Everyone in the universe must go to the Maldives.

Y'all don't even know how true that is. If you've been to the Maldives, I'm sure you know why I say that. We went there for a week, and it was seriously one of the most amazing places I've ever been to (if not THE most amazing place). It was especially convenient for us since Bangalore is only a two hour flight away from the Maldives. After about half an hour of flying, you're over water for the rest of the flight. Right when we were about to land, I started freaking out because we were getting dangerously close to the water and I couldn't see an airport anywhere near us. All of a sudden, a strip of land seemed to pop up in the middle of the water and the plane lands on this thing. It was literally a runway jutting out into the water, just wide enough and long enough for the plane to land on. We taxied for a long time before the rest of the airport finally came into view. Upon stepping off the plane, we were hit with a wave of stifling heat. This would have been really bad if there hadn't been a beach within five seconds of anywhere on any island of the Maldives. 

Anyways, we get off the plane and recover our backpacks from baggage claim and step out of the airport. Customs and immigration was hardly even anything worth worrying out about; we were in and out of that stuff within half an hour. After finding the guy who had a sign with my mom's name on it, we followed him to a taxi and drove to the little house we rented. At first we were confused because his name was Rifau (pronounced Ri-fah, with a short I sound), but the information on the house said that a guy called Mohammed would pick us up. Rifau said that Mohammed was at the house, and, figuring that he was telling the truth, we got in a taxi with him. The house was about twenty minutes away from the airport, on another island called Hulhumale. Hulhumale is a man-made island, but it's just as beautiful as all the other islands. Throughout the ride to the house, all of us had our jaws on the floor like idiots because we were in awe at how clear the water was. I'm pretty sure that there is no water bluer or clearer than the water in the Maldives, except for maybe it's tied with Thailand and Australia (not that I've been to either of those places but I've seen pictures). It's clearer water than Hawaii, and Jamaica (according to my mother). So we go into the house, and I'll be honest, it wasn't a five star resort or anything, but it was nice. Really cozy and cute, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living spaces, a nice patio, and a kitchen. But get this--it also came with two full time, at-your-disposal guides (Mohammed and Rifau) who would take you anywhere, tell you any random facts you wanted to know, and who were able to help you with stuff whenever you needed. AND, to top it all off, the house came with two boats as well! The guides and the boats turned out to be the two things that made our trip what it was. Mohammed and Rifau took us to several different islands and snorkeling places. We went to Hulhumale (or course), Picnic Island, Male (the capital), and a fishing island (which was not at all touristy, it was all locals). It was so awesome to have a boat that could take us anywhere we wanted whenever we wanted, and Mohammed and Rifau were so great to have around. We learned a lot from them and they were really nice. 

Literally ten steps outside of the house was a beach. Super soft white sand that led up to the clear, bath-tub-temperature water. The beach had some litter on it, which made me kind of mad, because how could anybody ever litter on such a beautiful sight?! It was even more painful to see litter in the water itself. The beach right outside the house was a local beach, and guess what that means? Since the Maldives is a Muslim country, it means that women are getting into the water in full borka and hijab. Yeah, that's right, people are getting into the water fully clothed! It was so different from the usual beach wear that you see people in--no bikinis whatsoever, not even any one-piece swimsuits! Our family all wears rash guards (t-shirts that are made to be worn into the water) because my mom and I burn really easily and Amara and my dad get super tan. Even though our good friends in a family that we've known since I was 5 think that tans are okay and healthy, they aren't any better than getting sunburned. You can get skin cancer from any prolonged sun exposure, which can mean getting tan or getting burned (true story, my padre is a doctor). Anyways, that's not something that any of us want to risk, so we put on sunscreen obsessively and wore rash guards.

The two boats that we had were a normal boat to take us to the other islands and reefs, as well as a banana boat. Yeah, I didn't know what that was either when we first got there. We later discovered that it was an inflatable boat shaped like a torpedo/banana. It had room for four people, and it was attached to the back of the other boat. The other boat then drove you around on the banana boat, and basically, the goal of Mohammed and Rifau was to throw us off the banana boat as many times as possible. It sounds like it wouldn't be fun, but it was actually tons of fun (aside from the few rope burns that we got from trying to old on for dear life to the floating banana-shaped-torpedo-like boat). 

Now I'll tell you about the snorkeling. When we went to Picnic Island for the first time (we went twice), Rifau went out with us to snorkel. The water was unusually calm and the snorkeling was amazing and gorgeous. It was our first time to snorkel in the Maldives, and it was super beautiful and really different form anything we've ever done before, at least for my dad, sister, and me. It might have been similar to Jamaica for my mom, but she went there alone. I think it was still pretty different for her too. Sooooo, when we first started snorkeling on Picnic Island. It seemed like Rifau knew exactly where to go, so we just followed him. The water didn't get any deeper than about six feet at the beginning, but it was super clear so the depth didn't really matter anyways. The coral was of so many different colors and the fish of even more colors. At Picnic Island the first time, my mom and I got massive sunburns on the backs of our thighs. Basically, our butts got so sunburned we could hardly sit down. My burn was worse, and it's started to peel a little bit now, which, let me tell you, is disgusting. Moral of that story is, put sunscreen on EVERYWHERE that isn't covered, because you have no idea how uncomfortable a really bad sunburn is on your butt and the bends of your knees, and pretty much anywhere else. 

While snorkeling at Picnic Islamd, all of a sudden, I noticed a significant change in the color of the water, and I also noticed that the coral and fish just seemed to...disappear. I pointed to where they seemed to disappear, and said to my mom, "What is that?!" She said, snorkel in her mouth, "That's the egg." I was so confused, and I had no idea what she meant by "that's the egg." Once we finally got to this so-called "egg," I realized that what she had actually said was, "That's the edge." Not egg, edge. I then started laughing really hard at myself for thinking she had said "egg," which caused me to inhale a lot of salt water and therefore cough until I thought I was going to die. After recovering from my near death by choking on the saltiest water you've ever tasted, I submerged my head in the warm water once again and almost died all over again. There was an edge indeed, and a very scary one at that. One of our family friends, I'll call her A, warned us of this before we left. She said, "The thing I don't like about snorkeling in the Maldives is that it suddenly just drops off into a never-ending abyss of nothingness. It's kinda scary." I didn't have any idea what A meant by that, but once I saw the edge of the reef, I definitely understood. It does indeed drop off into a never-ending abyss of nothingness. You'll just be chillin in the water, snorkeling and oooh-ing and ahhhh-ing at the pretty fish, then, BAM, all of a sudden, the six-foot deep water turns into an edge that leads down to the bottom of the ocean. You can't see the bottom, even though the water is so clear, because it's hundreds of feet deep. The edge is beautiful though. It has the most incredibly vivid colors of fish and coral that Crayola couldn't even begin to replicate. The fish get bigger and more brightly colored the farther down the edge you look, and the coral gets different too. Snorkeling at Picnic Island was the first time that I had ever seen this edge, and it scared me a lot. I mean, think about it. You can no longer see the bottom, the fish are huge, and you don't have a clue what could be lurking in the deeper waters off the edge. What if there's a shark down there, waiting to eat you?! Okay, it might sound irrational, but that's because it's hard to visualize. You have to see it to understand what I mean when I say all this. 

