I'm legal!

It's my birthday and I can cry if I want to...or something like that. I turned 25 on Wednesday, October 13th, officially entering into middle age (or so my father tells me "as 25-49 falls into the middle bucket of an average 75-year life"). In Delhi, turning 25 means not only do I have an easier time renting vehicles, but I can legally drink again. Yes, the drinking age in Delhi is 25. No, I (nor the high schoolers I have talked to) have never been carded. But still: another it's legal party, amazing!

Given as I am self-centered, I declared it a birthweek and held 3 parties and made another one my own. Wednesday during the day, my team surprised me with a pizza party where they proceeded to embarrass me by showing a slideshow they created of me doing ridiculous things in pictures...turns out I take a lot of ridiculous pictures. My team is very cheeky (as my British friend says) and sweet. On Wednesday night, the expats and some Bainees accompanied me to Smokehouse Grille, one of the only place you can get steak in Delhi. I think it tasted all the better since I can't get it anywhere (plus I got to be a bit of a rebel for eating steak on India). Now I only need to figure out where I can get key lime pie. Anyways, below are some pictures from that party. We ended up going downstairs and dancing to hip hop music (Wednesday night is hip hop night at Smokehouse). I literally danced the night away and only went to bed at 4AM...the next day at work was very productive as I am sure you can imagine.

I did not let the festivities stop there. On Friday, I hosted a joint birthday party with my friend Mayuri (her birthday is October 8th) at Mannekin, a night club known for cheesy Bollywood and American music. I think I am getting better at my Bollywood moves though my hip swivels aren't very good (Lali, another friend, says I need to go around more instead of just moving back and forth like one of those Hawaiin dancers on the dashboards). On the way home, another friend from India convinced me to make a quick stop at Hype, a new night club. There we were serenaded by a singer called Raghav, who I am assured is somewhat famous here among the Indian expats. He loved singing to my friends (this is what happen when I hang out with a bunch of attractive girls) AND he sang a song about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups(bonus): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSMbt6Uz0iA

And Saturday night we played Americans and headed over the the American Embassy for Oktoberfest. Some fun facts about the evening: they served potato latkis and apple sauce (yay Jews!), Riesling, pretzels and potato salad; the American embassy has a baseball field and pool inside of it and has uber-intense security; there are some very interesting American characters in India.

PS: Josh and Matt- thanks for the birthday flowers! Yes, I put them in a "trash can" vase; I am very creative.

On livestock

My first thought on coming to India: there is a cow in the middle of the highway. A few thoughts later: there are dogs, water buffalo, and pigs on the side street. The rest of my experience has been similar: I have had more weird animal encounters here than I ever did the US. I have stared down a camel, avoided eye contact with a monkey (turns out they will run after you if you look too closely), had a stand-off on a mountainside with a goat, almost was stepped on by an elephant, and have had several awkward encounters with cows.

Here’s a good example of my interaction with cows. These animals are like rats here—they are ALL over the place. You are not supposed to kill cows in Hinduism (like pigs for Muslims and Cheeseburgers for Jews); in Delhi, it is actually ILLEGAL to slaughter a cow…yay separation of church and state. Because of this, the cows are always in the road. I have already seen one accident when a cow took out a motorbike—cow and driver went flying and traffic stopped. I can’t count the number of traffic jams caused by cows hanging out in the middle of the road. Vinod, my driver, loves to see my reaction to these animals. The picture below is an encounter with a cow in Jaipur: I can’t tell who looks more disturbed, me or the cow. One other story: my friend Altaf likes to point at the cows and yell “steak” and both of us have pretended to chase one down the street with fork and knife in hand—yay weird Muslim-Christian jokes!

So…me and the goat. I have a history with goats. My childhood friend Megan Williamson had three of these creatures, and I have distinct memory of one of them butting me. It hurt…a lot. So when I was climbing down from a waterfall in the Himalayas at McLeod Ganj, I was not so excited to see a goat blocking the path forward. Just to give you an idea of the situation: there is only a narrow ledge and then a drop down to the bottom of the water fall. And on that narrow ledge is a goat eating his lunch. Josh quickly scampered by and then did not offer any help (so nice!). He did, however, snap this picture as I tried to sneak cautiously by the snacking goat. I was terrified this goat was going to butt me all the way down the waterfall as I am sure you can see in my facial expression. I think the goat was annoyed I disturbed his lunch.