I’ve been gone from Hyderabad now for an entire week…

Sometimes I feel that I am just on a short vacation away from home—that soon I will be back in SIP guesthouse, back in class, back in the thick of the Hyderabad socialites. More often though, I am struck with the reality that it has ended. Good-byes are not my forte, and I’ll forgo my feelings on leaving the city that was my home for four months, lest I get teary-eyed for the hundredth time…Fortunately for me, my last few days were so jam packed with finishing up final papers, taking exams, and packing up my life, that I didn’t have time to get sad until I hugged the seven or eight friends who took me to the airport good-bye.

Since then, I have left the heat of the south for northern India (though I can’t really say it’s any cooler here in Varanasi where I currently am than in Andhra Pradesh); I met my dad in Delhi and we began a whole new kind of adventure. We began in Sikkim, a small mountain state bordered by Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, which is basically the arm connecting NE India to the rest of the country. We drove from West Bengal up and up and up into the mountains, and after a small passport mishap, we finally reached Sikkim’s capital, Gangtok.

I woke up to see the Himalayas framed like a masterpiece in my window—Kanchenjunga peak presiding over the lesser, greener mountains was clear as day at 5:30 in the morning and faded gradually as the sun and the haze took over. In the early morning I walked a path along the ridge of a mountain through a forest alive as much with the prayer hangs hung from every branch as with the pine trees that comprised it. I went by Tata to the other side of the valley—to Rumtek—to stay at a Buddhist monastery.

I fell asleep to the sound of rain and woke up at the edge of the world—fog had rolled into the valley and there was no difference between the fog lying along the gorge’s riverbed and the clouds. Everything beyond the ridge on which the guesthouse was perched seemed to fall away into an apocalypse of whiteness; white noise. I visited the monastery, the monks in their red and saffron—just as you would imagine young Tibetan Buddhist ‘priestlets’ to be, except for their cell phones and walkmans and watches. There was rain all afternoon—the kind of rain where all I could do was wrap myself in a blanket, order chai, and sit by the open window reading—a cold rain, a kind of rain I have missed greatly. That night I went to the monastery and sat for an hour of prayer, the dim lights and bewitching chants truly brought me away from my reality; it could have been any century, I could have been any person.

I saw the earth fall away 1,000 feet just two inches from the car wheel under my window. In Sikkim the earth falls away like that without end, but it also continues without end as well. If ever you feel the need to truly comprehend the magnitude of this earth, take a helicopter through the mountains of Sikkim and see the hugeness of the mountains, not just in their individual height and slope, but in their endlessness and how they are scattered with the never-ending tiny farms of the people who live in the clouds.

Now I am in Varanasi, formerly Benares, the Hindu holy city. We caught the train here literally by 30 seconds, and rode it for 19 hours. This morning I was up at five, and on a boat in the Ganges by 6. We were rowed the length of the city’s waterfront and back—the city of Shiva’s birth, the oldest city in the world according to Hindu mythology. All along the river are the ghats—steps giving way to the water—where people bathe, pray, give offerings, and burn bodies. I saw stacks of burning logs, bodies inside, being cremated before having their ashes scattered into the holy Ganga. In the old city behind the ghats, the streets are narrow and crooked and there is a temple attached to every house. I’m not a religious person, but I can feel something down by the Ganga—the spirit of the people, of the religion, of the nation?

Tomorrow we will go to the city where the Buddha gave his first teachings. Tonight we will ride the river again and see it in the dark light of dusk instead of the dark light of dawn.

first of all, let me say that i have NOT dropped off the face of the earth, rather i've been sucked into it's very core and have refused to come out for the past few weeks. even writing these entries implies that i DO have a life elsewhere, and i just don't want to remind myself how soon i have to leave the new life i've discovered in india- a life of rickshaws and benzes, of 2 rupee chai and 700 rupee cocktails- a life that goes everywhere, does everything, and lives to tell about it.
most recently, my travels took me (on a ciee organized trip) to aurangabad in maharhastra. the four days we spent there were pretty laid-back, quite tame, a little stagnant even. the highlights were the ajanta and ellora caves, another trip to the cinema to see rang de basanti, and room service.
here is a small section of the ajanta cave temples, carved into a horsehoe shaped cliff 76 meters above the ground by buddhist monks beginning in the 2nd c. bce. besides the obvious serenity and the incredible feat of carving 30 temples into a single slab of stone, ajanta is famous for the beautiful paintings decorating the walls of these temples. the rocks were plastered and then painted after the plaster dried- so not quite a fresco. did you know that these monks had the concept of perspective down way before the renaissance? oh yeah, they sure did. it was hard to get good pictures of the best art because flash wasn't allowed, but this might give you an idea of the aesthetic:
apparently ajanta was abandoned when the buddhist movement in india went east, and re-discoverd in the 1800s by some high capacity british dude while he was tiger hunting. can you imagine following a tiger through the bush and stumbling upon something like this?
<---a distant relative of ajanta's architects? we also visited the ellora cave temples, which are not only buddhist but jain and hindu as well. though they lack the decorative painting of ajanta, they are somehow much more impressive. one of the hindu temples at ellora is the world's biggest monolith, and as i walked through it's multi-leveled corridors and rooms, i was unable to fathom how it could all be part of the same rock. i thought the david was impressive, but this...

