Here are some photos from around my school. After classes I went to the local mall with my friends. We wanted to get mendhi but the bazaar was closed. Instead we went to a department store. While we were there, two guys who worked there followed me around and took pictures of me with their cell phones. I thought they thought that I was someone famous. But alas I am only a white girl and that is good enough for them.
A night out on the town, Jaipur style, involves a lot of excellent 90s music, including but not limited to Backstreet Boys and very old Britney Spears songs. Everyone was very interested in our group. Maybe its because we are foreigners, or maybe its because we were singing Oops I did it again at the top of our lungs complete with dance moves. 
One of the extracurricular options in Jaipur is to take up singing, sitar or tabla. I went to a singing lesson. Afterwards the singing teacher's husband and son performed for us. As soon as they started playing the heat didn't seem as abrasive and the auto-rickshaw ride back didn't seem so daunting. I think for most of the people in my Hindi school, Indian music reminds us of our earliest imagined images of India. When I hear tabla, I see colorful saris (instead of the bleak rain-deprived landscape) and I smell cinnamon and tumeric (instead of urine). I think I am going to dance and try to learn the tabla while I'm here. That way I can bring some of the dream back with me and I can perform for all of you (I'll give family and friend discounts, of course).
Today was fancy friday, I wore my turquoise salwaar kameez. What is the occasion, you might ask. Well, we had our first exam today. Additionally this marks the end of our first full week of classes. This evening we went to see Raavan, a bollywood film, in theatres. It was very fun. The music and cinematography were great. Also whoever invented the intermission is a genius! Every movie should have one. It occurs exactly when I usually have to decide if I have to pee badly enough to leave the theatre. This way I just get to go. And you can have snacks! My personal favorite is the 2 samosa and a coke deal (diet=no dice though, blarg). The link below is my favorite song from the movie. Enjoy!
After many trials, I finally picked up my clothing from the tailor. Now I have a full, colorful, Indian wardrobe. It wasn't easy to get the tailors to give us the clothes. You see, time is an illusion and the phrase "it will be done in one week" is just sort of a manner of speech. It translates to something along the lines of "if you come back in a week and yell at us we will finish it by tomorrow. All in all the clothes turned out well, even though I'm not built anything like an Indian woman. You will have to wait for pictures of me in them until I find the occasions. 
Here are more pictures from the anniversary party for two reasons: 1) I know you love to see my face above all else. 2) I'm officially running on Indian Standard Time which means that I couldn't charge my camera battery in time to put up new pictures. AND, to top it off, tonight I saw my first elephant. It probably wouldn't have happened if I had actually managed to bring my camera. Anyhow, a note about Indian Standard Time: As a New Yorker, I want things done and I want them done now. Having this mentality in India will make you crazy (and has made me crazy). Things only get done when the right person is there, at the right time, with the right information and always after a chai break. The usual lag time is about 2 hours (can you even imagine that? It's so large an amount of time that it can't even be conceived of. That's a normal length movie). I have mostly given into the flow of things but today after 3 hours of waiting for the van to bring us from the school to home, they loaded us in with our heavy backpacks and left us there for another 20 mins! In the 110 degree weather! With no AC! After that incident I decided that there is no use fighting it. If you insist that the car comes sooner than you will wait in the car. 
This is another picture from the anniversary party. Here I am in some of my Indian finery with some friends from the program. Today was not picture worthy. It was the first day of my first whole week of classes. I'm a total language nerd so I have actually really been enjoying my classes and today was no different. After class I didn't do anything except study, do optional grammar exercise (thrilling, I know) and watch Indian MTV. It's been way too hot to go outside. It's 10 pm now and it has just cooled off to a beautiful 105 degrees. There is a plan to see a Bollywood film in a theatre tomorrow. It is defintely dependent on whether or not the cinema is air conditioned (can you even call it a movie theatre if it isn't air conditioned? have you ever been to a theatre over 40 degrees?).
