Ariel auditions for the Magic Kingdom....

***Due to the many requests to see my orange hair

and for all those who have cracked little mermaid jokes this week...

This special blogging episode is dedicated to you!

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Audition Poses....

Take One: 'lil sweet and innocent dew drop" look


















Take Two: the "Sassy" look

Take 3: the "Superb Swimmer and Responsible Rescuer" look

**Who knew Prince Eric had a fro and wore pink??...

Take 4: Scandalous!

sorry...model unavailable

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***No animations were harmed in the making of this blog. Any characters that even resemble April Coffman or Rebekah "Beki" Barreth are probably fictional and made up. They are too sensible and responsible of girls to do such things.. even if it is late at night.

Girls Night!

Who wants to have a slumber party when you can have a Mahendi Party???

All Natural and therapeutic...

Not to be confused with aromatherapy by any means (doesn't smell so great! especially when you add egg to the mix to put in your hair.)

Much Preparation goes into this delightful goo...

undae (1 egg), nimboo (lemons), Mahendi (henna), and pani (water).

Our Beauticians hard at work putting the mahendi in our hair... who knew something so green and gunky looking could add such a shine?

Ding! finished! Now we wait a few short hours before we rinse...

Here is Me, Atmum*, and Beki

Now for the hands -

This is where the creativity starts flowing. It is REALLY fun!!
Here is me and our Super Spider Slaying Auntie...

Here's the final product...

Now you let it dry and the darker you want it on your hands,

the longer you leave it. When you are ready, you scrape the dried stuff off and Tada!!

We had a lot of fun! We are now experts in the ways of Mahendi...haha.

PS... evidently green goop turns lighter colored hair bright orange!

and when i say orange i mean O-R-A-N-G-E!!

Like call me Ariel, i'm moving to work at the Magic Kingdom.

This was kind of a happy thought to me until a friend informed me that i wouldn't get hired because i was too tall. Way to kill a girls dreams. GEEZ.

Does it really matter?? I mean really, who's not tall to a 5 year old?

Bet you'll comment now, huh??

*Stolen from a friend's blog.... sorry I couldn't help it!!

Psycho Jumping Gargantuan Spiders... Get out of our House!!

notice it is not so much smaller than the yellow lufa...
Um...Ew

Our ever so brave and courageous Auntie!

"Where we're going, we don't need....Roads"

This past weekend we went to visit some friends and decided to go even farther north to this lake that was only 110 kilometers away. So we booked a taxi and after the pizza party, what's the point of sleeping if you just have to get up at 3 am anyways?! So about 4am we start off on our Great Himalayan Adventure...

The drive was Beautiful!! We saw the sunrise over the mountain tops and took pictures the whole way there. Remember how i said it was only 110 km?? so to go 110 km in the mountains took 6 hours to get there and 6 hours to get back - i have no idea how that taxi made it there and back without falling into a pothole and never getting out!

The longer we traveled the smaller the road got and the bumpier it became! Imagine being squished up in a car, holding on for dear life as if you are riding a mechanical bull. There was no sleeping on the way, let me tell ya!You know its bad when the driver stops calling it a road and starts refering to it as "the way".... We stopped at a dabba along the way, strange i might add - we hadn't seen a soul for about an hour and all of a sudden theres this little place to get some food. don't worry we were able to find a ladies toilet - a large boulder half a mile away. I always say i live in the middle of nowhere....I was wrong - We live in a Metropolis compared to where we were! I think there were more sheep than people. Below is a picture taken along the way, about 2 hours away from our final destination.

Along the way we ran into several herds of sheep and their shepherds. Crazy! There were definitely some points when the driver slowed down and almost stopped bec he couldn't tell where the "road" was and by "road" I mean tire indentions in the grass or gravel. Off roading has taken on a completely new meaning now. When we finally made it to the Lake... we were most pleasantly surprised, we walked up to the top of a hill and looked out to see this...We walked around the lake to the other side and just sat in the green grass just enjoying the view. It was so surreal. It was deafeningly quiet. No horns blaring, no bells or drums sounding, not even the wind blowing, birds chirping or insects buzzing. It was dead silent! The lake was crystal clear with not a ripple on it. It was so soothing to be there we just curled up in the grass and slept for a couple hours. Below is me and Jules before we passed out asleep.