we also saw the 'poor man's taj mahal,' built by shah jahan's grandson in honor of his mother rather than his beloved. if you were to see this without having seen the taj mahal, you would find it splendid, but after having seen the real deal this one was just an imposter.

the next time i'm in maharasthra, i'll be moving at a much faster pace. a few of the girls and i are planning a trip for mumbai-you know, that one that used to be bombay, home of bollywood and just about the biggest deal in india- for the end of next week. we have no classes the week before finals-what a perfect time to go on vacation! (ha). i can't believe that when i get back from mumbai i'll have only a week left in hyderabad. i often get scared by how my life passes quicker and quicker each year-i'm almost through my 21st year, and half of it has been spent outside the homeland. sometimes i almost wish i never traveled, it would be so much easier to never have to say goodbye- but i'll spare you that rant and take the i'm-so-incredibly-lucky tangent. i'm so incredibly lucky. last night i took a cab to the airport with my friend ashley who is going home for two weeks, only to return for the summer just before i leave. coming home alone in the old ambassador at four in the morning i was looking out the window and was suddenly struck by how normal everything has become- i know the roads, know that you have to turn left at such and such a pan shop, that this shortcut is less brutally bumpy than that shortcut; cows in the middle of the road are normal, so are sleeping people, so is the absence of stoplights and stopsigns. i mean, of course these things are normal, but they aren't surprising to me anymore and haven't been for a long time now, they just roll on by with the scenery. and yet... today i was taking a rickshaw home from mocha-our favorite chic little coffee lounge- in the late afternoon. we took my favorite road back from banjara hills, a road that rides a ridge high above the rest of the city. golconda fort and the sprawling, endless developments that have sprung up on all sides of it looked different in the late afternoon sun, and suddenly everything looked different- or rather, i began seeing things i had never seen despite driving the road a million times. i don't know which i find more comfort in- the familiarity of this city or the fact that nothing is ever completely familiar.

Happy HOLI!!!!

yesterday was Holi (pronounced "holy")--the festival of colors. there are a few different stories about the origins of this festival, but basically it's a celebration of the coming of spring, of good harvests and fertility, and of the death of the demoness holika. in other words, a perfect excuse for people to close their shops and run around in the streets throwing colored powder at each other! traditionally holi was a hindu festival, but from my experience i'd say it's gone secular- everyone, everyone celebrates (or they lock themselves inside their homes to hide from the hooligans). it is much like jouvert, the early morning mud/chocolate/paint-slinging part of carnival in trinidad. so there's some background, and here's my experience:

this is some of us with a friend from campus at our guesthouse, before we really got started. around 9am some off-campus friends showed up and we all piled into an open-top jeepy car (fondly named "gypsy") and took off- nine of us in the back and three in the front. as we drove through campus we could see that the other students had gotten a much earlier start than we had- already everyone was covered from head to foot in pink, blue, yellow, purple, orange, gold, etc. we had a quick breakfast of dosas and idlis, lassis and tea, and all sorts of chutneys at a favorite restaurant of ours (aptly named chutney's). from there we headed for the farmhouse of a friend of a friend-where all our friends would be (too many names, we'll just call everyone friend:)). the house was about 20km outside of town (and on bad roads, that is no short distance) and we got lost several times, but despite the discomfort of having about three people on top of me- bouncing at every pothole- it was a fabulous ride. everyone on the road was bright pink or orange, entire dayglo families were piled onto single motorcycles, people in rickshaws or on mopeds drove up next to us and threw color, everyone screamed "happy holi!" loud enough to be heard over of the noise of traffic.