Some people take to the edge better than others, like my parents did. My dad wasn't at all scared by it, and my mom was even less scared by it that my dad. She almost immediately said, "All I want to do is dive down there. I just need a mask, a tank, and a buddy and I would be off that edge in a heartbeat." My MOTHER said that. My mother, who grew up on a farm, who thinks skydiving is too dangerous, who doesn't want my sister to get a third ear piercing, wanted to throw herself off the edge and into the never-ending abyss of nothingness and dive down there with the scary and probably man-eating fishes. Granted, she has her diving certification and she used to dive a lot when she went to Jamaica for a couple weeks, but still. The edge is everywhere in the Maldives. Any reef that you go to, the main attraction is the edge because that's where all the good stuff is. The edge is where we saw tons of different types of fish, a shark, two turtles, several eels, lots of different coral, sea cucumbers, and more. My parents went out by themselves one time and say a manta ray! They said it was "a majestic beast," which is most likely an excellent way to describe it. We also saw tons of dolphins while we were on the boat, which was really cool to see them so close. 

One of our favorite snorkeling sites which we went to several times was called Kurumba House Reef. The reef was amazing and the edge was incredible. This was also the place at which Amara conquered her fear of fish and jumped off the boat and snorkeled with us. Being the first time in about three years that she's snorkeled with us, we were all really happy that she got over her fear of fish and the ocean and got in with us. We loved the snorkeling every time we went to Kurumba, except for one time. The snorkeling was good, but the water was pretty choppy. We had been snorkeling for a little while already, when suddenly we started to feel little pricks on our skin. They itched and stung, and we weren't sure what they were. I then realized that the things stinging us were little brown floating blobs. They were almost microscopically small, but if you looked closely you could see them. Apparently, since the tide was in and the water was a little choppy, these little demon-bities as I called them (they were actually tiny jellyfish) came in with the current. Yeah, they were jellyfish. And they stung us all over. However, Mohammed and Rifau were quick to let us know that they weren't poisonous and the stinging/itching would go away after we took a shower. That turned out to be true, and the itching and stinging mostly went away after a shower. 

One of the funnier things that happened while we were there was when we were snorkeling at Kurumba. I saw these HUGE but weirdly flat fish swimming about fifteen feet off the edge. They were really hard to see, but we asked Mohammed what they were. He said, "I don't really know how to say it in English, but in our language we call it 'floating rubbish in water.' I guess that's what it is in English, but I don't know the name for it." Floating rubbish in water, how funny is that?! We all thought that was pretty hilarious. 

Alright, well I think that's enough about the Maldives for now, I might write more about these lovely islands later though. I already started writing a new version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, replacing the words to the original version with words that describe the Maldives in all its glory. :) I'm definitely going back someday! 

Also, for those of you who are wondering, we asked Rifau and Mohammed how the name of the Maldives is actually pronounced. When we asked them this, they replied with, "Well, yes, there is diving here, but not in the name." So, that means that the I in Maldives is pronounced like a double E instead of like the I in dive. Mal-deevs, not Mal-dives. :)

Thanks for reading, more later! :)

Took the day off on Thursday, because I can.

Yes, I most certainly did do that. It's not like I just decided to sleep in and watch TV all day--I actually did something "remotely nice for such a hulli girl" as my friend worded it. I went with my dad to volunteer! As I said in my last post, I had two things specifically in mind when I came to Bangalore. I wanted to learn Hindi and volunteer as much as possible. Because of Indus, I hadn't been able to do much of either of those things. Since I was recently freed from the cruel bindings that so stifled these desires for 4 months, I have been able to get straight onto doing those two things! When we go out to stores or when we're driving somewhere, my dad points to random stuff that we see and teaches me how to say it in Hindi. Also, since I've been home all day and since I've been eating lunch with him, he tries to speak to me in Hindi as much as possible. Immersion works well for me to learn languages--it's how I got so good at Spanish. Anyways, what I was aiming to talk about in this post was volunteering at Bosco Mane. Bosco Mane is an all boys orphanage. Most of the boys are between the ages of 5 and 15. Some are only there for a few days just to get back on their feet after living on the streets, but some stay for a long time. The majority of these boys come from living on the streets, even the really little ones. Some come from really far away--even from several hours away sometimes. Seeing the places in which the orphans live (both at Bosco and at Angel's) makes me more and more thankful every time for our apartment here in Bangalore and our house back in the States. It's crazy how many kids they manage to fit into one space, but you'll never once hear a kid complain. They're more than happy to be there. After all, it's either that or live on the streets, and street life can be pretty rough. Not that I would know, but it's obviously nowhere close to a good life.

What we did at Bosco Mane was the same thing that we did for the kids at Angel's. We did physical exams on them. My dad and the other doctors went to Bosco about a week before and started doing physicals, but there are a LOT of kids there so they didn't get time to finish. We went back on Thursday to finish up, but a meeting was happening in the room that they used last time. Because of that, we had to set everything up in a completely different room with a very limited amount of tables and chairs to use. This kinda took a while, and even after that we were a little slow to get a flow going. Once we finally got started, we only saw about 25 or 30 kids before it was time for us to pack up again and head out. We're planning on going back again on Tuesday, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to go again. I want to go, but since I didn't have any of my text books this week I have a lot of work to catch up on. I was pretty much doing Spanish all day every day this week, so I'm really ahead in Spanish but I haven't done anything in any of my other classes. I'm gonna have a crap-load of catching up to do in the next few weeks!

Back to Bosco Mane though. These little guys are so adorable. I think it's probably a good thing that my mom didn't go because she would have fallen in love with every single one of them, kind of like I did. :) They were mostly healthy, but a large majority of them had dental issues. Most of the dental issues could be fixed easily by better brushing habits or things like this, but some had serious issues like tonsillitis or other things that needed surgery. Luckily for them, there's a dental college and clinic really close to the orphanage so it shouldn't be too terribly hard for them to get help. A couple were also in desperate need of glasses, which will probably be much harder for them to get access to. It's so sad that they have trouble getting access to things which we Americans usually take for granted. While we were doing physicals on them, we had a lady who is an oral surgeon with us. She was doing general dental check ups to see which ones were in really bad shape and which ones would probably be fine if they started being more careful. Y'all should have seen how excited these little guys were to go to the dentist! Going to the dentist is something that 5-15 year olds usually throw a crying and screaming fit about! There was a crowd of about ten kids surrounding our dentist as she was doing check ups, and she spoke Kannada as well so she was able to communicate with the kids. They got such a kick out of going to the dentist, and it was really cool to see how interested they were in everything she was doing. I officially have a new perspective on what it means to truly give back to the community. The feeling that you get deep inside your heart after you see how happy those kids are is one that can't be replicated by doing anything else. I love volunteering!!

Thanks for reading guys! And also thanks for being such loyal followers/reading my blog whenever you come across it, because today I broke 1000 page views and they're still climbing up before my eyes! Thanks so much and more later! :) 

I'M FREE!

