this past week

has been hell.
For a whole semester of nothing-ness academically and easy fun traveling, trying to get my next few months out has given me a run for my money. Literally. I'm out quite a few bucks.

But here is what I am doing when I leave the university on the 5th:

Delhi-Varnaasi-Ladakh for 2 weeks
flying to Paris to meet mom for 2 weeks
flying to Bangkok for my summer research project for the month of June
(with a little side visit to Singapore to see Riane, who is positively taking her internship in Singapore!!!)
flying home on July 1st, at midnight

Oh, and I just finished my last exam today
woo!

In the morning (4 am, actually) I am off to the Calcutta, Darjeeling, and Sikkim to see Mother Theresa's charity place, tea plantations, and the 3rd largest mountain in the world.

Our time here is coming to an end.
But it isn't over yet and we are still taking full advantage of our time here!

you woke me up!

my heart continues to break in India. I knew it would happen before I left, but sometimes the level of violence and pain and carelessness towards other living beings is appalling to me.

I met a girl who was working for an orphanage in North India and she told me the story of a little girl. A little girl she took care of, a little girl without eyes.
The girl's parents had died when she was placed in the orphanage and because both of her parents died, her village thought she was a witch. So they tied her down and gauged her eyes out with sticks of bamboo.
And it makes me cry to think of what that little girl has been through.

I can never even imagine the life she has led.

Yesterday I was ashamed of myself.
I was sitting in the AirIndia office, speaking with the manager, when a man reached over me to hand the manager some paperwork and on his knuckles and elbow were lines of raw, open, oozing sores. White and red around the edges, swollen in anger, this elbow was 6 inches from my face and I gasped and covered my mouth - everyone in the office that had crowded around to see the American female turns to look at me.
This was a man with an open infection, and his sores were just exposed to everything - it looked like his skin was being eaten off of him, like a hole was being made in the back of his elbow, and all across his knuckles, a line of craters.
I had physically recoiled from this man, gasping as I did it. It was disgusting.
But what bothered me the most was that it had disgusted me so much, and that I had acted so rudely to this man, in public. I have no clue what it was, how long he had it, but he probably wasn't that happy with it in the first place. When a girl who was already a freak show brought attention to his sores - it isn't a surprise when he finished quickly and walked out.
But it surprised me to turn and see this huge gaping hole in the side of this man's arm.
My first thought was that he had done a few too many drugs, used a few too many dirty needles. But it was all over his hands and on the back of his elbow.
Whatever it was, I hope it gets better for him, and I hope for humanity that others take such sights with more dignity and respect.

Later on the way back, I saw a man walking a dog with a broken leg, dragging him along with a lease, while his broken front right leg just dragged across the sidewalk, sores on his knee and I just wanted to stop the car, and scoop the dog up, give him a hug, give him love, give him care. I don't know the status of his owner, but I know that if he felt anything for that animal, he wouldn't have made the dog walk.
And that cruelty makes my fists clinch, my eyes water and my whole body gets all worked up just to collapse under the weight of just having to drive by and not having done a thing.

There are so many things I can't help here. I don't know what I would do for anybody, or how I would even imagine trying to do it, but I wish and I hope for everyone and all that suffering ends.

Tonight as I lie on my back, blogging in my air conditioned dorm room the night before I hop a plane to the Himalayas, there are millions of people suffering in the world.

sorry

that I never finished writing about Mumbai. But I will.
This past week has been crazy, which I will fill you in about later.
For now, I am finished with school at the University of Hyderabad. I took my last exam today.
And now I have some time before I have to get up at 4 am to catch a plane to Calcutta, a train to Darjeeling, and a bus to Sikkim to see the 3rd tallest mountain in the world. I am going to see the Himalayas. I am such such such a mountain person - I absolutely cannot wait.
Thinking about it, I will probably cry.
Even looking out my window at the mountains whenever I am home makes me a little teary - the beauty in this world can be so overwhelming, so intense, so powerful.
I believe that there has to be a lot of good in the world for something to be so beautiful and meaningful to so many people.
These mountains - these mountains are very special to the people of Sikkim. When people trek up to the top (which is hard to do), they follow the sacred tradition of stopping at the summit. I plan on finding out the all of the beliefs behind this while there.
I hope also to visit a monastery or two while I'm up that way. I really appreciate Buddhism, and want to spend some time exploring and learning about it.
I'm a little sad that my plan to volunteer in Nepal fell through - but I have new news on that front too! And it is exciting!


