So many Birthday Parties!

While I'm in India, I've been invited to so many birthday parties. This is my second invitation, but I've since gone to two more, so I've gone to four birthday parties. This is an invitation to a girl named Sajel's birthday party. It's at 5:30, and her flat is 6-A. I got the invitation the night before. Here they don't give you any warning, except for my first invitation which happened a couple of nights earlier, and it was Ayush's birthday party.

This is me holding Sajel's invitation. As you can see, it has Hannah Montana on it, who I completely hate.

This is Krishev, who is Sajel's brother, and his video game controller. he's showing everyone.

This is Sejal, the birthday girl. Too bad I didn't get a better shot of her.

This is the cake. It has pineapples and cherries and flowers and frosting, which I don't really like in India, and somebody is placing a candle in the cake.

Fortunately, they had a tank of 3 turtles, and I thought this would be a good shot. It is Ayush in front of the tank of 3 turtles.

These are the presents that Sajel got, which she didn't open because you don't open your presents when the other children are there. You wait until after, when everyone leaves.

This is Sejal cutting her cake. She's taking a small piece and feeding it to a relative that came to her party, then she gives them a piece of cake to feed to her. That's what they do here.

Here's me at a different birthday party for a little girl named Aditi. I got the invitation for this party about 3 hours before the party.

This is Tanushri in the blue and pink flowered shirt and Prachi in the white dress.

This is the cake with name Aditi on it, an angry bird, and a real plastic barbie with a frosting dress.

This is us dancing with Tanushri, Prachi, and a couple of other little girls.

This is the mug I got from winning a game of musical chairs. Everyone at the party also got a pencil holder.

This is me at St. Francis with my violin, practicing for the Birthday party of the directors. It is called director's day, and we're having a big birthday.

This is the day of the performance, and this is me and my "girlfriend" Shatakshi.

These are a couple of students that are performing, talking with our music teacher, Steve Rao

These are some students dancing in the program wearing traditional classical dance costumes.

These are kids from my class who are performing for the song from "Main Tera Hero." The song is "Sharmi ki Height."

these are girls in the performance.

Getting Ready for my Brahmin Ceremony! Part 1

In two weeks, on May 28th, we're going to have a big celebration called Janeo. It is where I become a Brahmin, and I have to wear a sacred thread across my chest, and I get my head shaved. It's like a Jewish Bar Mitzvah, except for Brahmins. Over 60 people are coming to the ceremony at a temple. After, we're having a big catered lunch at a restaurant called "Candlelight" near the house, but we can only have vegetarian food cause Brahmins don't eat meat. Relatives are coming to this special ceremony just for me! Victor mama is coming from Hong Kong and Guddu cha-cha is coming from Virginia.

 We need to do a lot of planning and fixing and painting to get everything ready for the ceremony. About 20 people will be staying in our apartment alone! In this picture, we had two people take apart and reassemble the couch and chairs in the living room. It took them the whole day to fix them up.

Then we had the whole house painted. This room used to be green and red, and now it's yellow!

Here's what it used to look like. This is me and Kulu dancing to "Lungi dance" in the living room.

This is the new baby, Ashish watching us dance "Lungi Dance"!

This is the wall mat that we bought from the "mat-wala"

This is Lovely cha chi's brother, Raja's new room color.

This is our new room color. It is tan and orange.

This is us going shopping for sari-s and clothes for the ceremony. We need to buy 14 sari-s to give as presents to some of the female relatives, and suits for some of the men. We picked out over 20 sari-s and then had to pick 14 of them for presents.

This is the sari-wala at the "Cheap Silk Sari Store."

Here I am drinking Sprite at the sari shop next to a mannequin wearing a sari. The Sprite was really good and free. They gave us chai and water too!

This is me holding a really cool silk sari with blue roses and blue outlining. 

 

 

 

This is us picking out shirt and pant material to give to the men.

April 21-May 3

This is lunch time at my school, with the older kids, and it's about 90,000 degrees out.

This is a "ghora" which means horse in Hindi. I saw it on the street on the way home from school.

This is me in the Western chorus. The girl with the white headband in front likes me because I'm a foreigner and she never gets to talk to one. We're doing a special choir to perform for the Director's Day next week. It's called "Days of Elijah."

These are the older kids playing the instruments for the song.

These are two older kids playing a game called "speed ball." One person serves the ball, and it has to spin around once, and the second round the other person has to hit it.

This is a speed ball rod with the ball hanging.

They are making a new auditorium for the school. And they're going to put on a musical here in the fall.

This is me and my friends in the pick-up room at the end of the day. Some of them I don't know, but the one on the right side of the kid with glasses is Shaunish, the one above the kid with glasses is Avnish, the one diagonally on the right side is Bascar, and I'm on the right diagonal side of the kid with glasses.

This is a beehive in our society.

On weekends, I get to have McDonald's breakfast, and these are my pancakes, hash brown and egg sausage McMuffin breakfast. They only have chicken sausages in India.

For the Canonization of the Pope St. John Paul, the school had a huge ceremony with thousands of nuns and priests and a parade down the street in front of the house.

This is the computer lab in my school. We get to go every Friday with Divya ma'am, the computer theory ma'am.

These are two school buses. One of them is a bike school bus!

They hang the backpacks on tiny hooks on the side, and the kids sit inside the bus.

Last week we went to dinner at a restaurant called "Walk in the Woods." And it really is like the woods, because it has stones, leaves and vines everywhere and tons of fish tanks. The leaves and stones are fake, but the fish are real.

This is the playroom in the restaurant, with tables, chairs like mushrooms, and a jungle looking boy.

This is me eating chicken soup in the restaurant.

This is what the restaurant and tables look like. It looks just like the woods!