Big news guys! I am free of a cruel form of punishment known as Indus International School! Friday (the 25th) was my last day at Indus! I was withdrawn because of some weird complications with my school in America. So what happened was that when my mom went back to the mothership known as Mountain View, California, she called my counselor at Newport, which is my high school in America. She was originally calling just to see how the re-enrollment process goes, once we're ready to re-enroll me. But somehow that conversation turned into something different, and we found out that we should be focusing our attention on something much bigger than just when to enroll me again. My counselor told my mother-figure that if I finished the year at Indus, I wouldn't have enough credits to go into tenth grade with the rest of my peers. My mom did some thinking and found out that the credits could be made up here and there through summer school or extra classes, so that wasn't really a problem. But then we looked at Newport's syllabi for the classes that I was taking at Indus. That, my friends, was the major problem. I was already 4 months into the school year and I hadn't done most of the work that my peers (who were only 2 and a half months in) had done. So not only would I go back short of credits, I would go back short of knowledge as well. Since my current Plan A is to go into medicine, I need a lot of biology and chemistry to be prepared for med school and everything, but if I finished at Indus neither of my bio and chem credits would count. That being said, I'd have to take physics in 11th grade, instead of biology 2 like I was planning. PHYSICS. Yeah......no. I am most definitely not a physics person. Also, I'd be really screwed for math. I'm supposed to take geometry all year in 9th grade, but what do you know? Indus doesn't do that. They do this weird integrated math thing, which is super hard and kind of idiotic, so I would go back to Newport knowing no geometry whatsoever. Not a good thing.

Problems stacked up, and thus blossomed a big ugly garden of ugly problem flowers. This all happened around the middle of November. With all of these problems, I had a few options in short:
1) Finish the year at Indus. Risk being a 5th year senior and thus postponing my entire life by like 5 months or something. Also have to take math with the freshmen as a sophomore (socially and emotionally very bad)
2) Take the rest of the year off and hang out (sounds good so far, right? keep reading...), then go back into Newport as a freshman, postponing my entire life by a year. There's the catch, making this option also very very bad for obvious reasons.
3) Drop out of Indus (conveniently right before exams!) and do online school at this place called Keystone, therefore enabling me to do the two things I wanted to do while living here: volunteer and learn Hindi.

Which option do you think I picked? Let me give you a hint: given that I'm sitting here writing this at 2:17pm my time and planning to go volunteer at an orphanage on Thursday with my dad and his team of doctors, I can tell you for danggg sure I didn't pick to stay at Indus. I picked option 3, do online school. I started yesterday, which was Monday for me (I'm not sure what day/night it was for all y'all that are reading this outside of India). So far it's pretty chill. I can't do much right now though because I have yet to get my textbooks. My mom has some really awesome friends/coworkers who are carting them back to India from America for me (thanks a lot guys!) and they'll get here on Sunday.

My last day at Indus was pretty good. But get this--I took one of those idiotic formal uniform white shirts and let all my friends sign it. Seems pretty harmless, yeah? No. The head of middle school, who, I will be honest, is one of the meanest people I've ever met in my life, confiscated my shirt. You know why? Because I was defacing a school uniform. Okay, is it such a novel concept to have people sign an article of clothing that isn't even a school uniform after I leave school? Now it's just MY white shirt, what is she gonna do about it if I spray paint my skirt yellow after leaving the school? Whatever, that's Indus's people of authority for you. I'm not gonna miss Indus itself at all. The people that I met, on the other hand, I'll miss them a lot. Most of them anyways. I think it's super cool that now I know people from so many different countries of the world, and that's definitely something that I gained by going to Indus.

Ohhhh man, I just stopped and ate lunch then did some other random stuff, and I gotta say that Pau Bhaji is one of the most delicious delicacies ever. That stuff is so good. In Bangalore it has to come from a packet because there's no place to get good pau bhaji otherwise, but in Bombay it is so freaking delish.

OH! One more thing before I wind this up! Guess what! So before I went to Indus, I had these 5 tie-on bracelets that I never took off, 4 were from places that we traveled to and 1 was from a friend who made it for me just before I left. When I say that I never took them off, I'm being completely serious. Two of them had been on for almost 4 years, one for almost 3 years, and the other two for a few months. What do you think I'm gonna say next? You guessed it--Indus made me take them off. This had me very devastated, but since I left Indus I got to put them back on! Yay yay yay!

More later, thanks for reading! :)

Volunteering at Angel's

Friday (the 18th) was my dad's birthday. We went to a restaurant called Barbecue Nation and had dinner with some close friends. After dinner, we went to their house and had cake, which was delicious. We were out really late talking and eating and having a grand time, and by the time we finally got home it was close to 1 in the morning. I didn't get in bed until around 1:15am, and I still had to wake up at 6:35 the next morning because it was a working Saturday on the 19th. I was fully planning on going, though in a very sleep deprived state, because Indus takes working Saturdays very seriously. However, sometime in the night while we were all sleeping, the power went out and nobody's alarm went off. For some reason, my internal body clock (which usually wakes me up on its own at 6:45 am anyways, regardless of the day of the week) didn't work either, so I didn't wake up until around 9am. Neither did my parents or sister, so we were all kind of behind on starting our days. At Indus, if you use your own transportation to get to school and you're late, you aren't even allowed in the school. If you take the bus and you're late, that's different because it's a whole lot of kids, so you're still allowed to go to school. Since we woke up so late, I had obviously missed the bus and therefore couldn't go to school since I wouldn't be allowed in anyways. This was good and bad. It was bad because I would be missing classes, and who knows what we'd be learning/reviewing in those classes. But it was good because I would be able to go volunteer at an orphanage with the rest of my family!!!

There were pretty much 2 main things that I wanted to do while living here for a year: learn Hindi and volunteer as much as possible. So far, because I'm so busy with school all the time, I haven't had time to do much of either. Anyways though, yesterday we went to a place called Angel's Orphanage to do physicals on all the kids. There were around 75 kids total, ranging from age 3 all the way to 18. When you first pull into the orphanage, there's a courtyard like place with trees and concrete benches and mats on the floor for people to sit on. Then behind that, there's a small building that probably should have been a 1 story building but somehow they stuffed two floors in there. The first floor if where they do laundry, cook, eat and hang out. The second floor is where the kids sleep. The lady who runs the orphanage will be referred to as S. S is a big lady who always has kids roaming around her. The kids love her a lot--you can see it in the way they act around her.

Our plan for the day was to set up stations for vision tests, height/weight/temperature, blood pressure, heart/respiratory rate and a general examination (ears, nose, throat, stomach, etc). We set up a table with 75 files for boys and girls, which was where the kids would start the process. I was manning that table, and they were to give me their name, date of birth, and age. It was amazing to me how many of the kids didn't know when their birthday was, and when they didn't know, S had to look through her files and find their DOB. Even then, some had nothing listed for date of birth. Anyways, after I wrote down their information and circled their age on the growth chart, they took their file and went to the next station, which was height/weight/temperature. Two girls who came along with us (the children of some family friends) were taking down the numbers at this station. After they had their height, weight, and temperature recorded, they went to my mom's station, which was vision tests. She told them to cover one eye and read some lines off the chart, then cover the other eye and do the same. The littler kids were really cute, and they would help each other by whispering the answers to the kid in front of them. They all knew at least some English, and when we were taking a break later in the day, a few kids went over to the vision chart and pretended to be my mom, saying "What is this? Can you read this? Cover the other eye. Hey, don't tell him the answer!" It was adorable. After they had their eyes tested, the older kids went for their general examination behind some curtains so they could have more privacy. The little kids had their blood pressure taken, then their heart and respiratory rates, then their general examination (which my dad was doing). At my dad's station for general exam, the kids were REALLY fascinated by the otoscope (the thingy that you look inside ears with). All of the kids, especially the older girls and younger boys, wanted to look inside everyone's ears. My dad was pretty tickled by that, and he always had a big crowd of ten or fifteen kids crowding around him. After they went through all these stations, they took their big brown file folders back to my table and we filed it away. It was really shocking to see how many of them had lice--probably around 55 of them had lice, and the other 20 were sure to get them sooner or later. It sounds bad, but my dad and some of the other volunteering doctors came to the conclusion that there was pretty much no use in treating it since it would be nearly impossible to get it out of that many kids. Once their file was safely returned to the first station, they could go sit on the mat and wait for my mom or sister to repair their torn shirts or pants or school uniforms.