Today was a double anniversary. I went to a 25th wedding anniversary and it is also a week since I got to India. The party was beautiful. The food was a little spicier than I like it, but I'm slowly getting used to it and the protests from my stomach. At the party some teenage boys took an interest in us and took turns walking past and singing Bollywood songs in our ears and asking us to dance. One guy asked our teacher if he would introduce him to us. My teachers response, "No way". Anyhow, it was certainly a sight to see. I was designated the ambassador. My job was to present the gift to the celebrated couple (pictured here). The wife's clothing was beautiful and she giggled when I told her so in Hindi. I might have to post another round of pictures from this event, but here are these for now. The electricity keeps going out so I am nervous to try to upload more. There is a heatwave here and everyone is asking where is the barsaat? (where is the rain?) so no AC is a bummer. Anyhow, more later, as always.
Today was a great day. We had our first class which consisted of watching a movie. Now this is no ordinary movie, it's a Bollywood movie, which means it was about 3 hours long, which means, it was our whole class time for the day. Then I got my Indian cell phone, which is so much nicer than my phone, that it rounds the bend of funny, and is just sad. After that some friends and I went to the fabric store. At these stores you tell them what you want and what you like and they pull out pretty much every single thing that they have regardless of anything you said. When we had each created a small pile (like... you know... small as in a small explosion), we bought our fabric for our saris and salwaar kameezes and headed to the tailor. The tailors shop was in what looked like a garage for dolls. It was about the size of a regular Manhattan apartment's closet. One by one they measured us and we watched their faces as we told them to move their fingers down our backs to show how short our sari blouses, how deep our necklines and how low our backs would be. At some point the guy that sold us our fabric even cycled over to join in on the discussion "Saat, ha?" "Nahin, aat." "Saat behter" (Translation: 7[inches] yes? No, 8. 7 is better). After lots of discussion, some intense price negotiations and waiting for two immense cows to cross by us, we finally got on our way home. All in all, I got one fancy sari, one fancy salwaar kameez, and 2 casual salwaar kameezes all custom made for about 40 bucks. Considering how long the last week has been I can't even conceive of waiting another one for all my stuff, but I will have to. And so will you. Stay tuned, ek haftay me, mein aap logon ko foto doongi (In a week I will post the pictures).
Here are some pictures of Jaipur. Today I ran into a wedding procession (of course, it was the one time I didn't have my camera). Some of the little boys were staring at me and whispering to the others. They tried to get close to me and kept whispering, one even got his mother. It was like I was a mythical creature. It was funny. I had to leave because I was stealing the groom's thunder. More tomorrow.
Today we drove from Delhi to Jaipur. It was supposedly a 3-4 hour drive. We left at around 11 and arrived at 7. I don't know how that's possible considering the bus driver was driving at 90 km/hr the whole time. Anyhow, my words of wisdom for today:
After a ridiculous journey and a stop in Belgium, I had finally arrived in Delhi. Here are my initial impressions based solely on the ride over: Delhi smells and looks like it's on fires, lanes are a figment of your imagination, puddles are never just water, AC is optional, horns and breaks are not, everything calls for Christmas lights and everything is either under construction or in a state of decay but it isn't clear which is the case. 
Alright, last post in America, I promise, maybe. There may be one more interesting thing that will happen here. Anyhow, in order to leave the US with a bang, I visited the ultimate American icon, Julia Child. I also got to see the exhibit on the First Ladies' inaugural dresses (Michelle Obama's was beautiful, I'm going to get bootlegs of her jewelry in India as a birthday present to myself. Barbara Bush's, not so much. The dress made the mannequin look like a linebacker and I don't even think it had shoulders). Tonight we are going to a swank restaurant as our final event. It is two blocks from the white house. Thank you American tax payers ;). I am starting to get excited about India, that or I have to pee, or I am getting so sick of the air conditioning in the hotel. Either way, I hope this isn't a situation of be careful what you wish for.
