Again, updating has slowed down, we're just too busy! But hopefully I can fill you in on what's keeping us for the past couple weeks. October here is similar to our November/December season back home. As I mentioned before all the houses put lights up and there are sales in all the shops. The first half of October is the puja season (when we had our two week vacation). Then for the week of October 28 there is a festival called Diwali, or the festival of lights. This means that any person who doesn't have lights up on their house yet will put them up and that all of the stores also decorate their doors and walls. For Diwali we were invited over to a friend's house for a party and fireworks. We took a rickshaw over and on the way we picked up some hot food off the street (jalebi and pakora). Everybody was out on the streets, fireworks were going off everywhere. Before I get further let me remind you that we are in Delhi, the national capital. It is densely populated, with houses and people everywhere. All of the power lines are also above ground. It creates a somewhat claustrophobic feeling with so many people and tall buildings and power lines. Add to the mix fireworks and it becomes a situation like war. You constantly have to be on the look out for kids running, because that means you should probably also run, they just lit a firework. So we made it to our friend's house (while picking up some of our own fireworks). My roommate is Hindu and so she set us straight with the proper rituals. We lit small candles and put one in every room of the house, also all of the lights in the house are supposed to be on. After eating, we went downstairs to the street to light off some fireworks. We were having fun with our small crackers and sparklers. Some of us were even more adventurous with some bigger ones. Then the neighbors came out. They had legitimate fireworks, like huge ones, that go up in the sky and make different shapes, colors, sounds. And they just set them off in front of their crowded house! I hid behind a car across the street most of the time. But you couldn't look away. It wasn't a busy street, but there would still be traffic, and there would be times that a motorcycle would be screaming down the street, narrowly dodge the ALREADY lit firework, and pass it right before it went off. It was really terrifying. Then the neighbors invited us over to watch them perform a puja, or offering to the Gods. So about 12 of us go over into their house and they feed us cashews and walnuts. Then they lit all their candles and sing songs. It had such a strong feeling of Christmas. All the kids had come back from school, and they were all dressed in their best clothes. It was such a fun atmosphere. Their house was completely decorated; they even had a wall of cards from other family members wishing them a Happy Diwali. It was really nice to see this side of India that is easy to forget as you dodge the men peeing in the roads, cow ****, and stray dogs. Then they started to feed us more snacks, and more, and more. And remember we had already eaten! This would also be an appropriate time to address the differences between American and Indian sweets (which are many). American sweets you know about. But Indian sweets have a ton more sugar on them, everything is in a sugar sauce, coated in sugar. Exaple of Gulab Jamin which is balls of sugar and bread, fried, then coated with sugar, then put in a sauce of sugary syrup. They also had different tastes as what is appropriate to go with sugar, like curd and cheese. A favorite sweet of Indians is called Barfi (no joke), which is sweetened cheese with a layer of sugar on top (also, no joke). It's rather disgusting. So while the walnuts and cashews were fine, I can not handle more than one tiny taste of Barfi-or any other Indian sweet. But obviously it would have been incredibly rude not to eat it. They would walk around and hand it to us and wait for us to put it in our mouth before moving onto the next person. By the 5th round of this I felt like I was going to passout. Finally they came around with this sort of buttery sugar and masala crepe. I lost it. I put it in my mouth and my gag reflexes started in, I waited for our host to move on and quickly spit it out in to my napkin in my hand. My roommate sitting next to me thought it was hilarious. Then the next round was a sort of cake, which I thought would be safe. But, of course in India nothing is as it seems. I put the cake in my mouth and immediately this sour liquid that was soaked up in the cake filled my mouth. Two strikes in a row and I was feeling pretty culturally insensitive. Thank God they didn't see me when I started to mildly dry heave in the corner as my gag reflexes just wouldn't give up. The last round was again cashews, which I was grateful for. But apparently, Andrew had had enough, and he said that he really didn't need anymore, thanks though. The guy said to take some, Andrew said he was full. The guy cracked the cashew, put it in his palm, and hand fed Andrew. I almost died it was too funny. Then he had to smile and say "mmmmm thanks!" Finally, we left, no without saying "Thank you, everything was delicious" about 340 times. Then we went outside and put off more fireworks. Then a line of three drummers came by and started a beat and singing. Everybody had a lot of fun dancing with them in the street (only after paying them, of course) and setting off fireworks. All the neighbors were out in the streets; the street had some impressively big fireworks (stuff that you DEFINITELY need a permit for in the States). Eventually we decided to leave, and on our way home we were constantly dodging fireworks. I've never been in a war situation, and never hope to, but I can only imagine that this was exactly what it feels like. I was seriously afraid for body/limb at many points on the way home. Of course, we did see a car that looked like it had some fireworks gone off inside of it. It looked like no one was hurt, but there was also no fire crew in site. Obviously somebody had mishandled a firework, the car burned until it went out and then was just sitting in the middle of the road. It must have been one hot of a fire. My camera was out of batteries but it looked something like this. I was so grateful to get home in one piece. Of course, we couldn't get to bed until 3 am when people finally stopped setting off fireworks in the back alley behind our apartment.
