1ere Festival de Musique - Solidays

Went to my first musique festival, Solidays, with Martin (a co-worker) and his friends this past weekend.

Christal, Me, Martin and Jonathan

I have arrived...well, sort of

I'm still waiting for my carte de sejour (work visa) but I do have an apartment!!! Let me tell you getting (not finding) an apartment in Paris is a huge feat. In order to get an apartment you first need at least 2 months rent to put down as your deposit - easy enough if you have a bank account in France, which of course I still don't have. Why? Oh, because in order to get a bank account you need your carte de sejour -however, in order to get my carte de sejour I need a lease with my name on it... Then you need two "guarant" which are two people who are living in France who will pay your rent for you if ever you don't pay it. On top of that you need a ton of other paper work. So, I was lucky enough to find Pierre who trusted me enough to wire him money as my deposit and bypass having guarants.

I am on the 6th and top floor (no elevator and yes my thighs are hurting) of a really nice building. I have two neighbors. One of them is a girl I haven't met and the other is this lovely man named Richard. Richard is the Senior Editor for The Africa Report a pretty intense magazine on obviously, Africa. His wife Casey is super nice. She was a shoe designer at one point and sang back up vocals for Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side."

Anyway, I'm all moved in now and am ready for visitors!!! Here are some pics of my first apartment in Paris:

The Kitchen

The front room/sitting area/kitchen

The sitting area - which has never been used...

I planted a little herb garden

The bathroom - I have a semi french

shower. The shower head is at about

waste height so you still need to hold

it with one hand in order to wash your

hair.

Bedroom

Bedroom shot #2

And now the best part of my

apartment..... THE CLOSET!!! Who

knew I'd get so much closet space in

Paris of all places! It's the entire

length of the wall!!

India May 2008

Back at the end of May I went to India for my friend Sona's wedding. I had such a fantastic time and have nothing but the best memories!! Here are some pictures and stories of my trip:

Jessie and I arrived in Mumbai around 10:30pm. It was hot, muggy and very busy for a Wednesday night. Sona, Adam, Sona's mom, Adam's parents and Son'as aunt and uncle came to pick us up. We drove out to Ghatkopar which is a suburb of Mumbai where the wedding was taking place.

Our bungalow in Ghatkopar.


The next day we got up around noon and had Mc. Veggie sandwhiches for breakfast/lunch. After eating Sona, Jessie and I hopped in a rickshaw to go check out the reception hall. After the reception hall we met up with Sona's aunt and her mom to go saree shopping!!

Saree Shopping with Sona's Aunt Didi
Didi took us to this building inside of which were stalls and stalls of fabric wholesalers. We settled at one stall and the craziness started! You named a color and three different sarees were taken off the shelf, opened up and laid out for you to look at. With such a variety of colors it was sooo difficult to narrow it down









Mehndi Party

That night after a delicious dinner at the bungalo all of the women met up at Didi's house to get henna painted on our hands and feet. It took almost 5 hours for Sona's henna to be complete!

Jessie's monkey (with only 2 legs) was everyone's favorite!

Believe it or not my hands were even darker a couple of days later! I found out after that henna gets darker if heat is applied. Seeing that I have the hottest hands EVER, saran wrap was definitely NOT necesssary.

At 1am we had to wrap our hands and feet because the henna wasn't dry yet and we needed to go back to the bungalow.

Prayer ceremony morning of the day before the wedding

The day before the wedding there was a prayer ceremony at the bungalow.

There was a procession in the street outside of the bungalow were a band played and everyone danced!

Sangeet Sandhya

That evening we went to the sangeet sandhya which is an evening of musical entertainment.

Me, Jessie and Erin

Me, Didi and Jessie

Our musical entertainment for the night?

INDIAN IDOL FINALISTS!!! Oh yeah!!!

The band made all of the out of town guest get up and dance to a song. All of the songs told the story of a couple either flirting with each other or longing for one another...when it was mine and Jessie's turn they told us to dance the Chin-Chin Chu dance. Huh? You know Chin-Chin Chu...

Litterally 5 minutes after these pictures were taken we busted out the running man and other fantastic 80's moves because how else would you dance the Chin-Chin Chu dance? They were a great hit with the audience! Oh, and I would just like to add this is SANS alcohol!

Wedding Day!!!

