Wedding Photos

These two broke the rules and cracked some smiles for their photo shoot. However, I heard they had both remained celibate prior to their wedding, so that may give a clue to the twinkle in their eyes.









Ahhhhh, that's more like it. Stone faced and serious. Traditional. It can be hard to keep a straight face when 50 Cent is screaming in your ears about a fully loaded clip.









Mia bumps and grinds with a woman on the dance floor. This is taking place at the same time as, and ten feet away from, the photo above. Mia had to dance with a girl because all the guys were too busy showing off their sweet moves to each other to be bothered with women. (Joe included.)







All the women in their saris before our second wedding. From left to right... Rani, Mata Ji, Kirin, Devi, Coco, Shamika and Mia.












The entry to a wedding is spectacular. It's amazing what a little fabric and some accent lighting can do to really spruce up a filthy alley.











While everyone else enjoys meals and dancing at the wedding the groom makes his way through the dark streets on a white steed. If he wants a few extra bucks he will pick up a passenger and act as a luxury taxi service.









This is Raj. He's a good guy. He co-signed on my motorcycle for me without me even asking. He also found old photos of me on the internet and loaded them into his cell phone. Then he used them to show everyone that he knew me. We look the same height but he is actually standing on a chair in this photo. Raj's brother, Narish, got me my own bottle of Coca Cola at the soda stand because I was an honored guest. Everyone else just got a glass. They are all so friendly here.










Mia and Rani gossip about who will be next to get married. "I hope it's ME!" they each say before making giggle noises and lightly swatting each other.
(It is more likely they were talking about something serious. Something cultural which could be applied both locally and globally.)






The young lady in this picture is hogging down on her 10th ice cream for the night. She just learned that she can get her way if she shrieks at the top of her lungs and drops to the floor like a wet noodle. The baby does that too.










This groom talked on his cell phone for the whole wedding prior to his bride arriving. "Hello, Alicia? Yeah so guess what... I'm getting married tonightWHHAAATTT!!! Yeah... yeah... so I wont be coming over later... yeah... look I gotta go.... gotta make some more calls. Ok, PEACE!"






Here comes he bride. None of that sappy organ music in India. Just the non-stop pounding of massive drums as she is escorted to her throne by all the women in her family.











Mia acts the princess as everyone gets ready to go at Mata Ji's house.












Mata Ji poses in her finest dress and jewels. She then accidentally put on two different shoes. When she noticed at the wedding she took them off and put them in her purse, choosing to go barefoot rather than have someone notice her lack of observational skills.













Joe enjoys a fruity, pink drink. No alcohol is served at the weddings. They keep everyone happy by providing those tiny umbrellas that seem so hard to find nowadays.















Another groom rides in on his horse. It all seems serious until you look just to the side of him....












......WHOOOOOOOOO!













Look at all the twinkle lights in the trees and the colors on the fresh fruit stand! Beautiful.












MMmmmmmmm. Delicious!












These kids were all smiles until the camera came out. More importantly, look at the JUMPING CASTLE directly behind us! It's right between the buffet and the thrones! These people know how to throw a party.
(Also important is the shirt on the young boy in yellow. It said, "It's all about CASH in the BANK!" in big silver letters all over it. Come on man, it's a wedding.)





Another wedding well done.

Indian Weddings

(By Joe)

(Some of you may have read part of this in an email, but I assure you it has now been enhanced with less redundancy, better descriptions, better grammar, better phrasing and less redundancy.)

We have now been to a number of weddings here in India. It was just wedding season so for 3 weeks in a row we were at a different wedding every Sunday. Mia got dolled up in very fancy saris for each one. The family we are staying with loaned her the finest silks, jewels and stick-on dots to make sure she was the prettiest girl at the ball. She was a picture of elegance. Truly stunning. I, however, attended each wedding in my same faded, button up black shirt, jeans, brown belt and black sneakers that have been my dress outfit for the past 8 months. It also makes up my daily school outfit here. (Or it did until I got a bunch of custom tailored clothes made cuz I'm a baller.)