So. Mumbai, day 3
(in pictures, because I can't recall every detail)

Mumbai is a sleepy little city and doesn't wake up until after us - we wander around looking for breakfast (coffeeeee) and were found by two ascetics who tied red and yellow strings to our wrists and gave us bindis and gave us some candies, blessing us. And then they asked us for money, and when we refused they told us that even Indians donate at least rs. 500 ($10) so we slipped them rs. 50 and walked off.
Of all the people in India, these were not the men and people to give money to.

But, a week later and looking back on this incident, we recalled that we ate the candies and this was a stupid stupid stupid thing to do. If I were home in the US, there is absolutely no way I would let someone tie string on my wrist, put powder on my forehead, and then eat their candy.
But, in the US, where we grow paranoid of every single thing that could possibly happen to humanity from a young age, this is a big deal. So, now that I am in India and I could die at any moment due to unforeseen events (terrorist attack, a cortisone shot from a doctor, a rickshaw) my awareness level is a bit different. Here, men walking around with candy (which is actually sugar coated fennel) and string blessing you is seriously the norm. Here, people live what they preach, what they believe, so it feels natural to accept. We are fine, anyways. It happened to us twice that day, in the morning and the evening - the second man sang to us. And didn't offer us candy or ask us for money. And he told us that our light shined from the inside, and that we were whole, beautiful people. He was a very happy person and he made us happy.

We had breakfast (Riane's flower and coffee)

We headed off to some gardens and took pictures with an old man who had decided to act as our tourguide:

We left him to go to Banganga Tank, where Hindus believe the middle of the earth is and bath in this big concrete pool of water:

And we found some murals on the wall on the way to the Thieve's Market (Chor Bazaar):

a public telephone

a man in his antique store in the Thieves Market

30,000 people work here - if you sent your laundry to the cleaners, this is where it comes and men, women, and children will throw your clothes in this huge segments of cement and beat the dirt out of your clothes.

At this point a young boy tried to get me to give money to him for this baby kitten he was hauling around and it just wanted freedom and all I could do for it was tell the boy to put it down, and let it drink water from the palm of my hand. Then, while we were watching the people do laundry, somebody decided to give this boy a beating and he was wailing at the top of his lungs, lying beside a parked car. But then he got up and chased me all the way into the train station. 

Soon after, a man grabbed my hand and asked if he could give me a kiss. I struggled to get my hand back, Riane told him loudly "No!" and he walked away laughing.

We then grabbed a train, ate some lunch at the same restaurant Bill Clinton ate at a few years ago, and then did some shopping, and we got some awesome buys.

We met up with our friends who had magically appeared in Mumbai:

and we visited a church and a park and then had dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel and spent the longest time searching for a club that would let us in for free, which they would not do. So we went home and the next day Riane and I had a photoshoot, we about died getting on a train that took off really fast and we were not all completely on, and we visited the largest slums in Asia, the same slums from Slumdog Millionare. No pictures, sorry. We all felt the same on that matter.

Then we really did hop a train home. Successfully.

I don't have anything to say about the slums just yet - my opinion on what we did and what I think about the whole section of society is very very very undecided and confused.

some pictures:

And home we went.

