  DISCLAIMER: Some of these descriptions will be better understood by devotees. If you have a question, please urlLink email me.
Today there was a nice morning program at Udayananda's house and then most of the day was spent getting ready for the big night program. About 150 people are expected, so it's a lot of food. We did a lot of cooking. My major contribution was in peripheral stuff like helping to make the salad, setting out the rolls in pans, putting together the lasagna. There was a huge disaster when one of the lasagna pans collapsed as it came out of the oven, with lasagna all over the oven and floor.
If it had been my house I think I would have cried, but we got it together and cleaned everything up without much of a hitch. Other people also brought prasadam, and there was more of Haripada and Phalini's killer curd subji as well as cheesecake, chickpea subji, rice, and several kinds of sweets. There was definitely enough prasadam for everyone to enjoy. The whole house was packed with people and the kirtan was overwhelmingly loud even as we were still cooking and offering.
Almost everyone had earplugs because it was enough to make your head wobble, and I was constantly in anxiety that one of the altars would get jiggled or (God forbid) knocked over. At around nine PM a video of Gurudeva's tour in Poland was played and a lot of donations were collected to support the work there-over $7,000!
So that was really good. Everyone was sort of eating and watching the video and so on simultaneously, which was a bit chaotic because it was so unregulated, but everything went off well. People began to leave around ten, but quite a few were staying the night and the kirtan went on continuously (and very, very loudly) until 1:30AM. I didn't get too much sleep because I had to chant my rounds, but I slept until about 6:30 AM. It is hard to really describe a rip roaring kirtan if you've never experienced one.
It becomes very ecstatic and somewhat out of control pretty quickly if that's the mood, and people are dancing everywhere and anywhere, jumping up and down, with karatals (cymbals) and mrdungas (drums) being played by the dozens. Everyone's chanting and singing at the top of their lungs, and in a small house, fifty people can make a LOT of noise. I walked down to the end of the driveway at one point, where my car was, about 125 feet away, and it was still so loud I might as well have been inside. Everyone was saying how their ears were ringing after it was all over. A substantial number of people stayed the night, so the line for the shower the next morning was pretty long.
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