Walking into a wedding is not unlike walking into a circus tent with prisms held over your eyes. Red and white striped fabric hangs everywhere and is embellished with rainbow fabrics and flowers of every description. The reception starts before the couple is even arrives and everything takes place in the same room or outdoor courtyard. A dance floor and DJ stand that rivals the hottest night club setup pounds Hindi top 40 hits into the very bones of of the wedding attendees. Laser lights and disco balls create a euro club ambiance that might seem tacky were it not for the 100's of Indians in jewels, suits and saris gyrating, shaking it and getting generally sweaty on the dance floor. The first few hours are reserved for the guests to snack, dance and socialize. Then, around 10:00, the groom comes into range. He rides atop a white horse behind a full marching band, and is escorted through the darkened city streets by men carrying huge, electronic candelabras. His best men dance in and out of the procession, whooping and hollering, pumping fists, playing air guitars, and pelvic-thrusting against anything and anyone that gets in their way.

When the groom arrives at the main gate to the wedding he dismounts, and is escorted in to sit on a raised throne high above the crowds. He remains stern and serious trough the whole ordeal. It is considered very inappropriate for him to so much as crack a smile. After another hour or so, his wife to be is led in by her female friends and family. They walk slowly and she looks as though she is going to cry. I'm told this is also tradition but the effect is similar to watching a woman being led to the gallows. Young men dance around her, pounding huge drums as she is slowly shuffled to her her own throne beside the groom's. I don't really know what happens after that because it is about that time that we usually have to go home and go to bed.

At these weddings Mia and I end up being treated as celebrities. Everyone wants their photo taken with us, including the bride and groom. Those who don't want to actually talk to us simply walk up and blatantly take photos of us with their camera phones without asking. Now I know how it feels to be all these Asians you see photos of on our blog. The host at one wedding kept coming up and shaking our hands and saying, "Good? Wedding good?"
"Yes," we would say, "Very good. It's beautiful!"
Then he would stand there looking very flustered, clearly having so much more to say, but not having the English words to say them in. "All good?"
"Yes. Very good."
The conversation was repeated many times.

The celebrity status became a problem at one of the weddings as I have already related to a few of you. Everyone kept coming up to us to shake our hands, invite us to dance and to get to know who were were. Then at one point in the night a drunk gentleman approached me and started shaking my hand and saying how excited he was to meet me. He began speaking in Hindi and I asked the people I was with to translate. To my surprise they pulled me away from him and told me not to talk to him because he was drunk. Later in the night the man came up to me again and started talking and I began chatting with him. He popped a cigarette in his mouth an offered one to me. I accepted it. He lit it for me and I started smoking, aping him perfectly to facilitate bonding. (This was great for me because in Malaysia I had a middle aged Indian friend and we would hang out and smoke while we talked away the hours. It was like old times.) The man was very friendly.

Then the friends we arrived with came back and started pulling him away again and Drunky stared yelling at them. I assume he was saying something along the lines of, "Why does everyone ELSE get to talk to the white guy and I keep getting shut down!" Someone punched someone and the next thing I knew there was a huge fistfight. He just wanted to talk to me and they wouldn't let him. Everyone in the wedding was rushing around screaming and punching. People who only seconds before had been sipping tea from dainty cups and nibbling h'ourderves were now emitting high pitched, guttural howls through clenched teeth. Their faces angled toward the ceiling, their eyes rolled back in their heads with rage. Their hands clawing and tearing at my new friends face, clothes and hair. I scanned the room for Mia. We made eye contact and I gave her the same look I gave my sister once when I noticed she had just witnessed me cause a large car accident.

