Holi HeeterPoti!

Well I turned EIGHTEEN, this weekend! And your 18^th Birthday is a bit milestone in ones life, you become an adult! Or in India, I became of marriageable age (they don’t say you become an adult when you are a girl in India, they tell you, “you are now of marriageable age”). So whatever the choice, I am now legal! I can vote! I can do other things, as well as, play bingo at the casinos, in Wisconsin! (But I think I will reserve that pleasure to the people who actually live in Wisconsin currently or maybe when I get back? Maybe?). So my friends and I wanted to make my birthday last, I mean I only turn 18 once! Along with this weekend being a good friend of everyone here in the city of Pune last weekend in the city. We are very sad to say, that a Pune kid is going home back to their native land of Canada, she will be sincerely missed (There will be more about this in a latter blog entry). So my friends and I created a HOLIDAY!

So that is what HOLI HEETERPATI, is! Holi is the celebration of spring (which this year falls on March 10) it is a big DEAL, and I cannot wait to go for it! Then also Ganpati is the celebration of Lord Ganesh (as previously described). So we created our own personal deity, Heeterpati. The Heeter comes from what EVERYONE calls me. Heeter, or Heater, sometimes Heyider (which is actually a Muslim boys name). Quick story, someone was calling my name (my real one), “Heather, Heather!” and well I did not respond, I don’t even respond to my own name anymore! So Heeterpati, is the celebration of the goddess of Heeter (myself).

Holi Heeterpati began at midnight on Friday night. Friday night some of my friends in the city went out for a super fun night on the town! We started out at dinner we went to one of the five (or four maybe, I am not sure, but it is clean and nice so I guess we can say 4.5) star hotels in Pune. There is a really good noodle restaurant in the Hotel which is not half bad, so dinner was there. The hotel is connected to the movie theater called E-Square (that has no relevance, but I decided you as a reader should know that, because I have probably talked about E-Square before and well it doubles as a movie theater, shopping mall, book store, gelato shop, five star restaurant, health club, and jazz club). At dinner, I was with Chelsea, Lauren, Anna, and David.

Following dinner we were going to meet up with a bunch of the other exchange students for deserts. So we left the restaurant and being six of us we were figuring we were going to need two rickshaws because you can only put three people legally in a rickshaw. So we ask a few and it is really annoying to get a rickshaw at night, because there are less rickshaws and the drivers think they are about equivalent to god at night because they think they can charge you an arm and a leg, to go anywhere! They think there is this thing called “Night Charge” it is this unwritten annoying rickshaw law, that they can price gauge at nighttime. So we find a rickshaw that has offered to take all of us, and well we cram six people into this rickshaw! Four of us were in the back and David was in the front of the rickshaw with the driver in the drivers seat, originally he did not give us a figure and he started changing his mind he said four hundred, and then we are like 100 and then he said 300 and we said 50 and he said 200 and we are like screw this and we get in. But David being in the drivers seat thought he would be funny and ask to drive (which yes we know is against Rotary rules, but well driving a rickshaw is a once in a life time chance, and he did not really get to drive it he just held the wheel, but still he was in the drivers seat!) All of a sudden the rickshaw driver starts doing this weird swerving thing and we are like what is going on! And we suddenly see that there are police near by! And having six people in a rickshaw especially late at night is well really illegal! So we are being pursued by the police in the rickshaw at starts taking crazy turns and avoiding stop lights by taking left hand turns on red (which are not really legal, but everyone does them). So essentially we were running from the police in the rickshaw! It was quite fun, and David being very inquisitive, started asking the rickshaw driver questions, and we found out some really interesting things. He spoke ok English which is good for a rickshaw driver. He said he made around Rs. 400 a day (around 10 USD, and also means that he makes Rs. 12,000 (USD 300) a month, and Rs. 144,000 a year, which is 3600 USD), and that he has driven a few of us before. That night we went to MG Road for desert and meeting up with the other exchange students, and then we were going to go dancing.

