Update on my life

Ok so here's a quick summary of everything that's gone on since I posted last. Life has gotten pretty busy all of a sudden. Last night I went to another foreign students association party at JNU. It was hilarious but not particularly fun. They had set up this weird backwards tent with walls made of fabric and no roof on the lawn in front of one of the academic buildings. When I got there, several deans of various things were lined up in chairs on the dance floor, making speeches. Apparently there was some confusion among the members of the fsa board as to what is  supposed to go on at a party. After the speeches, they served chinese food and soda and then turned off all the lights and started playing "dance music". During this whole time, of course, guys are making awkward advances in halting English along the lines of, "I think I met you yesterday." "Nope." "Yea at that party." "No that wasn't me." "Yes it was." and so forth. 

This week was the beginning of the festival season for Hindus and the end of Ramadan so there are all of these fasts and festivals and such going on. Thursday was a holiday in honor of Gandhi's birthday. I went with Lata and Manu to visit one of their cousins who has a boutique and designs clothes in a suburb of Delhi. She's going to make me Indian clothes. I'm so excited! I also got to try on a sari  for the first time. They're so hard to wear! I need to practice so I don't make a fool of myself on Diwali when I'm supposed to actually wear one. Getting all wrapped up in it isn't that hard, although making it look neat is a challenge, but  getting it to stay in place is impossible! Even when I was just standing still the piece over my shoulder kept sliding off. Apparently it's ok to cheat and use safety pins to keep it all in place.

I went to erev Rosh Hashanah services at the synagogue here. It was hilarious and chaotic with three men leading the whole thing, each with his own pace and tunes, and no one else having any idea what was going on. They managed to wrap the whole thing up in under 45 minutes, though, which was impressive. Tuesday night I went to a dinner hosted by a lady from the synagogue who is here working for the UN Development Programme. It was cool to meet Jewish people from all over the world  who are in India  for all different really interesting reasons. They also had challah there, which was glorious!

I also bought a bike this week. I have to remember to say "cycle" not  "bike", though, because here they call motorcycles "bikes" and people get very concerned when they think I plan to drive around the city on a motorcycle. I've been having a great time riding back and forth to JNU and around the neighborhood. I'm so sick of being driven around and it's nice to get to explore a little bit without deciding on a destination ahead of time. It turns out there are all these gender and class issues tied to riding cycles and people definitely look at me funny when I'm out riding but I'm not willing to let that restrict  me to  being driven around.