AFter we woke up, we headed over to a tent dabba. We felt like we were camping! We ate the typical indian dish - dal, chavel (rice), chipati, and another veggie. It was really relaxing and the owner was really hospitable and friendly. there were some other guys there just "hanging out" and playing some cards after they ate. We wanted to teach them Texas hold 'em but good luck explaining that in hindi.

As we were finishing our food, our driver runs in and tells us to hurry because its about to rain... if you saw the roads when they were dry and you heard it was going to rain - you'd peace out pretty quick too! We tried to just run up the hill towards the jeep but at 15,000 feet, good luck with that. we got half way up and had to stop because we were breathing so hard. Pesky oxygen.

As we started off the driver seemed a bit edgy and kept looking out the window and up. So he finally explained that there had been a lot of rain lately and made this area very prone to mudslides. I don't know about you but we all were plastered to the windows looking up and watching for falling rocks or a mud avalanche ready to push us off the mountain. But no worries we didn't see anything and were in the clear within 15 minutes.

Our driver gave us a good hindi lesson on the way back. We stopped for Numkeen chai on the way home (otherwise known as Yak tea). I wasn't the biggest fan of it but it tastes like buttery soup. It is made of ghee, salt and tea. If you go in thinking "soup" it's actually not too bad... We left there, and finally arrived at our house at 9pm.

A Weekend Retreat... culinary artists in the making

To the left you can see the culinary artists hard at work...
We have Betty and Martha working strenuously on adding the perfect ratio of mushrooms, onions, spices, and tomatoes to make that perfect from scratch pizza taste. And of course the most important part is the right sauce to cheese ratio... that takes hours upon hours to perfect.
However..... there was one snaffoo in this whole plan...
the stores were out of mozzarella cheese!!! Tragic it was!!! So what to do?

We stepped up to the challenge and used our vast intelligence to come up with a solution.... oh yes, cheese in a can!! Scrumptious!
Easy to grate but more difficult to digest...

Ah yes...the final product!!

do you spy pepperoni on our pizza??

OH YES!! scandalous, I know!

Zoos are neat....i mean my house

We live in a zoo...

Random stray dogs guard our porch, Monkeys swing from our mango tree, crows and parrots fly overhead, mice scurry from our kitchen, a family of gecko lizards live in our living room behind a tube light, our neighbor has a rabbit, ants live inside our bathroom door, and a cow just moved in on our roof....

We live in a zoo.... It's true.

See Beki's blog for pictures of "gauri" our upstairs neighbor...

http://bekib.blogspot.com

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY INDIA!

Here's a history blurb for you: Today is India's independence day!!
The state of India formally gained independence on August 15, 1947 after centuries of British rule.Independence Day is an occasion to rejoice in their freedom and to pay collective homage to all those people who sacrificed their lives to the cause. But it is more than that. It also marks the coming together of more than 400 princely states into one nation - India.

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now
the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight
hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
Jawaharlal Nehru

So i was planning on giving you some pictures of festivities here in Nimda* for independence day...however we found out that everything closes down and they had a program this morning and we missed it. since when does anything happen before 11 am around here? i mean really?

A Wedding in the City Beautiful

Ladies Sungeet
We arrived 30 min after they told us to come in which we still found ourselves one of the first to arrive! We sat around for maybe 45 min or an hour before anything really started. Then all the ladies were asked to come sit on cushions that had been set up on the floor. (Picture on left: remember one of my simple joys was christmas lights?? this was so fun!)
So we all sat in a group around a lady with a drum and they sang a bunch of songs that I couldn’t understand. A few ladies took turns getting up to dance to the song while we watched and clapped. Different on lookers would come and twirl money around their head as if giving a blessing then putting the money in their hand.After this, the dancing started on the dance floor and servers came in the room with drinks and appetizers galore. Every 2 seconds a new waitor was in front of you with a different plate of food or tray of cold drinks. This went on for like 30 min – 1 hour when the buffet line was opened for people to get food. It was mostly Indian food – dal muckni, chipati, alloo mutter, paneer dishes, rice palao..etc there were a few Indian Chinese dishes such as noodles and spring rolls.
After this we waited around a little bit longer then said goodbye to the bride and groom and their family and left soon after since it was really really hot in the non ac building
Haldi Ceremony
At about 11 or 11:30am we went to the building where the wedding would be held that evening. This ceremony is for close friends and family. They were serving breakfast and snacks. After they finished eating we went to Nidhi’s family’s hotel room. So we went to their hotel room and all squished in - sitting on the bed, the floor and a couch or two. The pundit came in and started setting up all his stuff ie flowers, powders, water, stuff for tikka (the stuff they wipe on their forehead in between the eyebrows during puja) there was a small shrine set up as well with incense lit. The men participating had their heads covered and so did the bride during most of the ceremony. The pundit did a lot of chanting and reading from their holy book. This was such a chaotic ceremony…there were babies crying, cell phones ringing, people answering their cell phones, people changing spots ever two seconds and walking around, with the bridal photographer taking pictures and moving around as well. Finally after about 2 hours of this, the bride sits in the middle of the room and the men get up and move. Everyone gets in a line, and once it is your turn you squat down or get onyour knees and get the haldi out of a bowl to spread on her face. It is to make her skin glow for the ceremony that evening and it is your chance to say something to her or give a blessing or a hug. It was a very emotional time for her when the bride spoke to her mom and dad. We left after this with everyone else and went to eat lunch and take a break before we had to get ready for the all night wedding to come.

