Long time no post! Sorry about that, its been a bit of a busy week. Good news: Hindi exams- complete! Written, great. Oral... could have been better. Turns out I can't really speak at a proper speed. Ahh well.

BUT... Thursday afternoon, Emily and I attended our first wedding! It was nice to finally put of a set of 'fancy clothes', and go out in public, especially with the whole family. As it turns out, Khadeeja and Adil didn't really know the couple getting married all that well, so our experience was much different than I expected. We showed up to find out it was a fairly traditional Muslim Wedding, where men and woman are separated, with separate food stations as well. Fortunately, Adil has progressive female friends who were already at the wedding, and had eaten on the mens side, so our group didn't actually have to split, and we had another DELICIOUS meal (you shouldn't be surprised, clearly all my Indian experiences center around food....). The decorations were so colorful, as well as everyone's outfits. There were about 500 guests, to which we discovered was only a medium sized crowd (crazy, that's way more than I would want at my wedding). What surprised me most was the lack of music and dancing really, but our host parents said it was probably because of how traditional the wedding actually was. So to be honest... first experience, a little anti-climactic. Good thing I have more weddings to go to! Khadeeja was actually pretty upset about the lack of dancing, and promised her brothers wedding would be much more exciting. Thank goodness!

After leaving the wedding we continued the family excursion to GK1 market, and then on the way home were stuck in our first real Delhi traffic jam. Just as I was starting to get a little agitated, we hear fireworks going off and see smoke rising from under the highway bridge (don't worry, this story ends well) and realize that people around us are stopping their cars and getting out to get a better view of what was going on along the side of the highway. Turns out, we were passing a very large temple, and Thursday happened to be the festival Dussehra, which falls on the 10th day of Navrathri. The festival is a bit hard to explain (hence the link, watch the video) but essentially a large paper statue of Ravna is burned as a symbol of good conquering evil, followed by a very large and rowdy street celebration. Our Muslim host parents were not amused by the amount of traffic it caused. Another quick history lesson: Ravna is a character from the Ramayana, one of the epic Sanskrit tales about a king, a queen, a few Gods, good and evil. Once again, that was a terrible explanation- click the link! Emily and I actually saw a modern English interpretation of the Ramayana last week, so we had a bit of a background and understanding of who Ravna was, and why they wanted to burn his statue - he kidnapped the kings wife, Sita! So really we've been getting the best of both worlds: Muslim traditions at home, Hindu traditions everywhere else. Its kinda nice to see multiple perspectives of things.

Another thing I've failed to mention... a group of us decided to take a weekend trip to Rishikesh! For those that are unfamiliar, Rishikesh is know for its yoga, spiritual enlightenment, the Ganges river (significantly cleaner than the Varanasi version) and of course, as the gateway to the Himalayas (I'm in the foothills!!!). Its a bit unfair to my most recent experiences to tack them on to the end of a post, so expect more to come later about the adventures in the foothills.