The children at the orphanage were all adorable, and they were really friendly. As soon as we got there, the little girls and boys immediately came up to me and said "Hi akka, what is your name? Why you are here? You can play with us?" 'Akka' means older sister, so they were calling both me and my sister that. They were really good at entertaining themselves; they had a multitude of random games that they played with each other. The boys were a little rowdy with each other and they would sometimes mess around and slap each other or hit each other, but they weren't being violent, they were just being boys. We were all really surprised at how well all the kids got along. Considering that there were 75 of them, all in different age groups, they got along really well. The older girls were very motherly to the younger ones and were willing to play their games and draw on the whiteboard with them. It was amazing to see how perfectly happy these kids all were, but we found out that some had ran away a few times. I wasn't quite sure why you would do that if you were an orphan who had known nowhere but Angel's as home for your whole life, but then again I'm not really one to think that I have a clue what their life is like. When we were about to leave, the older girls made up a really cute rhyme for my mom--"curly curly hair and oh so fair." I thought that was really sweet. :) The kids even said that they wanted us to come back for Christmas, and I think we might just do that.

More later, thanks so much for reading!

It's been a while! I need to fill you guys in :)

It's been a really long time since my last post, sorry about that. I've been super busy with school and trying to fit everything into the day that I need to get done so I just haven't had very much time. But anyways, there's been a lot of random things happening lately.

I'll start with school. School hasn't been that good as of late. It's really hard, for a lot of reasons. One reason why it's super hard is that the kids here have been learning these concepts for about 3 years longer that I have, so they know the stuff really well. I mean that literally--my sister's in seventh grade (two years younger) and she's pretty much learning a slightly diluted version of the exact same stuff as me. Another reason is that most of the students in my grade have been here for at least two years, so they at least have some idea of what to expect on the exams. I, on the other hand, have never taken exams like these in my life. Also (this is the thing that makes me the maddest), some of the teachers don't exactly teach all the concepts very thoroughly. They might touch on it once or twice, but you never actually learn it fully if you don't go home and learn it on your own. So that's why school is pretty hard for me right now. A friend that I've been talking to a lot after we met in the musical that we were both in (We Will Rock You) says that it will get easier and not to worry too much about it. He's also from America, so I trust him, but I'm still waiting for the time when it finally gets easier. I hope it doesn't take too much longer!

Now let's talk about stuff that DOESN'T have to do with Indus International School, because really, nobody wants to hear too much about that place. We had a 10 day break towards the end of October for Diwali, which is the festival of light. Since one of our goals in coming to India was to travel a lot, we took this opportunity to do so. On October 22, the final show of We Will Rock You finally happened, and it went amazingly. We didn't mess up hardly at all, and the dance scene (which was kind of the featured thing) went over perfectly. It was tons of fun and I met a lot of people during the many long rehearsals. True, now I have during-lunch support classes and I have to miss PE for the next three weeks because of the play, but it was still really fun.

On the night of the 22nd, we flew out of Bangalore into Singapore. We got to Singapore at like 5 in the morning, and since it was a red-eye flight we were all really cranky and tired. We had breakfast with some family friends at this tiny little shop, which is where I discovered a really amazing thing. It's called kaya, which is this extremely delicious coconut jam on some soft bread. It doesn't even taste very much like coconut, because my dad liked it too and he hates coconut. After breakfast, we went back to the hotel and slept for the majority of the day. Once we woke up, we went to China Town for dinner. Thankfully, our family friend (let's call him V, though not the same V as in one of my other posts) has lived in Singapore for a while and he knew exactly what to get us for dinner. We had some really delish food and drinks as well. V was a huge help during that trip--without him and his family we wouldn't have known what to do! We were in Singapore for about 2 1/2 days, and then we went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

That's an interesting place. It's kind of like a mixture of Singapore and India, but WAY hotter than either of those places. However, that place is extremely amazing because they have both KRISPY KREME AND STARBUCKS there. We ate so many donuts, it was insane. And we got Starbucks lots of times. :) It was really awesome and we saw tons of cool stuff while we were there, and ate tons of good food (of course). After being in Kuala Lumpur for 4 days, we flew back to Singapore for like 5 hours, then flew from there to Bali, Indonesia. We were only in Bali for two days, but I would have stayed a lot longer. It was so relaxing because we didn't plan anything to do--pretty much all we did was stay at the villa we rented and swam all day. Amara and I stayed in the pool for literally 6 hours straight one day, which was amazing. If you want to have a super relaxing holiday, go to Bali, it's awesome. I don't think they have Krispy Kreme or Starbucks there, but still, it's a nice place. We then flew from Bali back to Singapore, then from Singapore back to Bangalore. It's a miracle that the Singapore airport people didn't know us by name after going there so many times in such a short amount of time.

After being so relaxed for a little while, we went back to the stressful norm of school. My mom, however, didn't even get to go home after that trip. We had our driver bring her her pre-packed bags, then she headed off to California on a very late night/early morning flight. She's been in California for like 11 days, but she's finally coming back tomorrow! YAY!!! Pretty much as soon as school got back in session, we started studying for half yearly exams. Amara and I both did pretty badly on most of our mid-term exams, so we started studying way in advance in hopes of doing better on half yearlies. We've been doing extra work and studying for pretty much all of our classes every night so we can be more prepared, but I'm still really scared for half yearlies. Oh well, wish us luck!

Thanks for reading, more later! :)

Yet Another Awesome Day!

Today, once I finally woke up, we scraped off my dry henna and saw that the design turned out really well. The colour darkens throughout the day as long as you don't get it wet, so that means my left hand stayed dry all day today.

We had Uncle Tony and Aunt Jasmine's driver take us down to the pau walla, which is the guy who sells bread. We bought some pau (bread) and then got a tour of the local Saturday market. It was really interesting to see all the shops and stands that sprouted up overnight, and aside from the meat stores it was pretty cool. The places that sell meat always freak me out, mainly because they're still in the shape of a recognizable animal and because they way they're displayed is so unsanitary. No refrigeration here, that's for sure! I guess it never killed anyone, (at least not directly) so who cares?

After that we went out to Bandra, which is the city that my dad grew up in. We visited some more family and then went out to see the apartment that he spent his childhood years in. The couple that's renting it seems really nice. They're a mixed couple just like my parents are, which was pretty cool. We then went back to the house to pick up Uncle Tony and Aunt Jasmine, and then we went to the set of a movie that is being filmed here. Since Uncle Tony is a movie director, he's very close friends with the famous Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar. Because of that, we got to meet him, take a picture with him, and watch him act in a scene of one of the movies he's currently working on. It was super cool to see how the acting industry works! They mainly shoot the same scene over and over and over again until it's perfect, but I guess that's the way to do it!

Yet another great day in Bombay, but we're going back tomorrow. I like it here but I miss Bangalore! It's way too hot here :)

Thanks for reading!

Surprise! We're Going to Bombay!