The wedding:
Before we went to the wedding, Julie, Emily and I went to Kyle’s landlord’s house where his wife and 2 daughters had agreed to wrap our sarees for us. So now we know how to wrap sarees and wear the tikkas in our hair like true Indians! They were so excited to help us and did a great job! We have been invited back to see them anytime we come to visit Kyle. So that is really neat!(Above: Jules, me, Emily, and erika). We arrived at the wedding at 10:30 or 11pm. The bride and groom were on stage getting their picture taken with all their family and friends. They must have been soo hot, since the room was already sweltering and they kept having a bright light put on them from the photographer. We waited our turn and got our picture taken with them, that pic is on James’ Roberts camera so you’ll have to wait for that one. =) This sign below just made me laugh so i had to take a picture of it. Afterwards we ate dinner, they had buffet tables lining 2 walls with enough food to feed an army. They had Indian food, Chinese food, and some pastas followed by ice cream for dessert and a frozen Indian sweet on a stick. After this the dancing started. But it didn’t last too long, evidently this wasn’t a crowd too excited about dancing anyways. By this point a lot of people had already come, eaten and left. That didn't stop us and the continual flow of Backstreet Boys, Usher and Hotel California to keep us away from the dance floor. to the right is a pic of me,James, and Jules. James was our chaperone for the evening... things just go so much smoother when there is a guy around!

A little after midnight we were told to move to a different room since they were trying to break down and clean the main room. We went outside and waited in chairs near the tent where the actual ceremony would start. Which the ceremony didn’t start until after 2 a.m. oi. They had cold drinks, chai, and coffee being circulated during the ceremony by waiters to keep their guests awake. The same pundit that was at the Haldi ceremony performed the marriage ceremony as well. The main things that I can remember from the actual ceremony was that at the beginning there is a string tied from the bride and groom to the brides parents. The bride’s mother poured the water from a pitcher into a bowl. The pundit read from the book he had and chanted. After another hour and a half we finally start in on their 7 vows that each take. Then they walk around the fire seven times to symbolize the seven vows they have just taken. Finally around 4 am they finally announce that they are man and wife. Then everyone who is still there stand around them and throw rice at them then later throw flower petals at them. It was about 4:15 am at this time so we said our goodbyes and left to go pass out in our beds at the hotel.


The same day as the wedding was an indian holiday to honor brothers. The brother is given a bracelet as a symbol of honor that he must wear for the next year. I don't have a real brother so its nice to know i have some great honorary ones that look out for me over here.

there are some more pictures on Jules blog: http://julia22gulia.blogspot.com

Wedding and Dhaam

This my friends is dhaam... the picture below is the server who comes by and puts each dish on your leaf. The picture on the left is a dish specific to this area and usually is served as the second or third dish that comes by. First they pile that big mountain of rice on your leaf. Then you section off a small pile of rice and a server will come by and will put a ladle full of food on your rice.

Eat quickly because the next course comes soon! Its like going to a horse race... once that first ladle starts serving..you can almost hear the bell ring and everything feels like its in fast forward. Once that last serving is served you can almost hear the ending buzzer and everyone gets up at the same time - runs toward the sinks to wash their hands then leaves...

There are usually around 6-8 dishes that you are served. Afterwards you go home and pass out because you are so full. We usually don't eat anything that day until we get there if we know we will be eating Dhaam.

Here is me and one of my neighbors at the wedding. More neighbors...
The Bride and Groom (She's soo tiny!)