over us while we were dancing. It just stayed on our hair and clothes like in the pic below.  
All in all it was really fun! We did get in trouble once by the Jewish men who were playing what sounded like Jewish folk tunes because I guess girls aren't supposed to dance...oops! Thinking about the crowd of us it was funny. A whole group of Mormon kids, totally sober, dressed up and celebrating a Jewish holiday with everyone else :)