the party seemed more like a garden party than a farm party- it took place in a beautiful little yard that you entered via bridge. on one side there was a refreshment tent serving drinks and a buffet- but food was the last thing from anyone's mind, all we cared about was playing color and dancing! there were huge ricesacks full of powder all over the yard, and continually you could see clouds of color exploding and dispersing in the air over someone's head. the rowdier of us were not content with merely throwing color, we instead pinned friends and strangers and smothered them in color- i had my teeth brushed with blue and pink several times- puh! next to the house there were pipes running overhead spraying water- an overhead irrigation system for the holi players. we all kept running back and forth between throwing powder and then dancing in the sprinklers, trying to wash it all off. despite the number of colors we used, everyone seemed to turn the same shade of pink by the end of the day. a huge mud puddle formed in the middle of the yard and people danced in it- and shoved others in it. there was a dj who played all the favorites- the songs that seem to be endlessly recycled in every club every night in hyderabad- and two tabla players who beat their traditional drums in time with the younger generation's soundtrack. on a raised terrace overlooking the yard there was a pool- which early in the day lost all semblance of cleanliness and turned into a huge red bath tub.

the hours fell away unnoticed as we forgot everything except holi, the moment we were in, the people we were with, and the intoxicating colors. by far, yesterday was my favorite day in india. i don't think there was a single person who was thinking of anything other than having fun and making sure those around them had fun. when we finally left, we realized we had been so excited to get there that we had forgotten to gas up gypsy- but after a few waterbottles full of petrol and a joint effort to give her a running start down the long gravel road, we got her going. driving back through the city in the late afternoon i could feel a communal calm despite the ceaseless traffic. hyderabad was tired and content- and a little more colorful than before. we were warned that the powder can hurt your eyes (and possibly blind you) and make your hair fall out; fortunately we dodged those bullets, though everyone with lighter hair looks like they've revisited their rebellious manic panic highschool days. one day and three showers later, my hair is still a nice shade of plum, my nails are pink and my cuticles blood red, my neck looks rather jaundiced, and the inside of my right ear is deep purple. to avoid this, people oil their hair and skin- but judging by the number of color-stained people i saw in the city today with fuschia necks poking out of white collars and pink hands handing over rupees, i'd say that a few days of visible holi aftertaste is inevitable for everyone. today the roads around campus are splattered with color and even the coats of the month-old puppies that live down by gop's have changed from a dun color to every color possible. but as all good things have to end, it's back to life as usual.

HAPPY HOLI!

STUDY abroad?

so...all of you who are getting a little green reading about my fast-paced subcontinent-trotting lifestyle will be glad to know that the first word in that tricky little phrase has finally snuck up on me. my college isn't just paying for me to bum around the subcontinent, there's actually (actually, like the american like, has a way of creeping into every sentence here in india) some education involved, too- despite the absence of it in this blog. for the first time in a long time, this past weekend was not divided into bus time and beach time, train and tourism time; instead i was studying for the first of my interim exams- both of which i had today (hindi and sociology). it's hard to believe that the semester is already more than halfway complete!
anyway, someone or something was pleased with me and decided to grant me the gift of a small taste of monsoon season- which will reach hyderabad only after i am back in d.c. as i biked home it was just beginning to sprinkle, and by the time i reached the guesthouse there were limbs of lightning continuously reaching 180 degress across the sky. i don't really know if i can explain the awesome power of a sudden onslaught of rain (for the past few nights it has rained minimally) after more than two months of nearly cloudless skies and oppressive heat- i can only say that it has the power to turn me into a little kid again. once it really started coming down-with much more force than the water pressure of our shower- ashley and i dashed outside, stuck out our tongues to catch mouthfulls of water, splashed in puddles, and ran barefoot through campus to the amusement of many umbrella-covered and shelter-seeking students and professors. finally, when we came back home, a few inches of water had collected on the roof ( it's walled in) and we tried to plug up the drains so that it would turn into a giant swimming pool. no such luck, unfortunately. however- two of my friends showed up later at dinner (it was a candlelight dinner due to a rain induced power-outage) drenched to the bone, and told us of wading through knee-deep water in a low area. rain here is like snow back home-no one can function. my dance class was canceled, a friend's hindi tutor was cancelled, we had to rethink our plans to venture into the swamped city for tea tonight. it brings me back to rainy days at camp, a bunch of girls cabin-bound with nothing to do (except write excesive blog entries on the wonders of rain).

receiving blessings from an elephant in hampi was only one of this past weekend's events...