On to new horribly trying week.

heaven knows its high tide

Mumbai, Day 2

I don't know our exact itinerary, although I know we made them. Every night, before we went to sleep, we planned out our next day.
I know we woke up and went to Barista for overly expensive coffee and muffins. Barista and Cafe Coffee Day are battling it out in Mumbai - they are everywhere, but we don't really like them.
We set off to find the Thai and Singapore Consulates to get our visas for the summer- we knew they were somewhere in Mumbai, but nobody else seemed to know. An hour later of scouring the streets of Fort and Churchgate areas, the last person we asked pointed us directly to where we needed to be. We didn't have the right materials to complete the process - strangely, this was not as upsetting as it would have been if I had been home. My patience level is out of wack here - different things set me off, these days.
For some reason, wandering around in 106 degree weather was not that big of issue, being lost for hours and talking to some of the most useless people, including guards and important security people, was not as overwhelmingly frustrating as it could have been. Instead, we continuously took stupid, vague hand gesture directions until we were incredibly lost in the sea that is the Mumbai business district and had fun in the process. We really can't blame anyone for not knowing. One man even told us he was new to the area, but tried to give us directions anyways. Everyone tries to be so helpful. But many of them don't know or have any clue of the American 24/7 instant help and decision, always knowing how to get in touch or when to be somewhere, because we have better things to do than wander around. We really can't do anything but wander around anyways. We got familiar with the city in the process.

We spent some time in a travel agency-we were trying to decide how to get home.
This is looking out at the hot hot world of Mumbai from the helpful world of flight travel agencies strategically placed at foreign consulates who helped us find train tickets anyways.

The man secretly helped us out, then told us our much needed information, practically shoving us out the door into a cab (no rickshaws exist in Mumbai and this is one of its downfalls), "go fast!" to the reservation section of the closest train station for the final two tickets of our desired train, "you most likely will not get them," and we got there, outstripping everyone at the counters, we came out glowing, for we had just beat a large group of traveling guys and a bunch of Indians to the final tickets of this train and they were ours ours ours and we had a way home Sunday afternoon.
No more worrying, not that we were, really. Stopping at that travel agency was by the mere chance of walking to the consulate and deciding that we needed some air conditioning and water.

We left the train station to wander some more. On the way, we found:

High Court

We weren't actually allowed in here from the front, but we snuck around back and walked through the judge's gate and such and walked around all of the levels and spiral staircases, through the men and women with judges cloaks and people struggling with stacks of paper. It is a beautiful place, and amazing too, that everyone was still using it. In the West, places like this would be labeled as World Heritage and put off-limits, but here in India, it is just normal and vital to use everything there is. We aren't sure everyone notices the sometimes incredible surroundings they have and that what they are walking through is historically incredibly important. But who doesn't take what they have for granted?

A staircase of the University of Mumbai. Even being American females didn't give us enough power to step within the gates of the University.

So instead, we walked through the Churchgate train station, got some pizza at a really yummy oceanside restaurant, and met a boy who broke our hearts. From Tamil Nadu, he came to earn money for his mother and two sisters because in his village, he only earned rs 450 a month. Which is less than $10. He was an illegal shoe shiner, because he didn't have a box to shine shoes on, only a brush. He told us that he didn't make much money shining shoes, which makes sense. He walked around with us for a little bit, but seemed intent on following us wherever we went, which while we want to be supportive and friendly, we do not want to wander around a strange city with a strange boy. So Riane gave him some money, which didn't seem to be what he wanted, but all we could really offer and we thanked him for his tourism ideas.

We decided to take refuge at the Modern Art Museum, and did some culturing and cooling off. This we really enjoyed except for some of it was so... modern. And modern does not always equal "good" or "entertaining" or even "artistic." No pictures of this - it was a museum. 

We left and I was bombarded by a man without a big toe on his left foot. He just showed up beside me and started talking in really good English and a very fast gait for a man without a big toe, with dirty clothes, and no teeth. He asked me how my day was and I responded rather automatically, "I'm fine, how are you?" when clearly this man had not just walked out of an air conditioned modern art museum with a bag of left-over pizza in his hand. So of course, he responded with his automatic answer that he was, with a laugh, "not so well."

And in my way of not knowing what else to do, I said, "I'm sorry." and I walked faster and crossed the street without looking. Which he couldn't do because he didn't have a toe.

I left him behind without anything but an "I'm sorry."

