Mehndi, again. Sam is a fan :)

Christelle's parents (who were here visiting for nearly a MONTH - more with them will show up on here eventually) were heading back to Belgium the next day, and we finally managed to convince her Mom to get some Mehndi done. This guy has a spot on the sidewalk at Omax Mall (the one across Sohna Road from us). Alex wanted to come but her dishes weren't washed, and Miranda didn't really seem into it, so just Sam and I went with Christelle and Frances.
I love to watch these guys work - what an art! We bought ourselves some tubes of the henna, but we are scared to try it. They make it look easy, but I am sure ours would look like stick people next to the Mona Lisa! (Incidently, a tube of the stuff they use costs 10 rupees in the market. Keep that in mind when you read what I paid! Pretty sure it is the White Lady price.) He had a binder with photos you could choose from - we sort of sign language what we want.
Sam wanted the full meal deal - both hands, up on the arm. (When we got home and it was dinner time. it presented a problem - she could not hold her own fork and Alex had to feed her!!) Frances was only brave enough to get one arm done, Christelle and I both opted for the ankle, she added one palm ("not the fingers, please, I need to cook tonight") I prefer the back of the hand. Less hassle while you wait for it to dry!

This much fun cost me 400 rupees, less than $10. Sam LOVES it. And it lasts several weeks, so its ok.

Alex? On the swim team? OUR Alex??

So. I am at home, minding my own, when the phone rings. It is the swim coach at GDGoenka (the kids' school). She tells me that there is a swim meet today at the American Embassy School in Delhi and they are short some girls in Alex's age group and could she go and swim for them?......uh, I guess so. (Can she swim an actual stroke, an actual length of the pool is what I think, but I don't say that.) So we arrange that I will walk out to Sohna Road and deliver a swimsuit, towel, goggles, and swim cap and sign the permission forms as the bus goes by on its way to Delhi. About 10 minutes later, Alex calls. I say, I forgot to ask if you WANTED to do this - do you? She says, well, yeah, whatever. So, suddenly I have a competitive swimmer in my family! Incidently, Sam IS on the swim team, but dislikes competition, and they have enough girls in HER age group, so she didn't go. Weird. Anyway, Randy knocks off work early and we drive to Delhi, since this could very well be the only swim meet we ever have reason to go to, and the girls relay is the first race. Alex swims breast stroke. At a blistering pace. haha. Not. BUT, she does it, she makes it, and we are both tired just watching, so there you go. Of course, the Goenka kids get SLAUGHTERED by the AES kids, who swim several hours a DAY (and this is their varsity team, too, not the B list kids) The other school at the meet is Pathways, the other Indian school we looked at. They are also bad, but not as bad as us. To be fair, Goenka has had a pool for less than a year, so what do you expect. Anyway, after the relay (and AES was done, while we were on our 2nd leg) the boys relay started, and about halfway thru, lightening was spotted. Everybody got out of the pool, it proceeded to DUMP with rain, and after an hour, they called the meet. And we went home. By way of KFC for dinner :) . Of course, the photos do not do justice to the amount of rain that fell. We were trapped under a stand umbrella on the far side of the pool from the kids.
This is the GDGoenka contingent.
One thing to notice - the swim suits on the Indian girls. I talked about this earlier, when we went to the water park, but to see a kid try to RACE in a suit with a skirt and legs was pretty weird. Oh yeah, and the other teams both had team suits, and matching towels, etc etc. Oh well. I am just glad I don't have to fork out $50 for a special "swim costume" (not suit, costime). Here is video of Alex, and we were very pleased with her performance. She got the job done, and we were happy with her willingness to put herself out there and give it a shot.
Alex has surprised us with how her swimming has improved. Actually, all the kids are so much better this year. We have been experimenting with snorkeling too, and Alex caught on right away - she dives down under with the snorkel and everything.

The BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED!!! Check March, April....

I apologize again for the delay, but the blog is getting new stuff added all the time! Unfortunately for you, the fair reader, I am posting these events as to the dates they occured, NOT when I get around to finally blogging them. I am sorry - I know it is more work for you. But less confusing for me. So, to see our big vacation for real, (the cause of the blog delay) go back in time to March (which is when we went) and read the blogs in reverse order - they are numbered (1 to 15) for your convenience. Have fun! (the trip is the oldest stuff, and much has been posted that fits in the time frame since then, so check April - and soon May - too. ) Thanks for hanging in there, and being interested in our wacky experiences here. :)

we are famous! mis-quoted, but famous :)

So we were in Delhi shopping at Janpath market, buying pillow covers, and a girl approached us and said she was a journalist doing an article about tourists in Delhi and would we comment. We said sure, but we weren't tourists. She said ok and took our photo and wrote our answers down, and our names. We watched the papers and thought she must have either been scamming us, or decided not to use us. It was a whole week later that we showed

up in there, on page 4. And our names are spelled right, and match our photo, but that is where it ends - NOTHING she says we said, we actually said. We are NOT from France, we were NOT buying silk scarves, and we do NOT have GPS on our cell phones! So, my faith in the paper dropped a few notches. We have long known, tho, that what is in quotation marks here is a loose interpretation, and not an actual quote - we figured this out when they would quote Americans using words and phrases that no American would ever use! It also baffles me that they cannot tell the difference between an American accent and a British accent and a German or Dutch accent. I mean, really, we sound NOTHING alike! (oh yeah, we don't know anything about Sector 42, but we don't care either! and I think "besotted" is a strong word.)
But still, it was kinda fun to be in the paper!