We first went to one place to wait for the exchange students, and then went to the dancing and desert place to meet everyone else. We were joined by Johnny, Morty, Xia, and Charlotte, we also ran into some of out Indian friends. The place is a local hang out for teenagers because it offers nice deserts and has a small dance floor (which no one dances on it just plays good music) but with us being exchange students we always dance! We celebrated my birthday at midnight with everyone singing me happy birthday, and then we went to Anna’s house who lives very close to MG road.

The next morning I woke up really early to go see Om Shanti Om, with Eli. Eli and I have both now seen this movie three times each. Om Shanti Om, is the newest Hindi Flick out, and it is amazing! It is a great movie! It has everything you would want in a movie, a good guy, great music, and a great story full of action, adventure, and fun!

It is actually the top most grossing Hindi Film of ALL TIMES, and so we decided to see it a few more times since then, just to give it even more money! I am brining back copies to the US, because everyone should see this movie! (I will bring the subtitle version)

Then the movie being three hours long! We realized that right after the movie that we had an hour to get to our first exam of exams! We were about 40 minutes away on the other side of town, so we jumped in a rickshaw and picked up Stephanie on the way to go take the English exam!

The English, but sadly we were early, but Eli was with us, and well Eli does not go to our school. But she is with us and we walking in decide that we are going to claim she goes to our school. So Eli became Elenorea Urtenskritinmurphbooophel (Something along those lines with some added umlauts), a short term exchange student from Finland. But the English exam which we figured would take us about ten minutes, being that we are native speakers ended up being about ten pages worth of brutal torture of an English Exam! It took us around an hour! But after that, we were all starving enough to spend rs. 2000 on a great lunch at Polka Dots (our favorite hang out for amazing food! Also rs. 2000 is 50 American and we had six hungry girls with us!) So after that I went and joined up with Mallory and Jen, who were at the local coffee house, which has amazing Watermelon Mojittos (Which in this case a Mojittos is a very fancy word for icee). After that we went home, for a few minutes and had time for Jen to smear chocolate cake ALL OVER MY FACE (see the picture!) even up my nose, I was blowing cake out of my nose for like an hour! Then Mallory, Jen and I went to go see yet another movie!

We saw The Messengers, which sucks. It was about this family who moves into a hunted house, which has dead people buried under it, STUPID. Therefore, it was also really funny to Americans who have seen this gag a million an one times, not to mention Jen is the queen at laughing at the wrong time! It was great fun, because Jen and I would laugh really loudly in this full theater at something that would be American humor, and then five seconds latter everyone else would start laughing hysterically, after about the second time we realized they were laughing at us… hehehe

So the next day was spent lazing around on Sunday. The exact idea of a lazy Sunday, except for the early morning Rotary Meeting. It was bad, that is my story, if you want to hear about, my major issues with the Indian Rotary, email me, I will be more then happy to share and tell stories.

Then came Monday! On Monday we rented a driver and a big car and decided we were going to Bombay! Wahoooo! We wanted REAL HAMBURGERS! Yes, that is one of the only reasons we went to Bombay, to get real Hamburgers! We started out at 7am, and drove all the way to Bombay! The driver did not really speak any English and was getting really annoyed with our radio ADD, so he ended up taking us to the airport? We really have no idea why he took us to the airport, but it lead us about two hours out of our way. So we finally got to the Bombay Gate around 12:30, and Eli had helped us meet up with the Exchange Students who live in Bombay. One of them lives about ten minutes away from the Bombay Gate, which is SO COOL! I wish I lived there!