I am constantly ashamed of my behavior.

We walked back out into the sweltering Mumbai heat, to go wander into the Taj Hotel, seeing if we could afford to eat dinner, or have drinks or dessert here. The result: no. No, we couldn't afford any of it.

But we looked around, did some"shopping," and sneaked into "resident only" sections. It wasn't particularly difficult. Everyone there was a foreigner.

After that, we set off to do some shopping for nightlife appropriate clothing coming back with small puja bowls and hand painted stationary.

We ate dinner at a delicious and adorable restaurant, Indigo, complete with twinkling fairy lights on the roof. We shared everything, because it was pretty expensive ($20 each) and because it was a lot of food that we couldn't eat on our own. And it was just delightful.

I do have an issue with spending money on certain things - food/drinks, or edibles in general, souvenirs because "where else will I find gifts from India?" and other things.

But being in Mumbai really made me not want to spend much money on anything at all. 

We walked around to fairy light restaurants, to the lit up Gateway of India, clad in our going out wear, and along the way, we are passing entire families sleeping on sections of sidewalk. Babies are smooshed up against doorframes, men without a leg propped up on a covered vendor table, unrecognizable lumps of clothing lying on the side of the roads, children are begging in the street, running to you, men ask you if you want weed or prostitutes and I can't. I... just can't. I don't have what they want.

I walked around with tears in my eyes the entire trip.

Really, what makes me any different than these people besides my "soul" or whatever it is that makes me who I am being born to a middle class American family?

Or next day was more... picture full and intriguing.

Sorry for the lack of pictures currently.

And still sometimes, I can't believe it's real.

Mumbai is a beautiful place, in a strange way.

Mumbai is that dichotomous situation everyone imagines when they think of India. It's like it was made to be that way. And it is so accepted - it is the way of life here in India.

I still love trains - it is my favorite way to travel. We usually travel in the sleeper class (no AC, no bedding, just open windows and strangers) and this time was no exception. The night we left Lingampally:

 The only thing that changed was that this was our longest trip yet - 16 hours on a constantly moving train. But we made it, only to emerge in an incredibly beautiful, rhythmic, well-oiled city with a distinct look and feel. Mumbai is packed, and Mumbai is constantly moving. It didn't matter the time of day, or the heat - there are people everywhere. 20 million in fact. And they are all different.

Mumbai evoked several different emotions from me, some not until I was taking my last look at Mumbai through the window of a speeding train, sitting in a car with multiple screaming children.

 We arrived at the same train station that the scenes from Slumdog Millionare occurred in. It is a beautiful relic left over from the British, originally known as the Victoria Terminus. It now has an Indian name, another attempt at removing any traces of British rule, but nobody uses that name.

Inside was busy. Very busy.

 Sorry everything seems to be a little bit off-centered...

The first thing we did was try our hand at chasing buses, because Mumbai, of all places, has double decker buses, that I stupidly did not get a picture of.
Riane almost got bowled over - she has a knack for suicidal street crossing missions, but the drivers in India have a knack for homicidal driving.