An electrical storm like we have never seen before!

Last night we were hit with a storm. It started with incredible wind, then moved into sheets of rain and lightning like crazy! We were watching it from the door but didn't think fast enough to go to the roof and take video. The video is still pretty incredible, but this was when the wind and rain were over and the lightning was about half what it had been. Amazing!

A monkey on my back (yard, that is)

Well, this was really fun! Isaac was in Miranda's room that looks into the back and started yelling at everyone to come quick! He ran for the camera and took the first video too. This monkey was eating all the fruit (not sure what fruit it is) off this little tree. He was messy, too! And completely not bothered by his audience. We took the photos and video thru the window, of course, so that is why it appears a bit fuzzy.

When he left, he swung up onto the wall with no effort at all and strolled away. Lately we see him almost every morning, taking his morning constitutional along the wall, the whole length of the block. Christelle sees him daily on her wall too, so I guess he must take a lap of the whole neighbourhood!

Sari shopping - FUN FUN FUN!!

Christelle got this idea that we should shop for sari - even tho she thought she would look like a sausage in one! I said I thought they were kind of flattering, but we didn't really know anything about it. So off we went, to the Ambience Mall - the largest mall in India, with over a kilometre of shopping on each level! (and there are 5 levels!!)
The first place we went into was a friendly choice (you are my sister - this is your store) and lots of guys standing around. No women anywhere. And thousands of sari to choose from. So we jumped right in! You can see the long counter. You point to one and they take it down, hold it just so, and fling it out and away from them so it flows out, unrolling in the air and landing gently on the long counter so you can get a good view of the 6 metres of fabric. You say, oh no I don't like that one, and they say no problem, and get out another. Pretty soon you have a thick stack on the counter. You select two or three, step to the side, and he fits you (the fun part!)
You start with arms in the air so he can wrap around your waist. When he has gone around once, he starts making pleats about the width of his hand. Lots of pleats. Then he wraps a think velcro'd elastic around your waist to hold the pleats right in the front. There is still 2 metres of fabric to go, so it wraps to the left, under your left arm, rising up under your right armpit, to cross the chest and go over the left shoulder. The result is a sort of draped grecian goddess look that is so fun! There are many variations to the basic method - different ways to go over the shoulder etc. This is a regional thing. She decided she liked red, so she tried a bunch of those. Well, Christelle looked so NOT like a sausage and it looked so fun that I wanted in! The guy (you know, my brother) told me that with my large height, sari looked very good on me :)

We have our own shirts on to try on. We figured out that a plain colour t-shirt is best so the next time we went we planned ahead.

These are the same - just different colours. That is a bit rare - most sari are one-offs - there is ONLY one, ever. You will not see another woman wearing the same one because there isn't another one. We took some self-portraits.


Then we moved on to the cream coloured ones

We had lots of fun, but didn't buy sari that day. I got mine for Mother's Day, and we had ours stitched - which is to say they are "cheaters" - sewn into a dress with just the last draping around the body left up to us. This frees us from doing the pleats and worrying that someone will step on the hem and you will be dress-less suddenly!

This is at a baby shower in the neighbourhood - we were mixing an American idea (the baby shower part) with an Indian idea (to dress up and wear sari and celebrate the soon-to-be mom). It was fun to dress up! Sadly, sari seems to look a million times better on a size two Indian, than a somewhat larger whitey! We did learn the secrets of diaper pins to hold your sari together, tho!

BTW, sari prices vary widely - from 8 or 10 dollars for a rayon one, to thousands for an elaborate bridal one. (Of course, you pay more at the mall than you do at the market.) They come in silk, cotton, crepe, rayon, georgette... and more. In every colour imaginable. Except purple - we have never seen a purple one (?). They can be solid colours, patterned, embroidered, beaded, seuined, all of the above. You wear a petticoat under-skirt thing underneath. The fabric for the blouse part is attached to one end of the sari fabric and you have the blouse stitched up (costs about 5 dollars) into a very tight, usually short top with short sleeves. We both opted for as long a top as they had fabric to make! The Indian women let their bellies show, which is not always a good thing. To have it stitched up completely (which even some Indian women do because it is so much easier) costs another 10 to 15 dollars. The saris you see us wearing in this photo are georgette fabric and cost about 50 dollars for mine and 80 for Christelle's. We will definately buy more of these awesome dresses!