March 30th Part 1 - Lotus Temple

On Sunday, my only day off from school, I went to see the Lotus Temple in Delhi. On the way, we say a few goats in a park and on the roadside.

This is the Lotus Temple. It represents the Baha'i faith, which is about spirituality of people.

This is the Lotus Temple with the crowd of people going to see it.

This is me standing next to the structure of the Lotus Temple. As you can see it is made of marble cubes.

This is me standing in front of one of the four pools of water under the Lotus Temple.

March 27th - Ayush's Birthday Party

This is Ayush. He is my friend who lives in apartment 8C in the same building as me. Just last night, Ayush invited me to his birthday party. He is turning 11. Santosh cha-cha and I went to the shop to get Ayush a birthday present. I thought we could get him a chess set or small toy gun with flashing lights, but instead, Santosh cha-cha chose a Snakes and Ladders board game, which is for little kids. (The game was actually invented in India. In the U.S. we call it Chutes and Ladders).

This is puja that they do for people's birthday. This is in the guest room of Ayush's house.

Every birthday, the boy or girl's relatives come over and then the friends come over. I was the first one there. These are Ayush's relatives.

These are all the kids that went to Ayush's birthday party. I forgot all of their names, but we had lots of fun. We talked and danced.

This is is the Tom and Jerry cake that Ayush had for his birthday party.

This is everyone eating Chinese noodles and pizza with cake on the rug.

March 23-26 First days of School!

These pictures are of the assembly at my new school, St. Francis School. This is the first day of the new session, so we had an assembly where the priest and principal introduced the new teachers for each subject. We also sang the Indian national anthem, the school anthem, and some prayers. I felt really, really, really scared the first day, but it ended up being still a little bad, except for the fact that a girl called me cute. I found out that her name is Sanvi.

This is me on my way into the school after the assembly. I'm the fifth person in.

These are my school books. We have 8 different subject periods in a day, and we have books for each one. Every day I have to look at the subject schedule and put the right books in my back pack for the day.

I have over 24 subject books altogether. Some of the books are English, Math, Values, Social Studies, Science, and Hindi.

This is me wearing my first outfit for school. I have to wear this one everyday, except for Wednesday and Saturday when I wear white shorts and a colored shirt.

These are all of my books in two big bags.

This is me in my outfit outside the St. Francis School.

This is me after school with Santosh cha-cha and Joe on a motorcycle that we're going to use to get back home, and mommy is going to walk.

These are some photos from when we were in  Rajasthan of me and Bittu putting buckets over our head. Then we left for Delhi.

This is Jantar Mantar, and ancient astrological site which has buildings that measure the movements of the planets and sun.

This is the Qutub Minar, an ancient building from 1192 in Delhi that was the beginnings of the invasions.

This is me at Akshardam Temple, a temple where they honor a kid who traveled around the border of India and went through the Himalayas.

March 21st - The Circus!

Today we went to the circus in Chittorgarh. This is me in the rickshaw on the way to the circus.

Parvati and her two children went with us.

This is Bittu in the rickshaw making a face.

We stopped on the way down to see Leela, Sudhir's mother and Bittu's grandmother.

This is me in front of the circus entrance.

This is one of the acts - an elephant playing cricket!!

These are two motorcycles traveling in a big ball.

These are acrobats from South Africa climbing up a pole.

After the circus, we stopped to get some sugar cane juice. This is the green sugar cane juice machine and the sugar cane is lying in stacks next to it.

This is me and Bittu drinking our sugar cane juice.

March 19-21 Rajasthan

We decided to leave for Rajasthan today because I found out that I had to start school early on March 24 instead of April 1st. School started early because India has a national election coming up in the middle of April and the government uses all of the school buses to bring people to vote in the polls, so we will have a week off in the middle of April. We're going to Chittorgarh, Rajasthan to visit Sudhir Sukhwal and his family. He lives in the biggest fort in Asia. Sudhir is my mom's friend. She lived in the fort for two years doing her research.

It is an over night trip on the bus. We will arrive in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan at 4:30 a.m.

This is us at a Krishna Resort rest stop where the bus stopped for dinner.

After we arrived at the Fort at 4:30, 2 and a half hours later me mommy and Joe went to a temple and here is one of the gods there.

In the temple we also saw some puja [poojaa] bells.

These are nagara drums also used for puja.

This is the outside of the temple.

I took this picture on the roof and it shows a woman cooking traditional Indian food.

This is a monkey on a corner of a house. In Hindi, monkey is "bandar" (bun-der). The monkeys come in big groups across the roofs and attack houses for food.

This is a big breakfast I had on the first day in Rajasthan. I know this is only two pieces of bread, but I had a lot more. We stayed in Sudhir's haveli, a big Rajasthani house that is a bed and breakfast.

This is what I'm talking about by big breakfast.

This is the city of Chittorgarh from the top of the Fort (the roof) where we stayed.

This is one of the ruins on the fort. It is the Tower of Victory after the people won a battle in the 1400s.

This is one of the carvings on the side of the tower.

This is a barbed wire to help plants grow across the whole roof

This is me playing with a group of kids on the streets with a ball. I'm trying to get the ball away from a guy that is much bigger than me, and I got it!

These are women on the streets selling flowers people buy to give to the temples.

These are some Indian pot sellers on the street. People are using umbrellas to cover them from the hot, hot sun.

These are some other fruit sellers on the streets in Chittorgarh.

Afterwards we went on a ride to some villages near Chittorgarh. In one of the villages, there was this guy on a bike carrying wheat on the back of his bike.

This is a little girl sitting in the middle of the street in the village.

This is a traditional way of greeting people on the doors.

This is one of the many cows in this village.

These are the fields of wheat that were over the rock wall that the cow in the picture above was standing in front of. We went through the field to see an ancient Shiva temple with engravings. It is over 2,000 years old. The picture below is from the inside of the temple.

This is me and Joe inside the jeep going another village.

In this village, we came to a wood working shop. These are some statues. The first small one is Ganesha, who is a god. He was a boy but his head got replaced with an elephant head the two  others are just Rajasthani wood figures.

This is me with some other big wood figures.

This is a wart hog in the middle of the street in this village.

This is a cow begging for good at a doorway, and it's really cute.

This is a temple in the village, and this is a black elephant carving in the temple.

Behind the temple there was a lake and a lot of kids were there trying to practice their English on me, and when they saw my camera they wanted pictures, so I got some shots. I took of these on my back because they were crowding me.

This is a picture on the wall of a temple.

This is me at a big field on the way back to Chittorgarh. The field is owned by Sudhir and his wife Parvati who own the haveli where we are staying.

This is Sudhir in the jeep on the way back to the Fort.

This is me and Parvati.