Marriage....marriage is what brings us together today

Uncle ji took us to a wedding at his village.... it was really fun - really long but fun! And we only went to one day of the festivities... most shaddis or marriage ceremonies last anywhere from 3-7 days.
Our tailor was making a blouse for my saree and when she found out that i was going to a wedding, grabbed a jewelry box from her room and told me to wear it. Evidently it was her daughters... i felt very honored.

The first picture is of the barat - which is where the groom and the grooms family, friends, and a band parades in. Its pretty insane, tons of dancing and yelling and drums and untuned instruments all parading towards you...







Here are pictures from part of the marriage ceremony. The picture with the hands was taken before the mother of the bride pours water from a vase type holder over her daughters head so that it drips into the teardrop shaped holder and into the large bowl below.
This is the bride... i got to meet her before the ceremony began. She was all smiles until it was time to take a picture.. It is customary for the bride to look sad...traditionally it would dishonor her family because she is supposed to be sad to leave her family and now join her husband.

And this is me and my language helper... this is her saree that i am wearing.... she can't wear the colors white or black the first year or two of marriage so she wanted me to wear it since she couldn't.

Welcome Home!

Welcome to our house....

home of bucket baths, electricity outages, no A.C., night enemies, mangoes, and monkeys!

This is my side of the room... Beki has the other half.

This is our "formal sitting"

If you turn around you will see the "lounge area"

From the formal sitting if you turned right you would see the dining room

Here is our squatty....jealous?

Cooking with Papa Ji

We were invited downstairs to our landlord's flat for dinner. It was a special holiday that i couldn't pronounce little alone spell it for you. We ate food that is only found here in this area. I was invited into the kitchen which was pretty exciting - you don't wear shoes in the kitchen and only when you are considered part of the family do you usually get to go in someone else's kitchen.
This is Auntie ji and her sister that lives with them for now.... They are great!!

This is Papa ji cooking, he calls himself the cooking assistant since his wife did most of the work. But we have learned that he's a pretty good cook himself. And yes you also cook on the floor. Beki and I are trying to master what we call the indian squat...we are making progress however our ankles aren't strong enough yet. Basically you squat but your feet are flat on the ground.... You should try - its harder than it sounds.

Goomna (wandering)

Well we were walking the town and heading outside of the main market area when a lady started talking to us and told us to come to her house... strange thing about this culture - they don't ask you to come to their house, they tell you and sometimes don't really give you a choice. We had chai and visited with her a while.... and met her family and were invited to stay in her home the next time we were in town!

Here is a pic of one of the main temples in town.

Anyone notice something strange
about this 24 hour ATM...?


We were pretty excited about our mini trek...

it was only "7 km" to this lake.... or so they said.

Funny thing about tourism in our state...they forgot to mention that it was all downhill and you just follow the road....and the "lake" is more like a river with a lot of fish on steroids and big rocks. Seriously these fish were huge, several of them had to have been at least 3 ft long. We were a bit disappointed with our really challenging trek but now we know and we took the bus back.

So, i think we're going to make shirts....

with a picture of marijuana leaves on it.

You may call me Mary and Beki will be called Jane...

Yes, this is us in patch of what has become a very familiar plant..

And this sign on a building was just plain funny..

One afternoon i was sitting outside reading and journaling when group of ladies came up to me and i found myself whisked away to their home.

Hi, my name is april and yes i am a giant...

Cleaning in style

Well we have learned many tactics in cleaning our house. First squeegy the porch when it rains, (saves water) there are two drains on either end of the porch to help us out with this. Secondly this is a broom. Welcome to south asia where everything is done by squatting... so long handles are not needed. All the women are short anyway so why would they need something so tall?
They say it doesn't flood here...however that is not the case in our house. one day it was raining so hard and fast that the drains couldn't keep up and we became the guardians of our door so it wouldn't come inside. The other flood was located in our house where everytime we would use the sink, the water would come out from under and cause a new lake in our dining room.

Unwanted Guest

We found a guest living in our house... he was deported immediately.

Orange jumpsuits...

***so to understand, click on the link to Beki's blog....

then read her "biggest pet peeve"

I found this comic in a newspaper here - this is for you Beki!!!! love ya !!!even if you end up making me wear an orange jumpsuit to pick up all the trash in Nimda* with you....

Keep Nimda* Beautiful!!

Parties...they are Neat.

So sunday we had an American party for all of our neighbors in honor of Beki's mama being here. (New incentive for people to come - you get your own party...*cough cough hint hint*)
I hope our neighbors had fun cuz we had a blast!