I wouldn't doubt if Riane has a bruise on her elbows from me yanking her out of the road. It isn't carelessness - you can stand in a tree and people would find a way to run you over. You have to try crossing the road at the smallest break or you won't get anywhere.
The bus let us off at Colaba Market and we were immediately found by a group of young men trying to get commission by showing us various hotels. We humored one of them for a little bit, following him and looking at his suggestions - but Mumbai is pricey for what it provides and we were not going to pay the absolutely absurd prices of no AC, a shared bathroom, and definitely unhygienic living for rs. 800 ($16 total each night). We knew what we wanted for the most part and started out towards our desired dwellings when we had the very scary occasion of watching our hotel finder fall down into seizure on the sidewalk while handing us a business card.
As I watched this man writhe on the sidewalk, I quickly lost faith in Indian humanity. A business man walked by on his cell phone - he said to leave him alone, he would be ok. A security guard peeked over the crowd surrounding us, and walked away. One man stuck a shoe under our helper's nose, another tried to pry open his hands and put keys in them. A group of men continued to sit on stools in front of the alleyway we were a few feet from. I asked for the hospital, I asked for the emergency numbers, I asked for help, I asked what was wrong, Riane searched through our info for any emergency information our travel guide might have had, I glared and cursed the bystanders for not doing anything but watch this man, foam at the mouth, every limb rigid, suffer on the sidewalk.
A few minutes later, his body relaxed, and as he seemed to want to throw up, I wanted to turn him on his side. This is what you do for unconscious drunk people so they don't choke on their own vomit, but they told me to leave him alone. I couldn't really go against it. I was in a strange city, one of two girls surrounded by men, in a country where women are not equal to men, where physical contact is suggestive, with no clue as to why people grasp their temples and have seizures in the middle of the day.
Getting closer to him than kneeling could have been a very bad decision.
We waited until he was standing with some help and offered him food, water, AC - he wanted none of it. His friend said that if we gave them rs. 100 they could get him help. We are not stupid - $2 was not getting this man anywhere. They refused everything we offered - we even offered to take him to the hospital. He wanted a cigarette, his friends wanted money. We left them sitting on the curb.
We don't know how the social system works here - we have no clue if the hospital would have seen him, how it would have been paid for, what could be done for a man who clearly lives on the street.
We left them because there was nothing else for us to do. You can only offer so much.

And this, besides gorgeous architecture and masses of humanity swarming the sidewalks, streets, trains, restaurants, was my introduction to Mumbai. I had known when I decided I wanted to go to Mumbai, I would dislike it, just as I dislike every Indian city I go to. And it is pure selfishness.

I wanted to come to India to discover what the world is really like, not what the world is to a small privileged girl who grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, who got an actual pony for Christmas one year, who spent her time being molded into a disciplined gymnast in a chosen profession by the best coaches in the world.
The world is not so nice to everyone - my birth into the life I lead was pure chance. I am not different than these people, the people I don't want to look at - I am ashamed of that.
I hate India for showing me exactly what I hate seeing. Sometimes my once naive self longs to be naive again. I never thought the world would be as cruel as I have seen it be. I've read about in the paper, in books, in pictures.
I hate that I am here watching, studying, sleeping, talking, listening, bargaining, eating with many of the people that I will never ever know the lives of. I will never know what life is to them. I am merely an observer, and for no particular reason, and I will never ever understand that. I couldn't even make the decision to live as one of them, to adopt their thoughts, their ways. I have known a different world - I think and see and reason differently. That wouldn't disappear no matter how I tried.

We were there for 4 days and 3 nights. We stayed in a single room with a bath attached above a shoe store, with no air conditioning, where when we got there, 2 men were asleep on our bed under the fan and open windows. We had them change the sheets and for rs. 1200 ($24) a night, we stayed at the Apollo Guest House over the city of Mumbai, in the Colaba district.

We took the rest of the day easy. Took a long walk to the water, did a little bit of sight seeing, got a taste of local flavor, watched a local band play at a jazz club and just took in the city of Mumbai.

A few things we saw:

 awkward tourist picture in front of the Gateway of India

I've never been to Europe, but this plaza felt very European - pigeons, tourists, street vendors (that run when police come near)

This is the Taj Palace, the hotel where the Mumbai terrorist attacks/bombings occurred in 2008.

A man feeding fish to a large number of cats. I love this man.

 

We walked all the way to Chowpatty Beach, which is similar to an everyday carnival. The icees were an interesting choice, ice on a stick dipped into a cup of syrup...

We did dinner at a jazz club, listened to a local band sing covers, sang along to the strangest "jazz" choices we had ever heard, marveled at the alcohol tax, and went home.

Overnight hot trains are tough to deal with.

We put out our cocoons, showered, and laid as still and flat as possible to get the air from the fan.

We were impossibly hot and sticky the entire time.

Thus ends Day 1.

Once upon a time in India...

So while my life and future past the next three weeks is so undetermined, I should be terrified... I am terribly excited for the latter part of this week and then the last week of April through the first few days of May.