finally i am back in hyderabad for more than a few days- recently we've been trying to cram in as much travel as posible before it gets unbearably hot (now that it's march, the temperature seems to be increasing daily). last weekend (thursday through sunday) we went on our first program-sponsored trip since delhi, this time it was to bangalore and hampi in the neighboring state of karnataka. basically the whole weekend was devoted to sightseeing, so forgive me if this entry sounds a bit like a lonley planet excerpt- in lieu of adventures i will give you some facts.
we started off from the guesthouse at 4am on thursday morning, some of us having had only a few winks of sleep or none at all, and caught a 6 o'clock bangalore-bound airplane, my first plane inside india and quite the luxury. taking off from hyderabad at dawn, i stayed awake just long enought to see golconda fort from above before falling asleep for the next hour and a half.
after breakfast in a random hotel, we began our jam-packed day in bangalore, india's fastest-growing city. before my glorious hometown hyderabad surpassed bangalore in the IT world, bangalore held the title of india's silicon valley, which we have subsequently appropriated. at the nandi temple ( nandi means bull and is the vehicle of Shiva; strangely enough nandi is always referred to with feminine pronouns, even though she's a bull...?). better than the temple itself was the wedding taking place outside of it- a LOVE marriage, everyone took effort to note. here you can see the couple holding hands with their garments symbolically tied together as they circumambulate an alter several times in ceremony.
following that we went to the Lalbagh (Lal=red, bagh=garden) Botanical Gardens, containing a profusion of foliage and some interesting signs that read "biodiversity this way," "no playing in the garden," and "trees are my life." later in the day we visited a huge Iskcon temple (International Society for Krishna Conciousness; temple of the Hare Krishnas) where we had to wait in a rollercoaster-like line just to enter. i think it wise to refrain from making any cyber comments about my personal perceptions on anything religious, so i'll just say that it was larger than any temple i have seen thus far and quite interesting. we had dinner while waiting on a train platform and around 8 caught the overnight Hampi express (our first 2-tier train! again, quite the luxury-only 2 bunks high instead of 3), where i settled myself comfortably into my windowside berth, closed the curtains, and fell asleep in my little cubby as the miles passed under me. we were abruptly waken in the early morning, not before but just as we pulled up to the platform, and there was a mad scramble to pack up and get off. so yadda yadda we checked into our lovely hotel blah blah and hopped on two small vans, etc. etc., and then began exploring Hampi, where we saw some of the ruins (dating from the 14th-16th centuries and spanning 25 km) of an ancient city called Vijayanagara, which was once the 'capital of the greatest kingdom in medieval India,' a huge hub for international commerce, and architecturally profuse- temples, mosques, and palaces everywhere! to the right you can see people bathing in the Tungabhadra river, and

to the left you can see the Lotus Mahal. For lunch we ate at a quirky little restaraunt at the edge of a small cliff overlooking the river. from an ancient mango tree there hung a wooden tree swing that took you out almost over the cliff so that you felt you were flying above the rice paddies and all the women in their colorful saris standing ankle deep in water harvesting rice. we saw more temples and temple ruins that day than i can remember the names of, as well as the colorful Hampi Bazaar- full of cloth, beads, jewelry, fruit, and chachkas galore. i bought a beautiful little brass Ganesh; Ganesh is the elephant-headed Hindu god and the 'remover of obstacles.' The next morning we took the busses to Anegundi, which is thought to be the legendary kingdom of Kishkinda, home of the monkey prince Sugriva and the monkey god Hanuman who befriend and help Rama rescue Sita in the the famous epic the Ramayana. maybe these guys are descendants?
we visited the Vitthala Temple, by far my favorite sight of the weekend. the woman in red is not hugging the temple, rather rubbing the pillars to make them "sing." we then took a long drive through billowing dust and banana plantations, sugarcane and rice growing in abundance, lush green surrounded by arid hills strewn with huge boulders, to a village where we met with the founder of an NGO called The Kishkinda Trust . TKT, to paraphrase my itinerary, assists villagers at the grassroots level and empowers them economically, culturally, and socially to conserve their historical heritage. one of their major programs has been the development of eco-friendly products made from natural and local resources (banana fiber, river grass, etc.), this program specifically employs and empowers women who otherwise have no means of earning and income as well as churning out beautiful crafts. here is one of the women spinning string from banana fiber. that night we slept on the train again and had all of sunday free to explore bangalore- i spent most of my time on the main drag, poking my head into stores, sitting outside for coffee, seeing an early afternoon movie called rang de basanthi (less than two dollars for a matinee here!), sitting in an american style pub, and going to bed early so i could wake up again at four a.m. to return to hyderabad- which, being often compared with bangalore, i had actually started to miss. and speaking of...i'm sure everyone is aware that bush was in india for the past few days, but did you know that yesterday he left delhi and took a tour of hyderabad, right through my remote little neighborhood? well, as with religion, i will refrain form making any political comments. besides, the most interesting part of the day was not the president but the fact that as it grew dark the wind picked up with more gusto than i have felt it in india thus far, and sometime around ten there was a downpour...the first time i have felt rain in over two months! it was fantastic-i now understand the joy of a wilted plant that has not been watered in ages.