Seconds later we were being shuttled out the door by the people we came with. They were yelling at me over what sounded like a stamped of an assortment of world's noisier animals, "That's why you don't talk to a person who drinks! Also, you don't smoke!" However, it seemed to me that the man was not trying to cause any problems. He just didn't like that everyone else got to shake my hand and talk to me and he didn't. I feel the moral may be, "That's why it's better to make quick small talk with the drunk guy and then move on to the next guest," which was my plan. Anyway, our friends said not to feel bad because in India 90 percent of the weddings blow up into fights and then everyone just returns to partying. I said that in America 90 percent of people at a wedding reception are drunk, so it isn't as big a deal to talk to someone who has been drinking. Learning a new culture takes time.

Another day in class

Joe demands that his students respect him. Rinky and Sahida are two of the deaf students we work with in the morning.











This is Day One of Joe and Rinky's mural. Rinky is also an artist an works as a beautician in the afternoons.















One of the classes in the slums. They can really pack in the peanuts.

















The title of this educational poster is "Digestive System". Every day hundreds of children choke in India because of posters like these. I tried to cross the title out with a marker but my marker died.









We teach afternoon English in one of those rooms like you see in National Geographic. Thrilling!











Joe teaches multiplication to three of the girls while the other two work with Mia on addition.












Pooja says, "Thanks for teaching me math, Mia. You are a great teacher!" You can't hear it though because she says it in sign.














Joe always teaches with a grin instead of an ear twist or a karate chop. The girls have thanked him for that repeatedly. However, they are more than willing to slap each other around for anything from a sassy comment to a wrong math answer.















Deeponker helps Joe get the anatomy just right on a nudie drawing instead of either of them paying attention during English conversation class.










Chandan concentrates on a question written for him by Mia.












Mia uses a drawing done by Joe and Deeponker to explain some things to Sanjay.












Everyone in our morning class loves to watch everyone else work and then give them a good neener-neener if they screw up. Preeti, Pooja and Mia all hold their breath and ready their insults while Sahida works on a timed multiplication problem.








Mia rests her feet after another long day of teaching.

A glimpse of India

It is scary going into other countries and looking around at the children, knowing one day you very well may have to face them on the battlefield. India is going to be a tough country to beat.









Cows are everywhere. They stand in road medians, eat garbage off the sidewalks, and generally act like they own the place. It is perfectly acceptable to give them a good pat as you pass them on the street.









A boy proudly displays a chicken in the slums.

















Joe steals people's laundry to sell on the streets. He is like the opposite of Santa.












This is Joe number 'do'. He looks and acts very similarly to Joe number 2 in Tucson. 'Do' means two here.










This is the Indian equivalent of eyebrow waxing. The hair is ripped from your body by rapidly spinning thread. Mia put herself up for display while this beautician taught her class this age old art. Her assistant gouged Mia's eye because Mia was squirming.














Boys run over from a mid-afternoon game of cricket to say hello. Mostly everyone here carries around a cricket bat all the time because an impromptu game can break out anywhere.










Mia pulls a Vanna White in our bedroom. It's a few steps up from our other bedrooms this trip. The room actually changes itself to match your outfit!











This powder is used to make the dots or 'bindis' on people's foreheads. I use it to make clouds of red dust into which I disappear at the end of my street magic show.










This is a view through a door.

















Our first day out in Delhi. There are so many things here!












This little girl LOOOOVED to touch Mia's leg while Mia was trying to teach.












A street side fruit stand.











The Baha'i Lotus Temple.

Delhi

(by Mia)

