New Year~

I will continue talking about Burmese Culture since Burmese New Year festival is not far. We are going to celebrate Burmese New Year festival ( water festival ) in April 6 around 4:00 pm at Sunset Hall. I recalled my memory from last year water festival. I had a wonderful time at the festival. I remembered about writing a paper about water festival last year. In order to write this blog entry, I had to go through my paper from last two semesters.
First of all, let me start with beliefs and values that Burmese people in Fort Wayne still maintain. It might sound ridiculous for you but it is very true. Before the ceremony begins the whole committee inclding all the elders, dancers and other participants gatehr together to pray for the ceremony. What we do is we sit in vertical line putting elders a front. The reason why we put elders a front is we believe that the elders that more experiences in life and we value their being here with us. After we line up, one of the elder starts to pray in Burmese for the good time and for no distruction from evil spirits. The prayer takes about 20 to 30 minutes. After the prayer, one of the prayer announces that the ceremony is in section, then the dancers come up and start dancing. They try to do the ceremony to be authentic according to Burmese style. As an outsider I might say that the prayer seems very beautiful and very cute it does not matter I believe in that or not. The custom that prays in Burmese before the ceremony is very pleasant to see to the outsiders and I heard some American people saying what a nice custom is ; putting the elders a front.
At the festival I saw many dances. Among those dances, I was surprised to see the folklore dance. Because folklore dance is very hard to dance because it takes time to practice and requires lots of hard works such as settings and people. But people in Fort Wayne presented the folklore dance at the festival as one of the prides of Burma.
There is one thing that I discovered as an outsider is the cloth that they wear. At the festival, most elder people wore Myanmar Longyi. I was happy to see people wearing Longyi because it shows that they still do not forget their cloth. In Burma, we have our own traditonal cloth. Most people in Burma still wear it. The “ Longyi ” looks like a sarong in India is worn by both male and female. The longyi represented the Burma and you can see the Longyi in Burmese money as one of the prouds of Burma. At the festial, I did not see a lot of men wearing longyi but I saw most of the elder women wore longyi. So, I asked why she is wearing longyi in the foreign country. She said “ I like longyi anyway. I do not like wearing skirt or pants. They make me uncomfortable. Once you got a stain on the back of your pants you can’t do anything about it beside change the pant. But with the longy you can put the stain inside and wore it like a sarong in India. Also, I want to show the American people our traditional dress. ”. Form that answer, you can see why she is proud of wearing the longyi and how much she enjoyed to wear it. I am very proud of her as an insider and very impressed by her speech as an outsider.