The day of the wedding Jessie, Erin, Adam's mom and I went to a salon to get out hair did and our sarees put on (I still don't know how to do it properly). Little did we know we would feel a bit like celbrities! I admit, I exaggerate when telling stories but I am in no way exaggerating when I say that each of us had at least 4 people watching the 1 person styling our hair! I swear they called their friends as soon as we walked in the door! Note to anyone going to India in the future - if your getting your hair done for any reason and the stylist asks if you like jewels do not answer "yes, I love jewels!" I'm not sure if you can see it in the pictures that follow but Erin gave that exact answer and had her hed bedazzeled! And this is when we started our 100 rupee bets or G-note bets (Ghandi's face is on the front of the bill). The first one was for who could give Erin the best name for the evening. I won with "Sprinkles".

From the salon we met up with everyone else close to the bungalow for the Barat Nikasi. This is when the groom leaves for the wedding venue riding a decorated horse or elephant. More music and dancing in the street!

Wedding Ceremony

Day after the wedding

The next morning Eric, Erin, Jessie and I took a taxi from Ghatkopar to Mumbai. We were leaving the following morning early for our next destination - Dehli. Four people, four large bags, no A.C and tight quarters made for an unforgettable ride!

Street scenes on our way to the hotel in Mumbai:

The ride was was quickly forgotten once we got to the hotel though. We stayed at the Leela Hotel (http://www.theleela.com/) which has a fantastic pool and even better showers! Seriously, they may have had the best showers ever.

Delhi

The next morning Sona & Adam, Adam's parents, Eric & Erin and Jessie and I took off on our next journey to Dehli. Arriving in Dehli we were greeted by basically a monsoon. It was raining sooo hard no one was leaving the airport. As soon as the rain/hail died down a bit we hustled to our van which would be taking us around Dehli and down to Agra to see the Taj. Next 100 Rupee bet: who could come up with the best name for our van.

With it's sweet 70's "inspired" decore Erin won the bet with the name Pagoda.

Dehli has an English feel to it. Big grand boulevards, lots of greenery and tons of government buildings. Our first stop was Humayun's Tomb

This is the first example of Mughal architecture in India and is the same that created the Taj Mahal.

Isa Khan Tomb - built in 1547

The married couple and pagoda.

Traffic in Dehli...

From the front seat....thank goodness we had Ashanti our driver to navigate!

It took us about 4 1/2 hours to get to Agra from Dehli with all of the traffic. We stayed at the Trident Hotel (http://www.tridenthotels.com/) which is litterally 10 minutes from the Taj. This was great considering our wake up call was for 6am in order to get to the Taj for sunrise!

Taj Mahal

Udaipur

Another early morning - we got up to drive back to Delhi to fly to Udaipur. Udaipur reminded me a lot of the southwest of the states. It was dry and extremetly hot and therefore our next van was named Sahara.

If you're wondering what is there to see in Udaipur - you only really come to Udaipur for one reason:

Lake Palace Hotel (http://www.tajhotels.com/Palace/Taj%20Lake%20Palace,UDAIPUR/default.htm)

We had to take a boat to the hotel.

That evening we took a cruise around the lake. It was a perfect evening - nice weather, cool white wine, good company.

As we were making our way back to the hotel I noticed there were a ton of bird in the direction we were headed. If anyone knows me, you know how much a HATE birds! Well, the closer I looked the more these birds didn't really look like birds...

Umm they were the largest bats I had EVER seen in my life!!!!

After the cruise we had a couple of cocktails while taking in a performance of traditional dance.

Shopping in Udaipur

The next day we got to a little bit of shopping before flying back to Mumbai.

I stopped in this shop that sold bags and purses. I thought everything looked so pretty so I asked the man if I could take a picture of his store. He got a little flustered, said yes and pulled out a comb and started fixing his hair. I wasn't thinking of taking a picture with the store owner but here it is!

Our shopping day just kept getting better and better because after buying 3 purses (for about $9 otal) I walked out of the store to find a ginormous painted elephant!!!!

Last day in Mumbai

We had said good bye to Erin and Eric in Udaipur so Sona, Adam, Jessie and I decided to do a bit of exploring in Mumbai for our last day. We hoped in a cab and took it into downtown Mumbai - since we hadn't really gotten to see it before/after the wedding. Our driver was great because he took us on a mini tour on our way to do some more shopping. First stop whre the launderers (dhobis) wash Mumbai's clothes

Next stop - the gateway to India

Third stop - shopping. Actually it was more like getting Sona to barder for everything that we bought!

Fourth stop - Haji Ali Dargah Mosque and Tomb. It's accessible only during low tide.





Coastline of Mumbai

At the end of the day we headed back to the hotel to re-pack and get ready for our flights home. Jessie unfortunately realised she had too much stuff and couldn't fit everything in the bags she had. I had luckily bought an extra carry-on that day. So, what we were able to do was get one of the shops in the hotel make Jessie a bag...

Both were $10 - which one would you want?