Some nighttime soccer action. TOP: Marion makes a run with the ball while Elizbeth runs to cover her. BOTTOM: Marion and I go at it (notice the ref, he never called my obvious foul).

i can now happily add the arabian sea to the ever-growing list of bodies of water into which i've dipped my toes (india has already graciously given me the bay of bengal; add to that the atlantic and pacific oceans, the gulf of mexico, and the carribean, mediterranean, and tasman seas...thanks to my lucky stars, or something).
anyway, here's a word or two about GOA.
there were seven of us girls who weekended in THE place to be when it comes to beaches and parties in india, or so they say. the beaches at least live up to their reputation, but i've already gotten ahead of myself- to begin from the beginning i must begin with the bus. we took the cheapest transportation we could find- a government non a/c bus (buses here seem to be categorized as either a/c or non a/c; a/c basically means a cushy coach bus run by a private company, like the one we took to chennai). it cost us each about 7 bucks, less than the collective cost of the taxis from our guesthouse to the bus station. the ride began in reasonable comfort- open windows made up for the lack of a/c in the increasing heat (i've heard in oberlin it's 9 degrees, here it must be 90) and i drifted in and out of sleep, my sporadic glimpses of rural india giving the day a dreamy feel. however, the dream at nightfall fell into a nightmarish state. whereas my face had previously felt only slightly sandblasted by the wind during the day, at night the air coming in was cool and damp and full of dirt that clung to me, layer upon layer upon layer (if only you could have seen the color of the water when i finally showered!). i've been kind of sick recently- just a typical winter headcold and cough-and this certainly didn't help. i'm pretty sure the bus stopped in every village between hyderabad and goa, and took every possible sideroad/offroad possible; each time i woke up it was still dark, i was still coughing uncontrollably along with half the other passengers, the five babies were still crying, and we were seemingly no closer to the beach. when dawn finally came we found ourselves in the mountains and in yet another dreamland-there was nothing but thick, white fog and only the black limbs of dead trees were dark and close enough to be seen through it. a little later we descended from the mountains and finally, after 20 hours, entered Panjim, the capital of Goa, full of architecture reminiscent of its previous Portugese colonizers. from there we bussed it another 45 minutes to Calangute, or Baga beach- the two seem to run into each other with no clear boundary- were we unpacked our backpacks at Stay Longer guesthouse. like most of india, it was prone to frequent power outages- here's part of the room by candlelight. we felt kind of like we were in the kids' book madeleine where "in an old house in paris that was covered in vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines..." except that we were seven girls and our lines of three and four were a bit uneven- you can kind of see how the beds were pushed together in this picture, fun for slumber parties- and our house was obviously not in paris, and it was more covered in mosquitoes than vines, and we had no Ms Clavel to curb our mischeviousness...but i digress.
what you want to hear about is the beaches, i assume. basically, to be on any beach in february is incredible, and to be on baga beach is unreal. it's in north goa and the guidebooks say it's the most happening of goa's beaches- with it's beach bars and restaurants, it's bicycle peddling ice cream vendors, it's constant stream of parasail and banana boat traffic, it's endless leathery and ageing hippies, and santoosh the dancing cow- that's him over there- i'd have to agree. though the water isn't breathtakingly blue, it's clean and so clear, warm and so gentle- water you can spend hours in. it goes without saying that our days were spent on the beach.
in between the day and the nights, baga provides endless shopping-the main drag is essentially a longer and shadier version of mamallapuram vendor shacks, only there are more things to buy, more burnouts, and more european tourists. i'll admit that i spent quite some time in a tibetan market haggling over silver bracelets, and almost as long negotiating the price of a skirt...there is an abundance of enticing shops, and just as many die-hard vendors who will follow you down the street telling you "looking is free, i have anything you want!"
and then there are the goan nights, whose wild reputation has sort of outlived their reality. goa was overrun by hippies in the sixties and since has been synonymous with crazy hedonistic beach parties, later turning into raves and the famous goa trance scene. i think i missed goa's heyday, though, because five or ten years ago there was a huge crackdown on drugs and with it came a crackdown on the festivities in general. "there are more old people every year," said one goan we met- not offensively, he just meant that it is becoming a more family or average tourist destination than the psychadelic hotspot it once was.
we did, however, have dinner with a rock star- well, the self-proclaimed rising star and hot new thing in world music- was at #1 on the world music charts for 6 weeks last year. we met him when he performed at the fashion show in hyderabad and learned he lived in goa. like all the chart-topping rockstars i know (oh, there are too many to count!), he's a little full of himself. he likes crowds only when he's onstage, other than that it's small groups- he's really just a sensitive normal guy who has a sapphire embedded in a left canine and enjoys long walks on the beach... ok, but really folks, all character judgements aside (and all said, he's a pretty nice and funny dude, good for a good time), he was kind enough to drive us up to anjuna beach and show us the saturday night bazaar- full of crafts and food and live music under strings of lights. from there we tried to go to a club that was closed either because of a) a power outage or b) a murder or c) something in between, depending on who you talked to. to continue our star-studded night we caught a taxi with a bollywood choreographer from london to yet another club- this one supposedly the biggest in all goa, a cave-like trance temple decked out in blacklights and backing up onto the beach. it seemed like with about 200 more people it could be something to write home about, but since it was lacking, i will stop writing.
though goa is charming through and through, though its food is good and its drinks are cheap, though its beaches feel like home and its water tucks you into bed- the most incredible thing to me is just that i am able to hop on a bus and have a weekend there. a weekend here and a weekend there, even if i were to have a lifetime of weekends i don't think i could cover all of this subcontinent.
on sunday afternoon i caught an a/c bus home with ellen, leaving the others for another day (i have these things called classes that i have to be at...). more awake this time, i watched out the window as we passed fields lined with and divided by palms, full of grazing cows and water buffalo, billboards, and pickup cricket games. the driver stopped randomly in villages and had bags (of food?) handed to him through the window, and we ourselves were given a food break late in the evening at a quick little place- i had aloo palak and chai. we were up in the mountains again when we crossed into maharashtra- we passed a circus and an outdoor shiva temple during worship. i fell asleep somewhere in karnataka and woke up this morning back in gachibowli to find out that there have been riots in the old city over the danish cartoon ordeal and milos has been replace by a rat- how he found his way up to the third floor i have no idea.

