July 4th Weekend FUN + YJA!!

So after coming back from India, I had to work the next day and then leave for chicago trip the day after...crazy, huh? But I was looking forward to my chicago trip because I was going for the YJA (Young Jains of America) convention and I knew it was going to be a lot of fun. The convention actually was from July 3rd - July 6th but my brother and I went 4 days early to stay at my aunt's place. We got good rest there since we were really tired from our India trip.

My uncle dropped us off at the Lincolnshire Marriot Resort for the convention on July 3rd. This was my first time at the convention, so didn't really know what to expect but I guess that's what made it more exciting. The convention was divided for 3 age groups: highschool, college and after-college. I was in the after-college (called JNF) group, so I didn't know anyone even though there were 5 of us from Colorado. We had an opening ceremony and dinner around 6 o'clock and then right after dinner, we had to get ready for Raas/Garba night. In the meantime, my roomie arrived at the room. She came late since she had terrible delays with the airlines....We got ready and straight to the garba floor! It went on until past midnight. Well for the JNF group they had meet-n-greet program planned which was also fun. They had a deck of cards and cut each card in half and distributed among everyone. We basically had to find the other half of the card we received. It was nice activity to get to know other people. I had nice chat with everyone and then headed to my room around 2 am and went to bed.

Next day, July 4th:
I had schedule packed with sessions from 9 am to 5 pm. My first session was Jainism skits. Basically everyone was divided into groups of 5-6 people and given a fairytale story. Now the challenge was to act out the story you're given in any other language than English! Well this wasn't hard for me as I spoke gujarati fluently but other members of the group spoke broken gujarati which was very cute! My group got the fairytale story of Goldilocks and three bears. I became the narrator since there was more to narrate and other members acted out the scene. This was a lot of fun. Also to see that other people were giving their best to try to speak in gujarati/hindi was very cute. It would come out very different like a small kid had just learned to speak the language. Anyways...after that we had a relationship panel where they brought in 3 couples from different backgrounds telling their stories on how they met, what challenges there are in a marriage and what are the ingredients to make marriage a successful one. This was one of the best sessions I had. Then there were couple other sessions but I don't remember them :P! Towards the evening, for JNF, there was a speed dating program for 1.5 hours. I thought to myself that what are we going to do for one and half hours?? But boy was I wrong..once the speed dating started, I had a lot of fun talking with all the boys. What was funny is that every other boy I talked to was a Pharmacist! And I didn't come across any engineers at all! Some were shy and some were talkative. Overall I had a great experience! For the evening, there was dance fusion competition where 11 teams were competiting. Full of fun and entertainment. I hope they continue doing this. After the competition, there was "MELA". Actually for JNF, it was 80's night so everyone was supposed to dress up in 80's outfit. Unfortunately I didn't have 80's clothes, neither my roomie did, so we both decided to wear indian clothes (salwaar-kameez) which was weird because we were the only ones in indian clothes and everyone else was in their 80's outfit...BUMMER!! Well at least we were there to enjoy it! That night I went to bed early.

Next Day, July 5th:
Again today was pretty packed with sessions but these sessions were more focused around jainism than yesterday's fun sessions :). For some reason I got a headache, so I skipped a session and took a nap. We had a 2-hour recreation break which was very nice since we got to go out and breathe some fresh air!!! Aaaaaaahhhh! Since today was the last day of the YJA convention, we had a formal dinner and then dance!! My friends and I dressed up, took some pics and then headed to the dinner. Dinner wasn't that good but we had good time at our table. After dinner, we had the dance and boy once I hit the dance floor, I danced till 3-3:15 am....and I wasn't really tired (can you believe it?). Then my roomie and I went to the room, changed into pajamas and then went back out to hang out with friends. We were up till 5 am chatting with other friends. Right then my eyes started to close, started yawns and I felt really sleepy. I said goodbyes and came to the room to get some sleep. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep because I had to pack my bags to be ready to go next morning around 9 o'clock. I hardly got 2 hour sleep that day. I woke up around 8, got ready and we left the place at 9 am on sunday morning to head back home.

Overall, it was a great weekend at the convention. Met some really nice people, made great friends and got a really good experience out of it. I would love to come back again for this convention!!!