Joe and I are still in Delhi and still absolutely LOVING it. It's crowded and dirty and hot and colorful and chaotic and crazy and I think the most all-around fascinating place we've been so far. There are just people doing things everywhere you look. A barber shop that is just a chair by the side of the road and a mirror nailed to a wall, and a guy standing there shaving another guy- right alongside the 4-lane highway!! Or the Indian equivalent; they don't really do "lanes" here. And inches from this barber shop is a juice stand, one guy with about a thousand pieces of fruit and a blender, potential customers trying to push through the herd of passing holy cattle that has decided to graze on discarded mango peels right in front of the stand. Every business here has a sign that looks like it was constructed from discarded scrap metal and painted by a kindergarten class, and then shot with a few dozen times with a bebe gun. Next to the juice shop are a couple teenagers stirring a huge vat of boiling milk over some hot coals and burning garbage. Women are lining up with their pots and pails and pans in which they'll take their milk home and boil it again, just to be safe. Weaving through the cars and rickshaws and motorbikes and pedestrians is an old man on a bicycle pulling a wooden cart of various rubbish, calling out what sounds like "BARAAAYA!" in a kind of sing-songy chant. He buys and sells anything and everything people no longer want, and goes through the crying out this same appeal, a kind of super-convenient traveling garage-sale.

The slums are wild, picturesque in a kind of fascinatingly horrible way. All the ramshackle houses are painted different colors, vibrant teals and yellows and deep deep reds. Once you enter the slums the passageways are barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, yet residents of course have their goats and chickens and everything in there, crowding the lanes narrow lanes, already flowing with human waste and garbage. Yet it's oddly beautiful too. Even in the slums, women dress in ornately decorated saris, covered in tiny mirrors and rhinestones and jewels, layers of flowing pants under skirts under shawls and silky decorative scarves. We pass shrines everywhere we go, little pockets of sanctity carved out of walls or tucked into corners. Miniature images of deities and portraits of saints, where businessmen will put down their briefcases and pause to pour yogurt over the head of a goddess and light a candle in prayer. And there's so much more. I could go on and on.

We're living with the founder of a nonprofit that does outreach to kids in the slums, providing them with classes and tutoring and food and clothes and sometimes scholarships too. Joe and I are teaching a conversational English class to the teachers and math/English/speech class (depending on the student) to a group of disabled girls. From what we've gathered, the public schools here basically have no infrastructure to accommodate students with disabilities, so they're either not permitted to attend, or they're allowed into class but aren't given any special help, so they quickly fall way way behind. Our students have a huge range of problems and are at all different levels in their formal education, so we have to create different lesson plans for each student every day. Today I was teaching very basic addition to a deaf 10 year old and learning disabled 19 year old, while Joe worked on multiplication with 2 deaf teenagers and an 11 year old girl who's lost the use of her legs as a result of polio. Joe's also working on a mural in one of the schools with a very talented deaf girl who's dubbed herself his apprentice, as well as starting up general art classes with another volunteer.

P-WHY runs a women's center as well, a home for women who have had to leave their families (usually because of spousal abuse) as well as a vocational school for women in the slums. I had the girls in the beauty class do my eyebrows the other day. They use a piece of string, twisted in the middle around a finger and held with one end in the hand and the other between the teeth of the beautician. She then uses her thumb to gouge the eye of her client (in this case, me) to keep the skin taut, while quickly tightening the twists in the string and in one quick motion -- ripping out the eyebrow hair by the root. It's painful but very effective.

The house we're staying in is amazing. The founder of the organization and her husband have spent a lot of their lives abroad, as have their kids. Anou is beautiful and well-traveled and politically active and spiritual in a new age, yoga, businesswoman/advocate kind of way. And her husband Ranjin is the quintessential Indian Colonial British gentleman, with his scotch and cigars and love of Elvis Presley music. He'll gather us all into the "drawing room" or whatever after dinner and play old rock and roll and quiz us on who sings this and who sings that, and then scold Joe and me for not knowing our own cultural heritage. And they have servants. I know Joe wrote about this is the last blog, but WOW! It's just so, well... foreign to us. Even now I can hear a faint voice in a far away hallway calling out, "Deepak?! Chanda?!" Joe just bought a used motorcycle, and he and Deepak spent yesterday afternoon cleaning and polishing it (Deepak's idea), two very excited boys with new toy. They're making big plans for when Joe's good enough to carry passenger's- how they'll go down to the milk shop together and back. Watch out Delhi!