the return of soccer...

last night at 8pm, after a men's tournament game, six of us girls from sip guesthouse and six indian girls got together for a soccer match under the lights (which are too low and cause glare) of the unlined campus soccer field. each team was split evenly three and three. it was quite fun because many of the spectators stuck around to cheer and lindsey took charge of the mike as our nutty commentator. girls playing soccer here isn't such a big thing as you can imagine- in fact, girls and athletics in general are not a common combination. i get stared at even when i go running...as in, why is a girl running? but the girls we played with were so much fun and so enthusiastic and it felt so great to be back under the lights ( i don't think i've had a night game since high school) with a ball at my feet...and guess who scored the first goal?
well, that was so much fun that we convinced some of our friends from off-campus to come over this afternoon for another match. the teams wound up being mixed between them, us, some of our kitchen staff, and a few random little kids. again, great fun (except for the fact that i have had a head cold/cough type thing for the last couple of days and running isn't so easy when you can't breathe so well standing still) i think we'll try to make it a regular thing. i've also taken to jumping rope on the roof under the moon and stars at night- i always thought jumping rope was rather silly, but it's actaully kind of amazing.
on another note, today is my friend katie's birthday. last night we innaugurated her into her 21st year starting at midnight. brittany and i went went with a friend to get her a cake...but where can you get a cake past midnight? well, if you know the right people anything is possible. our friend had a bakery opened up just for us- all the tables were covered in loaves and loaves of fresh-baked bread for the following morning. as the cake was iced with "happy birthday katie," we were given the most delicious tiny chocolate tart and a vegetarian croissant that somehow both tasted incredibly fresh even though it was so late. unfortunately, as soon as we got back to the house where everyone was hanging out and katie blew out her candles, the cake was snatched away by some random guy (later i discovered that his name is "biscuit") and thrown in her face, subsequently landing face down on the floor before anyone got to enjoy it. oh well, it's the thought....