Wednesday was our last day of midterms, which made it a very amazing day. They started last Thursday, and ended almost a week later on Wednesday. Thursday was history, business studies and Spanish (I got 29/30 on my Spanish midterm, WHO'S A BOSS?!). Friday was just math, which was extremely hard even though I studied my butt off for it. Monday was chemistry and english literature (I apologize to all the English teachers out there, but Julius Caesar makes me want to stab my eyes out). Tuesday was a lucky day for me because it just happened that I didn't take any of the classes which had midterms that day--so I had a test free day on Tuesday. Then, finally, Wednesday was biology and english language, both of which were much easier than I thought they would be.

Since Monday evening, our parents had been talking about the trip we would be taking to a location unknown to me and my sister. I didn't have a clue where we were going, and my sister didn't either. We knew we would be leaving on Wednesday night to a place with hot weather, and that was about it. But then again, saying "a place with hot weather" narrows it down to about the entire country of India. So on Tuesday night, I was laying in my parents' bed and my dad was helping me study for my bio exam the next day, and he was telling my mom everything he had in his suitcase and he said some random stuff, then he said "and I have the gifts and To--uhh, toner. And mascara and my flat iron." But I knew what he was going to say. He was going to say, "I have Tony's stuff." And Tony is my uncle, who lives in Bombay! I didn't say anything though, I kept my mouth shut and acted like I didn't hear anything. So that happened, but then on Wednesday, when Amara and I got home from school, I went into my room to change out of my horrendous uniform and saw that the leak from upstairs onto my ceiling had gotten considerably worse. I called my mom into the room and she got really pissed, and she was telling my dad to go call the landlord and tell him, "Look, we're gonna be in Bombay, and if this isn't fixed by the time we get back I'm not gonna be a very happy person." Right after she said Bombay, both me and my sister's mouths were on the floor because she had just let the whole surprise out! That ended up being okay though, because that made it easier to pack since we already knew what the weather was like there.

We got into Bombay really late on Wednesday night and got into bed at my aunt and uncle's house at around 1:30 in the morning. That being said, we slept in on Thursday and once we finally woke up, we got all dressed up in our Indian clothes and went to see some family. Their house is really close to a famous mosque called Haji Ali. To get to it, you have to walk across a really long elevated pathway that goes over a rocky beach and is completely submerged at high tide. That pathway is one of the saddest things you'll ever see in your life though. There are beggars every ten feet, most of which have various disabilities or are very young children. Some have no arms, no legs, no fingers, a lot of them were blind, and a lot of them were below the age of 10. It was extremely depressing to see that amount of disability and poverty in the same place. Anyways, the mosque, though it was very old, was very pretty. After that we went back to their apartment and had some really good food for lunch.

We then went to do some touristy stuff, which included going to the Gateway of India, Hanging Gardens, and a lot of other things. It was really interesting because last time we were in Bombay (seven years ago) we didn't really do anything of the sight seeing variety, we just mainly visited a lot of family and friends. This time though, it's a lot shorter time here but we did manage to get in some sight seeing. It was really cool to see more of the city, it's a huge place with lots of sights to see.

Later that night we went to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Sammy Sosa. Even though we made a reservation, we still had to wait 30 minutes to be seated. Since yesterday was a holiday called Dusserah, which I didn't find very interesting at first but after seeing all the celebrations it's like the coolest thing ever. They do a lot of different celebrations for this holiday, three in particular though. One is that they have this HUGE statue of one of the Hindu Gods, and they wait until nighttime and then they set it on fire and watch it burn. I don't really know why they do that, but they only do it up here in north India, they don't do it in the south where Bangalore is because in the south that particular god is very significant. Another thing they do is that they take a statue of the same Hindu god and put flowers in it (and other random objects, that part kind of confused me because some of it looked like trash) then they say a lot of chants and yell random words in other languages and then a crowd of about 10 guys lift up the statue and wade into the water with it. They sink it when they're around neck-deep, and they let it dissolve in the water or whatever it does. It's cool, but it pollutes the water a lot and that's kind of sad because the water is already very polluted.

The third thing that they do--this is the coolest one in my personal opinion--is they make a little shrine of this god in the back of a truck, then somebody drives the truck reeeeeeally slowly. At the front of the truck, there are big groups of people (around 15 or 20 people) playing drums and/or dancing. They dance like there is nobody else on the planet, and they look like they're having the time of their lives. It's actually pretty freaking cool, I even wanted to join them and dance! :) They also light fireworks in front of the trucks, which is such a safety hazard, especially because the people lighting the fireworks are no older than 10.

Later that night we went to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Sammy Sosa. Even though we made a reservation, we still had to wait 30 minutes to be seated (it doesn't seem like this is related in any way but it actually is). While we were waiting to be seated, we saw one of these trucks driving by. My mom whipped out her phone to take pictures/videos and went closer to the truck. As soon as she went over there and started taking pictures, the truck stopped and all the dancing people ran over to my mom! I thought they were trying to mug her or something insane like that, but all they actually wanted was to have their picture taken! They started posing for the camera and dancing even more and were incredibly fascinated by this magical picture taking box. Everyone wanted their picture taken---from twenty-year-old guys to 6 year old girls to 50 year old women. It was pretty cool actually. This one older guy dragged my mom to the back of the truck and wanted her to take a picture of their shrine, which was very elaborate with candles and flowers and other offerings. As we were walking away to finally be seated at the restaurant, one last boy standing on top of the truck asked to have his picture taken. My mom turned around to take his picture, and he struck a pretty boss pose. Ahhh, the people here are so amusing! :) Anyways though, the food at the restaurant was really good. A little spicy, but really good.

Today was the most amazing day of my life...competition, even, for when I got my braces off. My parents and Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Tony arranged for me to go to a recording studio and sing and get a CD made!!!! AHHHHH that has been a dream of mine ever since I started singing and they made it come true! It was really surreal, I actually thought I was dreaming because it was so insane. I had never even been in a recording studio before today, and it was so much fun I just felt like screaming. I sang my heart out and it was such an amazing experience! I really really really hope I get to do it again sometime. A humongous thanks to my parents and aunt and uncle, I love you guys!

Before that though, we went shopping and bought lots of Indian-inspired clothes, which was great fun as well. We stopped at a little shop for lunch and ate delicious food. My new favorite food is Pau Bhaji, which is pretty much this really buttery bread that you dip in some sort of sauce stuff. All I can say is that it's amazing. Being here makes me realize how much more I like north Indian food than south Indian food. After going to the recording studio, we went back to Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Tony's house and had some home-made prawn curry with rice and fried prawns. We also had rice with this pink sauce called Sol Cadi, which was a coconut milk based sauce that was extremely good. We ate it Indian style---sitting on a mat on the floor. Now I'm going to go have Aunt Jasmine do some henna on my hand, more later! Thanks for reading. :)

Hulli Cabs and Blake Shelton

First, let me explain what hulli means. It seems kind of rude if you translate it to English, and it's really hard to explain in English, but in Kannada (the native language) it's not a big deal at all. It pretty much means something along the lines of village idiot. It's used as an adjective though, like to describe people or things. So one of my friends ALWAYS says "You know her? That hulli?" She pretty much describes everyone as hulli. But you can also say stuff like, "That hotel is so hulli!" So yeah.