Welcome to India

Hey Everyone,

We are now in (New) Delhi, India. We arrived on the 4th of April after a great few months just hanging out in Malaysia (which I still need to write about, hopefully soon). We have hooked up with an NGO here called "project WHY?" Don't ask me what it means because I don't know.

Our initial introduction to India was great. No hassles at the airport and a great hotel for a great price on our first night here. We got such a good nights sleep. We woke up in a neighborhood in central Delhi where the narrow streets are filled with poop and mud and trash and cows wandering around eating the mixture of poop, mud and trash and motorbikes and tractors are swerving around hoards of colorfully dressed people who all dress like they are straight out of the 70's. The 3 -4 storey buildings that lined the roads each have their own individual architectural style. Wonderful.

After our single night stay in a touristy little area we got in touch with the project creator named Anou and set up a plan to meet her at her house. On the way we met a man named Romeo who was very helpful and even offered to let us just rent a room in his home for the three months we are here. We went to check it out but found it was too crowded. That seems to be a problem here in India. I have never seen so many people in one place before. On a 30 minute walk back and forth from Anou's to Subway (yes, the American sandwich chain) I estimated that I saw 3,000 human beings. That's too many. How can I possibly get to know all these people and memorize their names.

We are now staying in the home of the project creator as I mentioned. It is a 3 story mansion in the Chirag Enclave which is, from what I gather visually, a very wealthy neighborhood. We are staying on the second floor in our own spacious room with satellite cable, an attached bath and a king sized bed. The home has a styling that makes it seem like it was left over from British occupation, though it was build much more recently. It has high ceilings, many sitting and music rooms and multiple marble stairways so you never feel like, "Ugg, THIS stairway again!" The decor is sort of Old Fashioned World Traveller. Many paintings and photos of Prague, a hall full of African relics, another hall fill of Indian portraits. In the music room there is a giant tiger skin rug tacked to the wall next to a black and white photo of the tiger laying dead in the grass near the proud hunters.

Anou's husband Ranjin recently quit his job to pursue his life's dream. Can you guess what it is? That's right! He wants to open his own air cargo shipping business. Don't worry, I didn't guess it either. However, as of yet he has not opened it so he can be seen coming and going throughout the day in an assortment of different outfits suited to his activities. A fancy smoking jacket, a golf outfit, a Quality Lubricants polo and slacks. I was confused by the Venetian gondola paddler outfit but felt it better not to ask in case the real answer was less exciting than my own imagined answer. He often sits in the music room and plays the piano. The music washes through the old house and drapes everything in a sort of forgotten era feeling. He is a great piano player. Mia threw me under the bus and said that I also play piano so he spent an afternoon trying to get me to play, but I only know like a third of one song and I can only play it with the notes taped on the keys so eventually he gave up.

We also have 4 full time servants in the house who clean our room, cook for us, do our laundry, and will perform any other task you may need. Do you need some tea? Just yell, "TEA!" at the top of your lungs. Same with, "TOAST!" If they don't have the ting you want in the house it will be there within ten minutes. If it is something more complicated just yell the name of the servant who best suits your needs. If you don't feel like getting up off your bed to plug in your laptop with the dying battery yell, "DE-PAK!" Depak will arrive shortly and plug it in. Don't feel like dressing yourself? "CHO-PRA!" She get the job done.

Andy, the recently self appointed volunteer coordinator, took Mia and I out on our second day here to the Baha''i Lotus temple near the house. It was a very impressive temple when we first toured it... but then we went to the visitor center on our way out and watched a movie on how they built it. This thing is like 150 feet tall and looks like a giant marble lotus flower rising from the ground, totally hollow in the center, surrounded by pools of water. Turns out they built the whole thing using tools like a stone tied to a stick and just a plain stick with no stone at all. The movie of it under construction looked like a 70's film about the building of the great pyramids or something. Wowza!

Petting tigers

Hey, I don't know why I didn't put these up earlier. Probably because I was too busy running through the streets at a full gallop yelling, "Did you all see that?! We just petted us some TIGER!!"