We have booked our train tickets to Mumbai, the gateway to India, for Wednesday. Our train comes directly into the station where they filmed the train scenes in Slumdog Millionaire! We don't have our plans set, but we are certain that it is going to be a pretty awesome trip.
We don't have a way to get back yet, but they have these special tickets you can buy two days before the departure date... we are hoping to catch one of those. Otherwise, we'll have to jump a train and hide from the conductor men. We've done it before, so it shouldn't be a problem, it's just a much longer trip.
And then! Then! Then!
We are flying to Calcutta to spend a week visiting Mother Teresa's Missions of Charity and then grabbing another train to Darjeeling and Sikkim to do some trekking in the Himalayas.
Let's just pause a second to think about all of that.
I am going to Mumbai, coming back here to take a few exams, and then flying off to the Himalayas and hanging around the edge of Bangladesh, also known as East Pakistan.
I am currently living a very blessed life.

I am incredibly excited!

Mr. Abhishek Sir

Sorry I forgot to write about this earlier...

But...
Mr. Abhishek Sir took us to Ramoji Film City, which claims to be the largest film complex in the world.
It doesn't claim to be one of the strangest places on Earth, but I'll give it that.
It is apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records.

We had trouble getting there because of the riots happening in downtown Hyderabad and the street was blocked, so we had to wait until the roads were opened but after that, I don't remember a thing. I slept the entire time.
We got the star package, and so we got BALLCAPS

and then we rode around in this comfy air conditioned bus while a man on a microphone pointed out the windows and told us, this is where we film if we want to be in rajasthan, this is the field where we film sad songs and dance numbers, this is where we film south Indian town scenes, this is where we film if we want to be in London, etc.
We ate lunch at this lavish 5 star hotel on the grounds because 1.) we had the start package and 2.) because they directed us rather bluntly that that hotel was where we had to eat by calling Abhishek over the microphone "And this, Mr. Abhishek Sir, is where you will be eating lunch."
In front of the whole van. He was mortified, we were extremely amused.

We walked down Honeymoon Lane

And played in water fountains

and played in a plane

(That's Abhishek and the white glowing is Riane's magnificently clad head)

and saw a Wild Wild West Show (did YOU know that India has their own concept of what the Wild West is like?)

The most unfortunate part was when there was a chase scene around the plastic fake horses... and a man was supposed to get his head stuck between the tail and the butt of this horse. If that had been real life...

And here, we also saw a traveling man we met in Varkala (we told him where to stay at North Cliff) watching this Wild West performance, too. Small world, eh?

Oh! We also got to do India's version of Disney's "It's a small world after all." 

We were the only Americans there - we couldn't have gotten lost if we tried. We were herded everywhere and we had to be there at the time they said to be there. They even took Abhishek's number and called him if we were taking too long somewhere.

Right and so we had these coupons we had to use and we did all of that and saw a few bizarre things in the process.

Wtf is this?

(he didn't know, but we had actually locked him in)

We were so addicted to our hats. Souvenirs! Woo!

FUNDUSTAN!? I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS PLACE ALL MY LIFE!

we were amused

Abhishek wasn't - he had left

What you don't see is us suffocating in the top of the shoe because the door at the top was locked.

"Milk-o-fun"

?

And then we left.

And it was happy.

Well you -ooo-o-o-oo you make-a my dreams come true

Today, the mess hall gave us FRENCH FRIES.
I love FRENCH FRIES.
I don't think it is going to matter where I go in the world, FRENCH FRIES will forever and ever remain my favorite food.
In India, sometimes, I have to be careful, or my FRENCH FRIES come to me with a strange India fried taste which makes me shudder to think about, so out of fear, I don't order FRENCH FRIES too often here.
I love dems.