It was a bit tricky choosing food since all of our guests were pure vegetarian (that includes eggs). We came up with one strange assortment of snacks but hey! they liked it....well ate it at least... we had veg pizza made from scratch, with fruit, bean salad, chips, lemonade, and candy. The only problem was that all 4 of the moms were fasting that day...so that posed a small problem but most of them came anyway they just didn't eat. Beki played her guitar and sang a few songs then they wanted me to do the electric slide that we had showed them a while back. Oh did i mention by myself? So yes i did the electric slide... alone...while beki tried to make up a country tune on her guitar with the whole room of people clapping to the beat.... It was a bit embarassing but ya just gotta do what ya gotta do. But then they showed us some dances and sang some of their songs - it was wonderful! Two of the girls danced then 3 of the ladies got up and danced and sang! I love this culture!
when most had gone, two of the girls showed me a couple dances and we practiced and played around out on the porch.

Indian Brides

So one evening we were coming back to our house from the roof and one of our neighbors came down with me. She came in our room, and probably within 3 minutes had located a makeup bag - I have never seen her so excited!! I don't think she could sit still as she was asking me to let her do my makeup. She announced..."I'm making you up to be an Indian bride"
... you can't help but giggle when she asks what each thing is and applies lipstick to say your eyelids and eyeliner to your lips. But she was having a blast so it didn't matter. When she was about finished, beki unknowingly comes in and is suddenly whisked onto the bed to become indian bride number two. It was a fun night!

Thanks Auntie Paula ji!!

YAY for packages!!! Papa ji came to announce i had a package!!! however he was late for duty(work) and i had to go to the post office on my own and not by scooter. *tear*

OH well! It was worth it!! I love coffee...and the coffee here, well ...its not the best. In fact your choices are nescafe or nescafe...

Oh yes that is chips, and dip and HOT sauce!

i love coffee....Thanks Auntie Paula ji!!! We were sooo excited!! By the way did i mention that coffee is wonderful???

i think instead of hunting down all this brown sugar... the packaged cookie mixes are the way to go....less mess anyways. good idea!

OH and the book - Su Doku really is addicting!! But its GREAT! I've been grounded from it unless we are traveling or i'm about to go to bed and all my work is done...

But my simple joy was the bubble wrap...

Beki's momma is here!

We spent 2 days in Amilan* and then hopped on a sleeper bus…the bus was Pepto pink – it was great. We did a little offroading here and there, so we were definitely flying all over the place and held on for dear life so we didn't fall out of our upper "bunk". So a brutal 17 and a half hours later, a couple bruises and a lot of holes in our knitting later we made it down the mountains to arrive in the Great Sandwich City to run some errands and pick up Beki’s mom who was flying in! The bus would have been great had we been driving on a flat road, but some of the roads really aren’t roads at all and I think there was something wrong with our bus….we would stop periodically and you would hear what sounded like hammering on the tires…
Have no fear we arrived safely and hung out with some friends in the City

after a bit of errand running....

We left the morning after we picked up Beki's momma from the airport just to stick her in a non-ac taxi to head 10 hours north to our home in 100 degree heat. It was a learning experience and we have developed a new love for high quality COLD H2O...

But, she made it!! She's gone shopping, is getting some suits made to wear, and adjusting to the culture so well. It has been a great eye-opener for us since some things just seem "normal" to us...she has reminded us that some of those things are definitely NOT normal in the states.

For example, one night Beki's mom was taking a bucket in the shower room and i was sitting in the dining room adjacent to it. She shouts through the door.."April? are you making noises out there? like playing with bubble wrap?" (i had received a package with bubble wrap in it is why she said that) and to this i replied... "No! Its just the ants in the bathroom door!" you can see the sawdust around the door... But hey, i'll take ants over "Night Enemies" any day... besides a couple of lizards have moved in and taken care of all other bug problems.

World Peace....

We were enjoying the sights and sounds of Amilan* when we came across the best restaurant EVER! Welcome to the World Peace Cafe...home of Veg/NonVeg Indian food, Chinese, Japanese, American, and Israeli food. A little something for everyone. And my chicken even came out in the shape of a heart!

P.S. i'd almost forgotten what chicken tasted like - it was great!

Bunnies, Snakes...and Yaks??

So we took a trip north about 3 hours (by taxi) and it was a relaxing ride...
except for the one traffic jam...



We arrived in Amilan* and stopped off at a REAL coffee shop/German cafe...It was wonderful! AND they had cute little cups with flowers on them. OHH the simple things of life...

The funny thing was that there were only white foreigners in the cafe. Normally we would be excited, but our first reaction was, "what are all these white people doing here??" I think sometimes we forget that we are not indian since white foreigners are so rare in Nimda*.So after stopping off at a friends house to drop off our stuff and catch up a bit, we headed up the hill to a temple where we found... YAKs!!! OH yes..i said YAKS.. They gave us "good price" only 50 rupees !!(like a little over a dollar) to sit on Mr. Yak and ride him up the hill and back...good thing we're used to being stared at...It was a pretty humorous sight.
Then we came across the biggest bunnies we had ever seen!! They were Huge! Afterwards we were leaving the temple and came across a snake charmer...
this is not my idea of a fun job... We wanted to ask him how many times he'd been bitten but he was a bit busy. ANd a guy with a big python around his neck kind of scared us off so we left pretty quickly..