Again, updating has slowed down, we're just too busy! But hopefully I can fill you in on what's keeping us for the past couple weeks. October here is similar to our November/December season back home. As I mentioned before all the houses put lights up and there are sales in all the shops. The first half of October is the puja season (when we had our two week vacation). Then for the week of October 28 there is a festival called Diwali, or the festival of lights. This means that any person who doesn't have lights up on their house yet will put them up and that all of the stores also decorate their doors and walls. For Diwali we were invited over to a friend's house for a party and fireworks. We took a rickshaw over and on the way we picked up some hot food off the street (jalebi and pakora). Everybody was out on the streets, fireworks were going off everywhere. Before I get further let me remind you that we are in Delhi, the national capital. It is densely populated, with houses and people everywhere. All of the power lines are also above ground. It creates a somewhat claustrophobic feeling with so many people and tall buildings and power lines. Add to the mix fireworks and it becomes a situation like war. You constantly have to be on the look out for kids running, because that means you should probably also run, they just lit a firework. So we made it to our friend's house (while picking up some of our own fireworks). My roommate is Hindu and so she set us straight with the proper rituals. We lit small candles and put one in every room of the house, also all of the lights in the house are supposed to be on. After eating, we went downstairs to the street to light off some fireworks. We were having fun with our small crackers and sparklers. Some of us were even more adventurous with some bigger ones. Then the neighbors came out. They had legitimate fireworks, like huge ones, that go up in the sky and make different shapes, colors, sounds. And they just set them off in front of their crowded house! I hid behind a car across the street most of the time. But you couldn't look away. It wasn't a busy street, but there would still be traffic, and there would be times that a motorcycle would be screaming down the street, narrowly dodge the ALREADY lit firework, and pass it right before it went off. It was really terrifying. Then the neighbors invited us over to watch them perform a puja, or offering to the Gods. So about 12 of us go over into their house and they feed us cashews and walnuts. Then they lit all their candles and sing songs. It had such a strong feeling of Christmas. All the kids had come back from school, and they were all dressed in their best clothes. It was such a fun atmosphere. Their house was completely decorated; they even had a wall of cards from other family members wishing them a Happy Diwali. It was really nice to see this side of India that is easy to forget as you dodge the men peeing in the roads, cow ****, and stray dogs. Then they started to feed us more snacks, and more, and more. And remember we had already eaten! This would also be an appropriate time to address the differences between American and Indian sweets (which are many). American sweets you know about. But Indian sweets have a ton more sugar on them, everything is in a sugar sauce, coated in sugar. Exaple of Gulab Jamin which is balls of sugar and bread, fried, then coated with sugar, then put in a sauce of sugary syrup. They also had different tastes as what is appropriate to go with sugar, like curd and cheese. A favorite sweet of Indians is called Barfi (no joke), which is sweetened cheese with a layer of sugar on top (also, no joke). It's rather disgusting. So while the walnuts and cashews were fine, I can not handle more than one tiny taste of Barfi-or any other Indian sweet. But obviously it would have been incredibly rude not to eat it. They would walk around and hand it to us and wait for us to put it in our mouth before moving onto the next person. By the 5th round of this I felt like I was going to passout. Finally they came around with this sort of buttery sugar and masala crepe. I lost it. I put it in my mouth and my gag reflexes started in, I waited for our host to move on and quickly spit it out in to my napkin in my hand. My roommate sitting next to me thought it was hilarious. Then the next round was a sort of cake, which I thought would be safe. But, of course in India nothing is as it seems. I put the cake in my mouth and immediately this sour liquid that was soaked up in the cake filled my mouth. Two strikes in a row and I was feeling pretty culturally insensitive. Thank God they didn't see me when I started to mildly dry heave in the corner as my gag reflexes just wouldn't give up. The last round was again cashews, which I was grateful for. But apparently, Andrew had had enough, and he said that he really didn't need anymore, thanks though. The guy said to take some, Andrew said he was full. The guy cracked the cashew, put it in his palm, and hand fed Andrew. I almost died it was too funny. Then he had to smile and say "mmmmm thanks!" Finally, we left, no without saying "Thank you, everything was delicious" about 340 times. Then we went outside and put off more fireworks. Then a line of three drummers came by and started a beat and singing. Everybody had a lot of fun dancing with them in the street (only after paying them, of course) and setting off fireworks. All the neighbors were out in the streets; the street had some impressively big fireworks (stuff that you DEFINITELY need a permit for in the States). Eventually we decided to leave, and on our way home we were constantly dodging fireworks. I've never been in a war situation, and never hope to, but I can only imagine that this was exactly what it feels like. I was seriously afraid for body/limb at many points on the way home. Of course, we did see a car that looked like it had some fireworks gone off inside of it. It looked like no one was hurt, but there was also no fire crew in site. Obviously somebody had mishandled a firework, the car burned until it went out and then was just sitting in the middle of the road. It must have been one hot of a fire. My camera was out of batteries but it looked something like this. I was so grateful to get home in one piece. Of course, we couldn't get to bed until 3 am when people finally stopped setting off fireworks in the back alley behind our apartment.
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