But anyways, for the past week we've been getting a ride to and from school from Amara's friend's mom who is a teacher at Indus. We get to school a little before the buses, so it works out well. Today though, it didn't quite work out that well. Amara's friend's mom, who I will refer to as V, has a really nice driver and car. This morning when we went to the building where V stays to go to school, we were informed that the car had a flat. The driver proceeded to try and fix the flat, but it ended up that there was some issue with that and he couldn't get the flat tire off the car to put on a new one. V then called up some cab companies (which didn't take long because it seemed she had them on speed dial), and after about 15 minutes of talking to different cab drivers, we got a cab to be there within another 10-ish minutes. This cab looked fine from the outside, but when the driver opened the back door of the cab, there were like several spider webs hanging off of the window and doors. Right away, I could tell that this cab was pretty freaking hulli. So we get in the cab (which smelled strongly of spicy Indian food and incense, ew) and drive away, brakes squeaking all the way to Indus. Later I found out that after we drove away, my mom saw one of the tail lights go out. All the more reason for this cab to be called hulli. About three whole seconds into the ride, the cab driver turns up some music in Hindi or Kannada or something, and it was SO LOUD! Of course my head was right next to the speaker too, so this squeaky Hindi music is blaring in my ears and it was actually kind of torturous. However, my sister and Blake Shelton came to the rescue. Thankfully, Amara had a headphone splitter, so not only could Amara and I listen, Amara's friend could listen too. As soon as she plugged in those headphones, I went to the country music playlist and started blasting me some Blake Shelton! YES. Then, I had another full hour in that hulli cab which was made bearable solely by my hero, Blake Shelton. :)

So not only did Blake Shelton save me from dying a sad miserable death in that hulli cab, I have introduced the wonders of his music to my fellow Indians here at Indus. Yes, that's right, I have hooked a small number of people on Blake Shelton's beautiful and amazing music (as well as other beautiful aspects of him). Below, I will post some links to a few of his songs, and let me just tell you that it was extremely difficult to limit myself to less than 50 songs to link to. I don't expect yall to watch all of them, but I would if I were you. If you like these, you'd probably like everything in his Red River Blue album, and everything else that he's ever written. :)

Hillbilly Bone by Blake Shelton (the first ever Blake Shelton song that I heard)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGoiiwxTWeE

Kiss My Country Ass by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJe754cLbok

She Wouldn't Be Gone by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-n6DsDG40

Drink On It by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnuVedLV0yg

Good Ole Boys by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wUeegIam9I

Some Beach by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTT2LEyjdC4

Red River Blue by Blake Shelton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU--RQvpyA8

Thanks for reading and watching!:)

Disappearing drivers, middle-of-the-week holidays, and permanent housing!

This week, the school days were really screwed up. Our week was this: Monday and Tuesday, go to school as normal. Wednesday and Thursday, holidays for Eid al Fitr and Lord Ganesh's birthday. Friday and SATURDAY, go to school. Yeah, that's right. Grades 9 through 12 have a full school day on Saturday. Of course the “working Saturday”, as Indus International School calls it, had to be on the day that we finally get to move into our permanent housing. Yesterday, on Friday, Amara and I got back from school and immediately went to Commercial Street to buy bedspreads, sheets, pillows, and other things for our bedrooms at the new place. That being said, we didn’t get back to UB City until around 9:30 or a little later, and we still had to eat dinner. After eating dinner and finally getting to bed, it was well past midnight. Needless to say, we were all really tired, and then we remembered that I still had to go to school the next day—which meant being awake bright and early at 6am to catch the bus. We then decided, after much contemplation, that I wouldn’t go to school on Saturday because not only would I be running on 5 hours of sleep, I would be needed to help move into our new apartment.

But it’s never that easy with Indus. This morning (Saturday), my mom burst into my room where I was still sleeping at around 8:20am. She told me that she received an email at 9:30pm Friday night saying that if I didn’t go to school today, I would be suspended for a week. Keep in mind that there was no way we could have planned for this, since the email was sent so late last night my mom hadn’t seen it until this morning at which time it was too late to get me to school on time. In a few moments of sheer panic, we called the vice principal of Indus and told him what was going on. My dad explained to him that we were moving into our new apartment, our driver had disappeared and we didn’t have a new one (I’ll explain that later), and we had already missed the buses. To top it all off, the coordinator of the high school division of the school had said earlier in the month that if we didn’t take a bus and were late to school because of our own transportation, we wouldn’t be allowed to enter the school. The vice principal, after hearing the reasons why my excuse to miss school was legit and why I shouldn’t be suspended due to the school’s stupid rules, said he would “consider our request.” Indus is all about how they will not sacrifice academic rigour ever at all no matter what…but if I miss one day of school (for a real reason), they’re gonna force me to miss a week of school? Does that make sense to anyone?

Okay anyways, now that I’m done ranting, I’ll tell you a little bit about what happened for the two holidays that were earlier this week. For Ganesh's birthday, there were a lot of new stands and venders popping up selling statues and sculptures of Lord Ganesh in various sizes. When I asked one of my friends how she celebrates the day, she said they celebrate by eating a lot. Sounds like an alright holiday to me! There was also a ton of extremely loud music being played out of random speakers on the sides of roads, which I didn't really understand. For Eid, there were lights everywhere and tons of people out and about in their hijabs and topis. On Tuesday, quite a few stores were closed due to Eid al Fitr (the Eid celebrating the end of the 28 day fast for Muslims known as Ramadan), but then on Wednesday, the stores that were closed opened up again and the stores that were open on Tuesday were closed for Ganesh's birthday. Luckily though, we had both days off! 

Earlier this week, we had quite a disaster with our driver Kalandar. He drove us to the bus stop on Monday morning as normal, but then, when he was supposed to be at Google to pick up my mom, he wasn't there. Like, literally, he was nowhere to be found. So some guy comes up to my mom and basically tells her, "No Kalandar. New driver. Get in car." Needless to say, my mom freaked out and called my dad. Long story short, she ended up getting in the car with this new driver, whose name is Babu, and getting dropped off here at UB City. However, there were several issues with mister sir Babu. To start, he doesn't speak English or Hindi, so we were kind of stuck on how to communicate with him. Also, he doesn't know where anything is, so we had to ask random people on the street how to get places every five minutes. Andddd, another thing is that he has like one of those bush cars, you know? The kind that you'd expect to see following a herd of elephants on an African safari, with a machete hanging out of the driver side window. You know the kind...the two seats in the back were even sideways! It was really weird. So, we had no choice but to try to work with Babu for a couple days while a permanent driver was being worked out. After struggling through that until this morning, we were given another temporary driver until tomorrow or the next day. The temporary driver was really nice and had good Hindi and English, so it's kind of sad that we don't get to have him be our permanent driver. Our new permanent driver is alright; he doesn’t know where as many things are as compared to Kalandar and the temporary driver, but I think it’ll work out okay. This driver fiasco happened at a really bad time though, because now we're moving into our permanent apartment for the year and it'll be weird to go through that with a brand new driver. This brings me to the next thing mentioned in the title...

