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!:)