Liji and I have been going out and just driving around to see places we have never seen.  Wow! Once you leave Kochi city this place is so beautiful.  We have had some great times, met some great people, and heard some great stories, but instead of elaborating on all of that I will just show you the pictures.  Kerala is a large state and there is still so much we haven’t seen, but we are making our way through.

I have been watching a lot of tutorials online.  It’s my new fascination.   Some of the great ones are: Angry Chicken, That Darn Kat, How About Orange, and there are so many more.  These have inspired me to create my own tutorial.  This is my first one and isn’t the best, but it’s pretty good. This is a super easy project so if you are a beginner, this is perfect for you.

This is a basilica that people said we must go see.  The original church was built in 1524, but destroyed by a flood.  This current church was rebuilt in 1676.  Around here they call it “the sweeping church” because there is a little shrine in front of the church with a pile of brooms off to the side and to pay respect you take a broom and sweep a bit. When we arrived I was amazed at the space around the basilica. There is a large area for people to come and worship outside. The area is surrounded by large artificial tree trunks. Inside the tree trunks are scenes from important times in Jesus’s life. There are about 40 of these surrounding the grounds. This place was really quite amazing to see. Check out some of the pics.

This is the area where the sweeping is done. On the right side are the brooms.

Diwali is an official holiday here in India.  In short Diwali is the Festival of Lights.  You can read the whole description of Diwali here.

We shot off a bunch of fireworks in celebration.  The fireworks here in Kochi are a lot more scary than the fireworks in Utah.  One of them actually shot a bunch of times into the air and a piece of it came down and burned the top of my head.  It hurt, but I survived.  The sound of some fireworks is like bomb going off.  All in all, the celebration was a blast (haha).

Here is a short video that Liji filmed. Around 1:27 you can hear me say “It landed on my head.” That is when it burned me.