Tied Up

Recordings of my dance performances have now made their way youtube. HERE is the video for Kathak, I was shocked to see that the performance was nine minutes long…I knew it felt like a nightmarish eternity onstage, but I didn’t realize it was such an eternity for the viewers as well. As I said before, the Kathak teacher decided to make us go WAY faster than we had ever practiced the dance so we are all visibly making mistakes in the video…especially me…so don’t judge, Kathak is really hard. Also, keep an eye out for two of the girls’ hair pieces falling out. HERE is the video for Kuchipudi. Bet you can't tell which one is me...actually, you can barely see me at all since there is a man taking photos standing in front of the video camera for most of the time...

Last night was the CIEE Farewell Dinner and Re-Entry orientation. It’s so hard to believe that it is already time for events to have the word “farewell” in their titles. I leave Hyderabad in nine days! The Re-Entry orientation was similar to our welcome orientation at the beginning of the semester in that it was long and boring and caused us a lot of undue panic, only this time instead of telling us how hard life in India was going to be they told us about how depressed and lost we’re going to feel when we return to life in the USA. I suppose what they said was partially true; we have really changed and adapted to life in India over the past few months. For example, we all dressed up in our saris last night (the ones we wore to the OBAMA BALL in January) but the novelty that the situation had at the beginning of the semester had completely worn off. In January it seemed so funny to see everyone dressed up in traditional Indian formal wear, but last night it seemed like standard practice—what else do people even wear to fancy events? I also managed to tie my sari myself, having somehow telepathically absorbed that skill over the past few months. This, I felt, was quite a milestone.

Our program arranged for all of the girls to get Henna designs on our hands for the event, so my hands look very lovely right now. Since we were all henna-handed and sari-clad we assumed the dinner would be very formal and elegant, but as with everything that CIEE organizes, the dinner was almost successful...but not quite. The food was really delicious…but we had to eat it picnic style in our formal wear… For some reason they did not feel the need to provide tables for the dinner, they just made us eat the food in the chairs we had been sitting in while watching a sitar and tabla performance before eating…at least they provided plates. It was a little lackluster and anticlimactic—very CIEE.

We returned to our dorm and I was untying my sari and reflecting on how well I have adjusted to life in India when the two girls in the room next to me started shrieking. I ran over to see what was happening and then saw the largest spider I have ever seen in my life, easily the size of one of my hands with long fat, white legs, crawling out of my friend Laurel’s closet. I also shrieked. So I guess I haven’t really adjusted to everything in India.