Update on life:
- I have been listening to a lot of Hall & Oates. Help me.
- Tagore house is in an uproar - everyone's grumpy because the power continues to go out in the middle of the night and we immediately drown in our sweat and now all of the air conditioners in the house are broken. Having a house full of young'ins who grew up with air conditioning... placing them in the next hottest place in the world next to the center of the earth without a refuge from the impending heat stroke doesn't bode well.
- HCU is having a festival - Sukoon, which means "relax" or "relaxation" in Urdu (mixture of Arabic and Hindi) and it is far from relaxing. This sign looks like a Nickelodeon sign to me.

We rode this definite death wish of a ferris wheel - no straps, metal that flexed under our feet and certainly going in circles close to 30 mph. And, it was water powered. We were positive we were just going to be tossed out by the sheer speed of the thing that a man was controlling by rotating this lever that connected to the water barrel.
I mean, any place that rents out ginormous camels that bare their teeth for its riders does not have a relaxing atmosphere. But, there is this band that keeps playing this horribly depressing song - "Depression, Anger, Pain."
That's uplifting, relaxing, yea?
The party atmostphere becomes more apparent in the dance parties in the street every night. Male Indian dancing, the only type you will see in India, is absolutely hysterical. There is nothing like watching one guy do the stanky-leg (Susan) while two other guys hold his knees and pretend like he is having a seizure and try to hold him down from just pure full body gyrations. There is a lot of hip action, and a good deal of jumping and high pitched girly screams. I don't know if that is a concept here, to "scream like a girl." I'm going to say it isn't, because they do it a lot.
I got a few videos of it all- entertaining.
Indian carnival food isn't exactly like at home... no funnel cakes and candy apples, no hotdogs or greek gyros. Nope, you can get entire plates of biryani and sawarmas and tamato flavored popcorn if you wish, though. Wash it down with a refreshing bottle of coconut milk.
-And our SIP cultural performance. I performed a Kuchipudi dance solo.
I'll post the link so you can see it. Sorry I don't have any pictures of backstage and such - I gave away my camera too soon and didn't get any pictures. This is a Riane picture of us.

Getting dressed for Kuchipudi is the most elaborate thing I have ever done in my life.
My teacher and makeup artist arrived an hour late, so I had an hour to get dressed... and it took 2 hours. So the show started an hour late, but it wasn't just because of me. All of the Kuchipudi dancers had costume malfunctions.
India time. No biggie.
First, neither my nose nor ears are pierced, although this might change soon. I want to get my nose pierced, but I think about how painful the fake bull ring hoop they gave me was to put in and how my nose started bleeding and I teared up when they clamped this stupid gold ring to my septum. Makes me rethink the nose piercing idea, although I certainly would not get a bull ring.
I don't think I'm that much of a baby - that shit hurt. Plus, he literally was trying to pierce my septum without the proper tools. Anyways, they had to bobby pin these ginormous earrings that went from the side of my skull down past my ear hangy thing... to my ears.
I didn't know bobby pins were so... multipurpose.
I wasn't measured previous to the performance - so I was brought the costume of a 16 yr. old, but in a country where I am bigger than most of the men, it was meant for a 12 yr. old Allyn. Not a 20 yr. old Allyn who also happens to be a sweaty American.
By the end of the whole ordeal, they had let out all of the seams just so I could get the shirt past my elbows, I had been thoroughly violated by some women who tried to smash my already non-existent chest into this half shirt meant for children, and I had a ginormous wedgie worse than any gym suit could possibly give me, plus a few bizarre layers that attached I have no clue where. My feet where painted red, I was given multiple headdress pieces plus some fake flowers, I had 2 nose rings, two arms full of bangles, bells around my ankles, and other random things pinned to my costume in various places.
It was an experience.
But, I was so tired from worrying how I was going to mess up this piece that I learned in full only two days earlier that I almost feel asleep in the makeup chair. Maybe that was just my narcolepsy - it's unclear.
- And now today, I finished and sent one final paper out and then Riane and I bought place tickets to Calcutta, train tickets to Sikkim and are looking for places to go hiking in the Himalayas (actually pronounced as "Himahlias").

Tonight is Mexican night at Novotel :)

My dance peformance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC-WzsT0W9g