On the mini-trip to Bombay came Eli, Lauren, Chelsea, David, and Me. Lauren and Chelsea the first time we went to Bombay got a very bad opinion of the city. And this trip changed everyone’s opinion of the city. The Bombay kids took us to a café called Leopold’s for lunch. Joining us was Awo from USA (Minnesota) and then a girl from Germany. We talked about being in different cities, along with the other exchange students. It is wild how they live in the metropolis of Bombay, they are lucky and unlucky in some respects. We also once again proved the theory about the fact that the Exchange Students from Pune, are the closest bonded Exchange Students. After lunch we met the driver again for an hour car ride to go find shopping, on Linking Street. The street has great bargin and is amazing for haggleing! There is some little ally ways that Awo and the German Girl were winding us through, but right as we were in one that faces walls and not any natural light, the power went off! It was pitch black, and we could not see anything! Talk about freaky! But never fear my cell phone has an attached LED light, so I ended up finding my way out, but still, it was freaky! After that we left the Exchange Students, to go to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. We were instructed that we had to be home by ten pm sharp, so we had to be out of dinner by 7. We arrived at Hard Rock, after finding the place, which was behind a mill in a town behind the lots in the back, it is quite hidden. We arrived and we were the only ones there! The food was like food for the soul that is missing America! Real Hamburgers! Real Potato Skins, WITH BACON! Real Nachos (well almost, but it was not 19 tortilla chips arranged on a plate with not real nacho cheese)! REAL Chicken Fingers! Oh it was heavenly! But then the very smart David who was memorizing the menu, decided to look up where all the Hard Rock Cafes are in the world. And what he found out was startling! They are opening one in Pune (the city I live in!) In a few weeks! Really it was supposed to be open in the fall of 2007, but who knows when it will open now? But still there is hope!

After we finished dinner we began to head home. I really love the city of Bombay. It is just amazing. It is a city not really for the tourist but for the people who live there. It is not really a place to visit, because no one would be able to understand. It is not a place you go to for fun, there are fun things to do, but you have to know about them. Bombay is a city to explore. I could spend days, weeks, maybe every years exploring what the city has to offer. It is a real metropolis. It is for business and also what business is when it is not on Wall Street. It combines everything you love about all the cities you have been to and then everything thing you hate you should multiply the effect by 550 and then you have Bombay. It is in the wrong place for a city, it has terrible weather, and it has more pollution then you know what to do with. The homeless are in masses, Slums run for miles and miles. It is dirty, and gross, but at the same time, it has more beauty then your average city. It displays things that a community should, real libraries that you can check out books from, real universities, commuter trains, and crowds of people. It has buildings and organizations, for everything. It is full of what you are looking for; you can find anything in Bombay. It is an amazing city, which I really could be madly in love with!

Some things about Bombay that I would like the world to know in my observations.

One:

It has amazing shopping

Two:

It “strickly” observes traffic regulations (wear your seat belts!)

Three:

You can find beef, but you cannot find Mexican food

Four:

The poverty is overwhelming.

Five:

The Grand Amounts of Public Toilets!

This really is one of the most amazing things about Bombay is the Public Works. They have an incredible number of Public Shower Houses and Bathrooms. They are everywhere! Most of them are pay toilets, but you can also shower in them. You can even buy a membership to most of them if you frequent the place. They are everywhere. I was under the impression before I came to India, that bath houses and public toilets were only around for tourist spottings and were completely gone since the Roman Times! But truly they are a concept that I find fascinating, and intriguing.

We finally made it home after getting lost in the Dharvi Area of Bombay, Dharvi is a slum area, and also what some of us in the car found to be the cleanest area of Mumbai, it had clean streets and well paved roads, and was also supposed to be apart of the biggest slum in Asia, I think we were in the tourist section or something, because we could not really have been inside Dharvi?

That was Holi HeeterPoti! It was a great holiday; You should all have celebrated it!

More coming soon, I have not really been up to anything lately.... But since HeeterPoti, one of the original schemers of HeeterPoti, has left the building (or the country) and flown home to Canada, otherwise Exams are finally over and just like last time more stories about their incorrectness more or my incorrectness and stance on Rocks. And coming shortly my medical expose on Indian Medicine! (which is normally like go out and lick a tree!)