We finally get to move into our permanent apartment!!! We found out at the beginning of this week that we would be moving in this weekend, so we went shopping on the two holidays to get dishes and groceries and get an idea of what we wanted for our bedspreads and pillows. It was kind of insane how expensive the stuff is here…it was just as expensive if not more so than in the states! It’s also super difficult to find sets of dishes…they’re usually sold as single plates and single bowls and single cups, so we were really happy when we finally found a place that sold dish sets. I decided on a set that I liked, and when I say that I was the one who decided, that’s no lie, my mom forced ME to pick out the dishes because the dishes we use here are going to be my college set. Yesterday, we went to a store on Commercial Street like I said earlier to get bed covers and sheets and all that good stuff. That ended up being really expensive too, but that’s probably because we bought 3 bed covers, 8 pillows and like 10 sets of sheets. We were there for a good couple hours and finally left with five or six bags of stuff.

I’m writing this from our temporary apartment—I’m just sitting on the couch listening to the chaos around me as my parents try to get things signed and cleaned and the many other things that are apparently associated with moving into a new apartment. But my mom just started playing Angry Birds, and you know that big white bird that (I’ll be frank) poops out an egg when you tap it? She says that bird is sad and lonely because its face gets all twisted up when its egg goes away. So now she doesn’t tap the bird to make the egg come out, she just leaves the egg in the bird so its face never gets twisted up. I just thought I would tell you guys that. Thanks for reading!:)

Reflection on month 1 in India

So yes, we have been in India for a month now and I've been in school for three weeks! The first month has been really interesting; I like Bangalore a lot more than I thought I would. School is also really good, but Indus lies and says that they only give two hours of homework a week, when they actually give like five or six hours of homework a week, if not more. But the campus is really nice and the teachers are too. I got my formal uniform on Thursday (which consists of a plain but see-through white collared t-shirt, a tan skirt with buttons DOWN THE FRONT [which I do not understand], and these super ugly brown shoes). Amara and I both have to wear the formal uniform on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and we get to wear our PE uniform on Tuesday and Thursday. A couple posts back, I said that Wednesdays were my favorite days because I had good classes, but now we have a new schedule and Wednesdays aren't my favorite any more.
We recently put an offer on an apartment though! The lease got signed by the landlord today and now it has to go to Google (where my mom works, for those of you who don't know) to get approved and get the rest of the signatures that it needs. Also, on a completely different note, I got a role (a very tiny one at that) in the school musical! I only have two lines (not that I really care all that much) but I get to sing kind of a lot, which is what I actually care about.
I got sick for two days last week and I have no clue why, but I felt really bad and missed two days of school, which kind of sucked. My mom is convinced that I am "becoming SO Indian already!" but I actually don't even know what she's talking about because I am so not. The weather here is AMAZING, it's warm-ish but it's breezy and I realllly like it. Don't get me wrong though, I definitely miss the rain every day back in Washington. I also miss my fat cat, who isn't fat at all but regardless of that I miss her. She's in good hands though!
OH MY GOODNESS yesterday on our way home from school we saw a protest for Anna Hazare! He has been fasting to end corruption, and has caused a movement that swept all over India. The protest (supporting him) was really interesting, they had candles and signs and a guy was yelling stuff and it was so cool! It's probably not that big of a deal to locals but for me it was so different and awesome! I have to get to bed...more later though, thanks for reading! :)

Survived my First Week of School!

Yes, yes I did. The teachers were really easy on homework, but I'm guessing that was because it was the first week. My first week overall was pretty good, I made friends, I like my classes, and the campus is really nice. Unfortunately though, I've already caught a cold and don't feel very well. On Monday, me and Amara are performing in a small orchestra to celebrate Indian Independence Day. We do have a half day of school though, so we have to drive the hour and a half to Indus just to pretty much come right back. Then on Tuesday, there are auditions for the musical We Will Rock You, which our school is putting on. Of course the auditions have to be happening when I have a cold. But I'm still planning on trying out; I guess I just have to drink tons of tea, get lots of sleep and pray to God that this horrid sore throat goes away. I'm already homesick...which is a bad sign, considering that we haven't even been away from home for a month yet. I miss our cat, Nattie, a lot more than I thought I would. I hope she's being good for our house sitter and not doing anything stupid like she tends to do. And, of course, I miss all my friends a TON! I also miss our house, and my bed, and our kitchen, and our couch, and everything. To my friends and other people in Washington, I love you guys and miss you! Thanks for reading. :)

First 3 Days at Indus

Monday was my first day at school, unfortunately leaving me and Amara with an extremely short summer. The first day was pretty much a waste of time, we sat in a room ALL day and were given the same presentation as at orientation, so since I went to orientation, I was soooo bored. The second day was when I started having classes, and I'm not used to having a block schedule, so I was really confused. That being said, I accidentally did Monday's schedule on Tuesday for my first 3 classes. When I realized that, I felt so freaking stupid, so today in biology I had to explain to the teacher what happened. And I was mad because the business studies class that I accidentally went to had cool people in it, so now I'll be alone and sad when I actually have business studies. Oh well. This school really scares me because there are so many rules, and I feel like whatever I'm doing, I'm breaking a rule. And the uniforms are really ugly, in case I failed to mention that before. I don't know any of my teachers' names, they're all either Sir or Miss. It's much easier that way. Today, we also had classes, and I decided that Wednesday is my favorite day because I have good classes on Wednesday, including Spanish and biology, which I love. But it is really weird to be in school the whole day on Wednesdays, because in Washington we got out of school early on Wednesday. It's also really hard to decide what sport to do; I really want to do swimming but if I do that means I have to swim in the middle of the day which I don't want to do because that's really weird. Anyways. More later, thanks for reading!

The Past Few Days in Bangalore

On Saturday, we went to two music schools around Bangalore to see what our options were for continuing music lessons (viola and voice for me, flute for Amara) while we're here. The first one was interesting, the guy who we talked to was named Ashley and he was a weird dude. But, he actually took the time to listen to me and Amara okay our instruments and he also listened to me sing. He then invited me to come back on Sunday to participate in their voice class, and I was undecided at first, but after seeing the second music school I decided to go to the class. The second music school, The Bangalore School of Music (either School or Academy, one of those two) was really a disappointment. I've become really attached to my viola teacher back in Washington over the past four years of lessons from him, so it's really hard for me to be open minded about taking lessons from someone else. But I'm trying, I don't want to lose a whole year of playing my viola so I guess I'll do whatever it takes to continue that. On Sunday, I did go to the voice class and ended up liking it a lot! It was really fun, but I was reminded in that class that I also really got attached to my voice teacher in Washington over the past 2 years of lessons from her, so it was again hard for me to try a new style of teaching and a new teacher. But I think I'll definitely be going back for voice and viola lessons at William Joseph International Academy for Performing Arts. Today, we went to our new school, Indus International School, to get measured for our uniforms and to get our PE uniforms. They're all ugly. Really, really, horribly ugly. It's only for 8 hours a day though, so I guess it's fine...but they're still ugly. Girls have to wear a SKIRT every day which is actually the worst thing ever. Whoever invented skirts is mean. And we have to wear these stupid ugly brown loafer-like shoes! UGH. The PE uniform definitely isn't as bad as the regular uniform but I'd obviously prefer no uniform at all. The parentals are out house hunting yet again, but Amara wasn't feeling good so we had our driver drop me and Amara off at the apartment while my parents went to look at around 9 more apartments. More later, thanks for reading!

