technical difficulties..

Sorry i have not posted in a while - it is due to technical difficulties-

lack of internet has been the culprit this week,

but i am alive no worries and i will post ASAP.

who?? we're just here for the food...

Uncle ji and auntie ji invited us to someone's wedding.

Apparently it was auntie ji's friend's something's someone's daughter.... no idea.

Here is part of the barat coming in ....the groom is already at the front of the room.

This was definitely one of the nicer weddings we'd been to.

The decorations looked new and not reused for 20 years.

Uncle ji's reasoning for us going was that there would be a good dinner...

There's no arguing with that!

So we came and we sat a bit. The barat came and then the pre-appetizers were served by waiters carrying the trays...and sit a bit more. Then you go to another room for the real appetizers...eat all this really quickly and wash it down with some coffee or chai. Then we sit for a while longer...kind of wondering what we were doing. Then we move to the main room and sit some more....sensing a trend?? Then its our turn to go to the dining tent where there are tons of fake chandelier lights hanging and a big statue of Ganesh, the elephant god, in the middle guarding the plates. All around the tent, a lovely buffet of all the indian food you can eat is set up. But you don't sit a bit...you eat holding your plate and really quickly. Naturally.

We went back inside for a few more minutes to see the ceremony...aka be distracted by the mob of all boys dancing on the dance floor. They were definitely busting out moves that could only claim the names of "the light bulb", "petting the dog" , "the stumble", "the twist", "making the pizza", i could go on but i don't think i could convey the hilarity of it all. Especially since they had probably had more than just chai with their dinner...

Auntie ji, Mamta, Uncle ji, me

(My indian family)

HAPPY BIRTHDAYYY!!

Happy birthday bekkers!!!

In honor of beki's 24th day we celebrated at the beauty parlor getting our eyebrows threaded... then had lunch at the infamous Raj Mahal hotel restaurant.

Then in true Nimda* tradition, we made egg less cake to give it to our closest neighbors. Apparently here if its your birthday, you give people sweets or cake and you pay if you take people out to lunch. As tasty as egg less chocolate cake is..... we gave it all away to the neighbors and came home and made BOX brownies WITH eggs. If you couldn't tell i decorated the brownie cake...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY (and as they say here) AND MANY RETURNS!!!

Explorations in the Great Sandwich city...

Only in India...

So i wish i could take credit for this picture...but i can't. Thanks Kyle for letting me steal it!!

a clash of cultures::: one who is accustomed to the ways of the west would think: "Its an elephant!!!!" however those of us more acclimated to the east would think: "A DRIVE THRU!!!"

An Excursion to Agra...a history blurb

sometime ago...in the age of the Mughal emporers... a certain ruler by the name of Shah Jahan fell in love with a beautiful woman. He married her and called her Mumtaz Mahal "jewel of the palace". They were inseparable - even though he had other wives. She was a help and advisor to him and was loved by the people for her charity work. However, heartache followed when she died giving birth to their 14th child....
The heartbroken emporer poured out his grief and much of the royal treasury into the construction of what is now known as the Taj mahal (crown palace). It took the equivalent of 20,000 workers working everyday for 22 years to complete it. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials during the construction. In all, 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the white marble.

It is rumored that Shah Jahan had no intentions of being buried at the Taj mahal but had plans to build an identical structure, but made of black marble, across the river facing the Taj. Soon after the completion of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan was deposed and put under house arrest by his son Aurangzeb, at Agra Fort.

Legend has it that he spent the remainder of his days gazing through the window at the Taj Mahal. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the Taj Mahal next to his wife, the only disruption of the otherwise perfect symmetry in the architecture.

in the picture above, you can see the Taj in the distance and what was once the moat around the fort. The moat was filled with crocodiles and turtles that surrounded the fort with leopards and tigers living in the "jungle" inside the high walls...

Touristy Times with Tonya...

India Gate

delhi traffic...
A wandering around Haus Quas

Good Times with Tonya in Nimda*

Bangkok in a blink...Happy one year!

We spent one night in Bangkok, thailand and flew back to India the next day. We took the SkyTrain to meet up with Stephanie and Aaron who were in town. We ate at Outback!! A bloomin' onion and free refills!! amazing!!

This day was also to mark my one year anniversary. So,to commemorate this day I enjoyed a rare but extra delicious DrPepper that i had received in chiang mai....

