Shaking hands, Kissing babies, Petting elephants...NBD

 I PET AN ELEPHANT TODAY! so I was just chilling in India hanging out at a festival and up walks some elephants! They were the best things in the entire world and I love them with all my heart! Here’s a pic of me petting one!  I named him Jello, to make up for the fact that I have no one to call Jello…

That awkward moment when the foreigners turn into the main event at the festival: So we were just chilling at the festival watching some elephants and camels go by when all of a sudden person after person start asking us to take pictures with them or dance with them in the parade, or (and this is my personal favorite) hold their babies. It was a tad bit disconcerting…I felt like a politician: shaking hands and kissing babies. So many people wanted to shake our hands and touch our hair or skin, or take pictures with/of us. My personal favorite (other than holding someone’s baby) was when a police officer took his phone out and took pictures of us.  I wanted to let him know that he didn’t look as intimidating as he thought when he was cheesing from ear to ear while taking photos of us.

O and did I mention that we will be on the Indian evening news? Because we will be.  While at the festival a news reporter came up to us and asked us how we were feeling in India and how we were feeling at the festival, then he took lots of photos and videos! We even got special privileges while at the festival because we were foreigners. We got to get out of line and take special pictures; we got to get out of line to have pictures taken of us. It was pretty cool, we were pretty much VIP’s.  We spent the last 45 minutes of our time at the festival taking pictures with people.  The weird part is a lot of people wanted to take pictures with us, but they didn’t have cameras, so they wanted us to take pictures with them on our phones and cameras, so they’ll literally never see the pictures…

I’ve figured out why America is the most obese country in the world. At parades and festivals we’ve gotten to the point where we toss out full sized candy bars to the people in the crowds…not in India, in India they toss out stuff like cucumbers and mung beans, and water, and some candy, but not nearly the amount or size of that in America. #problemsolved When we got back to the school we divided all the candy into 3 bags (one for the boys, one for the girls and one for the blind boys) then we took the candy around and passed it out like it was Halloween! It was great : ) I’ve pretty much become besties with all of the boys.

Speaking of the boys, I realized that boys will be boys, no matter where you go or who they are they’re all the same, even here in India.  Today my friend (the one from previous blog posts) tried to convince me that some elephants would be coming to the school at 6, well at 6 when they weren’t here I asked him where they were, then he tried to convince me they would be here at 7, well I told him I thought he was full of crap. I told him he was dishonest and we were no longer friends, at which point he immediately started trying to convince me that there were elephants across the street…he knows I can’t leave the commune…this all basically ended with me being super over it because I was quite excited about seeing some more elephants.  But at the end of the day the boys are pretty much the sweetest things ever, they gave me flowers and it was cute : )

As I told a friend of mine yesterday, I can tell this is going to be one of those rip my heart out and leave me for dead summers…I’ve still got plenty of time so I’m not thinking about leaving yet....

Foreign Celebrity,

Leigh