We Have Finally Arrived!:)

After 5 days in Hong Kong, we've finally touched down in Bangalore! Hong Kong was...interesting. A good experience, definitely, but not really a place I would want to go to again. The food was kind of difficult, it was good when we were at an authentic place but when it was American-ized Chinese food it was really...gross. We only really had authentic Chinese food one time, and it was the night before we left. We were on a private tour with a British guy who had lived in Hong Kong for a really long time, and he was basically a local, so we had an amazing tour with him. But whenever we tried to eat anywhere in Hong Kong, it was really hard because we had literally no freaking idea what we were doing and the waiters didn't have great English, if any. We went to this gigantic floating restaurant called Jumbo Floating Restaurant (or something self explanatory like that) and the decor was nice...but we all decided that the nice decor was just a decoy to take your mind off the bland food. After carefully sifting through everything on the menu (which was like 50 pages long), Amara and I settled on getting a chicken dish. However, we were then enlightened, and found out that the dish we had so carefully picked out thinking it was a safe bet was actually a whole bird just plopped onto the plate. Literally. A whole bird. Head and beak included. Needless to say, we changed our mind on what to get, but the food in general still wasn't that great. Also, it was so hot in Hong Kong that I actually thought I was going to have a heat stroke and die. If you stepped outside of the hotel, within two minutes you would be dripping with sweat all over your body. When we went to see the Big Buddha, it was around 3000 feet above sea level, which is somewhere near the elevation of Bangalore, and it was still smokin' hot up there too. My dad had been constantly reassuring us that, no, we would not die in Bangalore, because it wouldn't be that hot since it's higher up. So, at the Big Buddha which is at a higher elevation, we were still drowning in our own sweat, so I did the logical thing and freaked out. When we got off the plane in Bangalore, I was bracing myself for the wave of unbearable heat to come crashing down on me and cause me to start dripping sweat at 3 in the morning, but miraculously enough, that didn't happen!!! We got our baggage, breezed through customs and immigration without any problems whatsoever, and then met our driver outside the airport, and arrived at our temporary serviced apartment. Aaaaaand that brings us to right now! Today we were house hunting all day, which was a super fail, we found nothing that met our needs, and now my mother is moping about because of that. But I have faith...we'll find a place to live for the next 11 months eventually! Okay, so now I'll go ahead and spit out the answers to questions you're probably all wondering about...I was wondering about them myself before we got here!
How's traffic? Today it wasn't that bad, it wasn't really a parking lot like you'd expect, but it was definitely not like Washington traffic. Washington's traffic is organized, Bangalore's traffic is....not organized, to say the least. There are cars, trucks, rickshaws, TONS of motorcycles, people, kids, dogs, goats, cows....it's crazy. Cars and motorcycles cut in from random places, people just run into moving traffic to cross the streets, and animals obviously couldn't care less about traffic so they cut in whenever they want.
How's the food? SPICY. Good, but spicy. That is all. Ohhhhmygod though, the gulab jamans are SO good. I could live off of those.
How's the weather? Actually, it's really nice. It was hotter in most of the un-airconditioned apartments we looked at today than it was outside. The weather is definitely manageable, I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice it is.
Are there elephants everywhere? Sorry guys, only in movies.
More later, thanks for reading!

Tomorrow is the Day!

The title is self explanatory but yes! The time has come for us to temporarily end our life in America and start a new chapter of it in India! But of course the suspense of our new life is still not quite here yet, because we added a 5 day stop over in Hong Kong on the way to India. If we hadn't done that, the flight would have been 26 hours, so we decided to make it a little more bearable by shortening it to 13 hours to Hong Kong, then around 6 hours to India. This last week has been especially stressful...it seems like it's lasted for 10 years. I've been trying to cram in my last sleepovers with friends whenever I could and trying to make sure I see everyone that I wanted to see before leaving. I didn't quite get everyone but close enough I guess. The movers came on Tuesday to pack our freight stuff, and it's kind of depressing to me that all the stuff we felt like we needed for a year could fit into 588 pounds of freight and 2 duffel bags a piece. Guess that just goes to show you that we have too much crap in our houses anyways! The biggest downside is that moves get everyone really stressed and on edge, and let's face it, nobody is a nice person when they're stressed, which has kind of been painfully obvious for the past week.When we moved from Kansas to Washington a few years ago, we always said that would be our last move until I went to college. We never thought anything like this would ever happen, and, though it will be a great experience for us, it does mean another move there and back. At least it's temporary!
Going to Hong Kong is also adding stress because the airlines have stupid rules like 11 pounds per carry on! We usually carry on a small Rick Steve's suitcase, but that suitcase alone weighs 7 and a half pounds, so that didn't happen this time. We had to shove everything for our 5 day trip into a tiny duffel bag so as to meet the airline's carry on rules. I also have to carry on my viola, which is light on its own, but when it gets into the case, it weighs 13.4 pounds. I have to carry that on too...so if they weigh it I guess we're screwed. Bottom line is, read the rules of the airline before you book the tickets. You might just have second thoughts on what airline to fly.

25 Days and Counting!

Once it got down to one month til we leave, my mom started a countdown to India. Now it's 25 days until we leave, and we haven't even started packing anything or preparing at all. Actually, scratch that, we have started preparing, we shopped for what felt like 32573896738497508327 hours but was actually 7 hours on Saturday just buying stuff to stock up on for India. But it is completely true that we haven't even started packing yet, which should concern me, but it doesn't for some reason. I think we're all really starting to get excited about this huge but temporary move, but there are definitely good things and bad things.
Good:
-FOOD!:) it' gonna be amazing there.
-cultural experiences
-new place, new people, new friends!
-traveling on that side of the world!
-tons of other things.

Now for the Bad:
-BUGS:( ahhh!
-ugly ugly ugly uniforms. there will be several snowballs flying through hell on the day I have to wear a skirt to school every day.
-diseases like malaria and other scary things...what if I die?!
-the heat! Washington has warped me into feeling like 70 degrees is hot, 90 degrees in the freaking winter is gonna kill me!
-getting skin cancer. Me being as white as I am, I get burned really easily, and I'm thinking I'll have to wear a full body suit to avoid that.
-again, tons of other things.

HOWEVER, pros and cons aside, I'm excited, and it's only a year, I can do anything for a year!

The Situation at Hand

The Situation is this: I'm 14, and I'm moving to India for a year. It's bittersweet...I'm excited but really nervous at the same time. I'm sad to leave my friends, but it's not a permanent move, so I'll see them again for sure. I called this blog Tuna Out of Water because my friends call me Tuna for some reason and India is definitely not my normal Bellevue water that I'm used to. 

So, in India, I'll be missing my freshman year of high school here in Bellevue, Washington. I'll be going to Indus International school in Bangalore, India. We don't really know where we're going to live yet, which should be concerning, but for some reason I'm not even freaking out about it at all. That, or the fact that we're leaving in less than a month and haven't even begun to pack yet. We're going there for my mom's job, she works at Google and they need her to do research in India and are willing to get her there to do it. My dad, who is a doctor here in Washington, isn't going to be able to work for a salary while we're in India, so he'll probably be a stay at home dad for the year. He's going to do volunteer work when we're there though. 

All the adults who I tell about this always say, "Oh, wow, this will be such a great experience for you to have while you're a kid but still old enough to remember it!" And I know that. I've heard it a million times, but they're actually right. The timing of this adventure is perfect--I'm going into 9th grade and my sister's going into 7th grade, so we're both old enough to remember this. But another thing that is really cool about this is that I'm actually half Indian, my dad is Indian, so this is gonna be really cool for me to be able to get in touch with this half of my heritage. I'm excited, scared, happy, sad, nervous, and anxious to get out of here for a while. This had better be good!