HAPPY ONE YEAR!!!

Malaysian Madness

Hmmmm, its been awhile...but i don't remember the DFW airport or any other airport for that matter having such a photo worthy spot...We arrived safely in Penang, Malaysia!!! YAY! As we were in the taxi headed to our guest house, Sellers had her map out and asked the all too familiar question..."Where ARE we??" After some discussion, the taxi driver took pity on us, turned around, and in perfect english showed us on the map where we were and where we were going and also the things to do in Penang. English, a driver, AND a tour guide....can it get any better??We were a tad worried when we turned into the neighborhood of where our hostel was located... the words "trailor park" came to our minds....

We stayed at Ali's guest house.... when I looked at the name i guess i wasn't thinking that it was pronounced ah-lee but perhaps "allie" - which i've lived here long enough to know better... The "ah-lee's" guest house was nice and clean - they just failed to mention that a mosque resided next door - 5 am wake up calls come waay too early.... BUT it was only a few meters from the beach so that made it ok.When we arrived it was overcast and rainy. In fact it rained or was overcast most of the trip... So our solution to the bad weather?? lots of sleep and shopping. Our guest house was 2 blocks from a night market where we bought many fun things including paintings - I love this place!!!

Lindsey and i stopped in a shop in search of a sarong for her. We met this nice man who was trying to sell it to us but he wanted waay too much. He wouldn't budge from the price. He kept saying how the color was so nice and the material was the "best quality" and that it even had penang written on it...We kept talking to him and found out he was from Bangladesh and spoke hindi... So Sellers and I busted out our amazing hindi skills and of course he got so excited that a few more minutes of bargaining, he went to ask his boss if he could sell the sarong for the price we wanted and came back with the okay. The whole sarong excursion gave us two lessons: A) hindi will get you far in any south asian country B) when the piece of clothing that has the location of your vacation spot written on it - you should check the location of said writing... A few nights we ventured to the "civilized" part of the island..aka there was an amazing mall with a starbucks/mcdonalds/grocery store/etc. Ohhh yes my friends - that's us!!

we're in a mall AND we're wearing shorts!!!! Rebels... They even had a toys-r-us!!! it was like Christmas!
So then one day, we took this fun little ferry to an island called Langkawi. After battling the curvy roads of the himalayas in a bus, being tossed around inside a boat for three hours was a breeze!!

We grabbed a taxi to our next hostel which had character all on its own. They had an unlimited supply of pirated DVD's for you to borrow and wireless internet... beautiful!

And what guest house wouldn't be complete without a pet monkey???

The owner of the guest house let us know the area and that the beach was in walking distance. All you have to do is basically walk down the street, cut through a hotel and you're on the beach. She also told us that we could use the hotel's pool because they didn't care.... It was still a little drizzly so we went to check it out and took a walk on the beach - of course taking silly pictures.

We decided to rent a car since the weather wasn't trustworthy enough to rent scooters. There was hardly any traffic on the island so we just cruised around listening to old school jams on the radio. It was soo fun.

Our little car was named "bullet". He was not quite fast as a bullet and had some hard times with inclines and hills but we loved it and it loved us.

I did learn how to drive bullet... Learning a standard and driving on the left side of the road is a bit challenging....but FUN!! Bullet took us to new and exciting destinations like the waterfalls...and the cable car!!!
When we came down, Mandi and i couldn't help ourselves but check out the FREE bunny petting farm..it was hilarious! there were bunnies everywhere and one must have been hungry because it wanted to eat one of mandi's toes for lunch! We were a little thrown off that we didn't have to pay like 10 rupees to get in and another 10 to take pictures of the bunnies. we could come and go as we pleased...weird.

We did some more exploring on the island and tried to sneak into the four seasons... we all put on our sunglasses and drove bullet in as if it wouldn't look out of place next to all the mercedes and BMW's parked up in there.... we peaced out pretty quick after some funny looks from the valet guys...

we also found a great beach!! the sun came and went because of all the clouds and the water was cold but it was still nice to lay about and read.
The day we left to go back to penang, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day! And naturally there was a well-known Eagle statue on the harbor.... UNT Eagles- GO MEAN GREEN!

Our last day in Penang was spent sleeping late then having lunch on the beach and reading with our toes in the sand...ahhhh