TWO holidays in ONE weekend.

Let’s just say that weekends here are A LOT more interesting than my normal weekday/school day.

First HOLIDAY…Friday was India’s Independence Day, so we had NO school and that was about the only benefit of the whole holiday. I don’t know if “younger families” do more, but there were no fireworks, supposedly there was a parade, but we were told not to go near big crowds or crowded shopping areas…sooooo we just went to the grocery store and then cyber café (we are regulars there). Compared to the US’s celebration, India did nothing from what we experienced. The only difference in normal day life was that the poor people on the street were selling flags and some people had put them in their cars and then the servants and our mom watched a Bollywood film. We opted out of the film, because it was in Hindi and luckily we did opt out of it, because the film was WAY looooooooooong!...for those of you that know me, I PROBABLY would have fallen asleep. Long movie, mid day, and IN HINDI…definitely an equation for me to fall asleep!

SECOND holiday…Rakhi holiday…it has a longer name but I have NO idea how to spell it. So this holiday is ALL about tradition between a sister and her brother. First, the sister feeds the brother sweets and salty snacks or lunch in some cases. Then the sister puts tikah on his forehead which is red stuff and rice…this act is to say best wishes in life, may you be victorious and then ties a bracelet around the brothers wrist to say that I love you, and the brother gives the sister money. WELL…we don’t have a brother in our family, BUT we do have the servant’s son. SOOO, we told our mom that we wanted to give him a bracelet and she LOVED the idea. She bought some bracelets for like 5 cents each. On the holiday, we went to our dad’s mom’s brother’s house (basically his uncles house but they NEVER call it that) for lunch. It was pretty darn good. We had these puffy tortilla like things and then green chilies and this BEANY dish…SOOO beany…it was made with LENTILS AND CHIK PEAS AND GARBANZO BEANS….BEANS BEANS BEANS….and theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnn I ate it!!!!...I know crazy…and they gave me TWO servings!!!...and I finished them both…it actually tasted good, but the texture was not the best but I just covered it up…(for those of you who don’t know…I HATE beans…of ALL types, except edamame)and they gave us a salty snack and Khier (a sweet dish). After lunch we went home to our house and Reka (the servant) came and grabbed my wrist…SOO excited and pulled me into their SMALL little home. This was an eye-opening experience by itself. Their home for four was a small outside and then a room that was seriously 3 feet by 5 feet. I had NO idea this whole time that they were living in such a small space right next to us. Quite humbling. Then we completed the tradition and Rahul gave us a delicious sweet instead of money, which was GREAT!!! His BEAMING face just pulled on my little heart strings and I could not stop smiling. Afterwards I invited them into our room to play cards with us and I introduced them to the game of BLINK (for those of you that played it at my house this past summer Chelsea, Peter,). It was a lot of fun. Going into their house and putting the bracelet on Rahul has been the BEST experience for me thus far.

On Sunday Molly and I ventured to this mall that we had heard SO much about. We took a bike rickshaw which was the WRONG idea!!!...we should have taken an auto. Besides the fact that the rickshaw driver SAID that he knew where he was going, he really DID NOT! (he knew the general direction.)…so we biked around WAY more than we should have and it seemed like he was struggling and THEN once he found out where we were supposed to go he had to bike up a bridge!!!....I wanted to get out of the bike and walk up the hill so he did not have to bike us there. He was NOT sweaty when we got in the bike and by the time we got there he was DRIPPING sweat and his shirt was DRENCHED. Oops. Don’t worry we gave him a little extra tip. Molly and I then walked around the mall, ate lunch for two dollars each (a FULL meal) and then went to McDonalds for a soft serve cone that was only 30 cents ( and OOO so good!) While we walked around the mall we found a store called “the one dollar store” which did NOT make sense because they don’t have dollars…AND it was basically that EVERYTHING was 99 rupees which is MORE than 2 dollars. It was actually VERY American there was Kraft Mac n’ cheese and chewy granola bars and Campbell’s soup…so one day that store might be invaded when I am sick of Indian food. While we were in there one of the store employees came up and started making us smell EVERY SINGLE body was scent!!!...he would open it up, squeeze some out and then put it up to my nose. EVERY SINGLE SCENT…no joke. The problem was that all I could smell was cigarette smoke on his hands…so NONE of the scents smelled good. On the way home, we decided to take an auto rickshaw and we made it home safely and quickly!...another successful weekend. God is good.