Dussehra: The tenth night of Navratri         

I meant to write this blog post a while ago, because this holiday was actually a few months ago. Oops...  Anyway, Navratri is a Hindu holiday that lasts nine nights, and the tenth night is called Dussehra. My friend Aakanksha from school invited me to the dussehra party at her society. ( a society is basically a bunch of buildings that form a neighborhood.) At the party, everyone does this dance called Dandiya and garba. Dandiya is a dance that you do by beating your sticks with someone else's sticks. Garba is when you dance a repeated move over and over again while going around in a circle. ( I'm not an expert at explaining all this, so if I get a fact wrong, sorry!) anyway, the party was one of the most fun nights I've had in my life! To get girls ready for the party it is a really complicated process that takes about two to three hours. Pretty crazy, right? This is how we got ready: first, we changed into a lengtha choli, which is basically a long skirt and a short top. ( to stay modest, I got one that didn't show my stomach.) 2. My friend's nanny ( they call them their didi here, which means big sister) put my hair into a really complicated hairstyle. This usually really REALLY hurts. A lot. 3. You put bangles on your arms ( funny story: red bangles means that you are single and looking for someone, green means you are married or taken. Guess which color my friend put on me? Red.. I didn't know what this meant until after the party! Thanks a lot.) really heavy necklaces and super heavy earrings that are so heavy they are commonly held up by a chain connecting the earring to a pin in your hair so your ears don't have to handle all that weight. You could also put ankle bells on, but our skirts already had bells on them, so we didn't do that. 4. You apply really heavy makeup. Really really heavy makeup. This didn't really help me as it made me look even paler... haha! 5. You pin a long see through scarf on your shoulders and drape it over your hair. This covered the hairstyle so I was kind of sad about that, but you also couldn't really see that my hair was light in the dark/strobe lights in the party, so I guess that made me stand out less. 6. You put on a ton of perfume ( this made me sneeze pretty badly.. Haha) 7. you are ready to go and dance! When we headed down to the party, I was surprised to see that all the guys were wearing... Jeans and a t-shirt! All that effort for us and they don't have to do anything! I didn't know the dances, but I caught on pretty quickly because most of the steps were repeated a lot. After dancing a ton, we ate dosas.. So good.. At one o clock in the morning, we were so tired, so we said goodbye and went back to my friends house. I was sleeping over and normally at sleepovers I talk and talk and talk... But we were so tired we barely said anything and we fell asleep instantly! That night was so fun and I made a ton of new friends, learned a new dance and it was fun to learn about the holiday and hear new music. I learned some new Hindi too.. After dancing a ton my friend would say "garam! It's so garam!" That means hot and I think I'm spelling it wrong.. Anyway, Dessehra  was so fun and it was a night I will never ever  forget. 

- Laura :)

P.S Sorry I am not able to post the pictures of me and my friends all dressed up on this website but if you are on Instagram, then you can see the pictures on there. 

india's culture so far

We have lived in mumbai or bombay for almost a month now.  I will give a brief review of the culture                   so far,first you cannot eat beef ): (I miss taco bell a lot),also there are many people who stare at you because they think we are rich and have a different skin color. P.S staring isn't rude in india sadly. India has lots of holidays one perk to that is school is off a lot, holidays we have experienced here are ghandi jayanti, Ganesh(i forgot the second word to it) and some sort of holiday where people do human pyramids to get a pot with butter cookies , although many people have died getting the pot.(They must really want cookies!) Also, they have these mini three-wheeled taxis called rickshaws (witch have no doors but there fun so it's okay). The last thing isn't really about the culture it's that they have a really good mcdonalds here witch actually has real chicken!!!Maybe it's because they don't know how to make processed goo?? Anyway, india has been a 1/2and1/2 experience. -tyler              the picture down below is the train station pretty crowded right? There are 28 million people in mumbai 28 MILLION!!!! THATS LIKE 15 BOISES CRAMMED INTO ONE CITY!!!!!!!! bye!(;

          

First Impressions

         When you think of India what do you think of? Palm trees, tropical fruit, elephants, basically Hawaii with a different culture right? Well not quite, you see India is much more populated, dirty, and not up to date. These are the things that surprised me most, and they are not present in the entire country just Mumbai.

        India is the second most populated country in the world, right after china, so when you have a big city like Mumbai you have a BIG city. Mumbai is the most populated city and is 232.8 square miles. That's a lot of people. As a result you have no personal space wherever you go, you could not go outside without seeing someone else and there is a job for almost anything. You never have to pick up after yourself in a restaurant because that's some one's job. There is a person in charge of each kind of product at the electronic stores, there is someone to open the door for you at every single shop, and cooks  and maids are very popular. With so many people so much could go wrong, so, security is everywhere, in front of every apartment complex, at the door of every mall, and before you get on each train. Girls and guys are separated in lines (the girls have a covered booth they are searched in while guys are searched out in the open. There's a "ladies only section on the train too.

         Another thing that struck me in Mumbai was that they aren't quite so clean here. There can be piles of trash in some places and people brushing their teeth on the side of the road. so far I've seen 1 pig, 2 cows, 4 cats, 5 goats, and who knows how many dogs just wandering around. With no one closely watching them or claiming them there no one to clean up their "waste" so, no one does, resulting in absolute stank, everywhere, mixed with the trash piles and sweat of everyone can be almost unbearable at times. Luckily there is air conditioning and the modern technology of the air freshener on our side. Because of the heat Air conditioning is a staple in every house, elevator and shop.

         India has these commercials talking about 4G data going nonstop. I thought it was weird they were talking about it like some newfangled thing thing, but here it is! Something else new is "commercial free television" or in America "Netflix". Cable hasn't come out yet either. Speaking of TV they have music video channels that we found while skimming through our options. They have videos that could have come straight from the 50's! The juxtapose from Ellie Goulding on the previous channel was comical to me.

        But overall the people are nice and the food is good , though spicy at times, and I'm glad to experience the mind shattering place that is Mumbai

                     -Emma