4/19/08 - Drawing Session at Hindu Temple

Spring is the best season for everybody, including religious organizations!
So many activities are happening every weekend, and even on weekdays.

Although the Hindu Temple welcomed this idea of the project, it took a while
to find the time to do the drawing session.

This Hindu Temple is the biggest and oldest temple in North America,
according to their explanation. It is huge! They are under expansion/construction.
Mr. GP, their PR person whom I mentioned before, was delighted to explain all the details.
Every time I am also excited to see the newly completed parts of the building.

Okay, so finally we found time to do the drawing session.
They have a Sunday elementary School, and the educators were
very nice and serious about what this project is about.

This time, I got a better idea of how to explain the drawing process to the children. I asked the children to explore their temple first, and come back to another quiet place. I asked them to close their eyes and imagine what they saw, learned, experienced or thought about their religion or religions.

Many children raised their hands to get ready.
It was really fun! They were amazingly enthusiastic.
They individually went into their drawings further and further.
I guess they got used to seeing so many objects and letters. Although we were in a classroom-like place that did not have much in the way of Hindu imagery, many were drawing Ganesha (an elephant-like god) and a beautifully dressed woman or vibrant greenery.

At the Muslim center, many children chose crayons and thick, bold colors.
Here at the Hindu temple, many used pencil colors. In the beginning, educators were concerned about making a mess on the carpet, so maybe because of that the kids chose lighter materials, or perhaps it is simply their sort of "trend." The boys and girls sort of worked separately although there were only a couple boys there this time, so they did work a bit with some girls.
In the Sikh temple, boys and girls seem to have to maintain a certain distance. In this Hindu temple, it does not seem strict. However, I remembered when I visited another Hindu temple near there, the girls told me boys are not allowed in their dance classes or lessones. I am just saying that there was a subtle difference in the type of distance between boys and girls. In Sikhism, you have to sit down in the prayer room separately. In this Hindu temple, everyone seems to be roughly all together.