lots of things

hello dear readers! i apologize for my lack of updates. there have been many, i assure you.

last sunday, we all split into groups of four and were assigned to an indian university student. my group was lucky and we got two leaders, sumitra and praveen, both linguistic phd students. they helped us figure out the bus system, not a simple task. praveen hung out mainly with max, the only guy in our group, since praveen is a guy and the buses are segregated women and men. sumitra told me that she wants me to come over to her house and cook with her! and when i told her i wanted to get a sari, she told me she would take me to the place she goes and to her tailor too. what great fun.

monday night, after a day of sampling classes, we all met for fusion music. indian fusion music is a mix of western styles and classical indian styles. there was a sitar, tabla, flute (made of bamboo), an electric guitar, and a drum set. it was SO good and i'm pretty sure my mouth hanging open the whole time in awe and pure joy. some of my friends here recorded little videos of it, so once they've uploaded them, i'll post it here in my blog. for now, here are some pictures that my friend denise took:

sitar

tabla

and a fun fact about denise: all the indians pronounce her name as dennis, haha. all of us started to call her dennis for fun and now it's strange for us to call her denise. also, there's this friend, zackary, he goes by zack. the indian people call him zach--as in za-ch. or za-ch-a-dee. we like to call him za-ch as well :)

on wednesday, we had to register for residential status with the police. they house themselves in the old airport, completely abandoned, and i've heard it's haunted. no ghost encounters though. just two and a half hours of waiting around in order to sign three papers.

thursday night, we got a sampling of the culture classes we can take as extracurricular activities. the classes offered are tabla, sitar, kathak, and hindustani vocal. kathak is a dance that you do to indian classical music where you dance with an anklet of bells. i signed up for the sitar and vocal class--and the best part is...i'll be coming home with my very own sitar! and hopefully the skills to play it!

more to come--i don't to overwhelm you all at once!

love to you from india,
lauren