Indian Independence Day aka MY GREATEST INDIAN ADVENTURE YET

Hello one and all! Hope all is going swimmingly in America and you all are enjoying the last vestiges of summer--please eat a hot dog and lay out by the pool in my honor. As is witnessed by the title of this post, this week started off pretty crazy for me--Monday, August 15, 2011 is a date which will live in infamy...as far as my life goes. So because this day was so awesome/crazy/random/super I will just start from the beginning...

August 15 is Independence Day in India.This is the day, in 1947, that India declared its independence from Britain and became a sovereign nation. Much like the fourth of July, Independence Day is a national holiday in India and every year all the schools in India do a specific program in honor of the day. The school was decorated with tons of flags and everyone pinned little Indian flags to their clothes for the day. For the independence day program, the kids perform a marchpast. A marchpast is a specific march that is meant to honor the country. The kids had practiced the marchpast the whole week before independence day and it was really cool to watch the finished product (see video below). After the marchpast, the rest of the program just consisted of a few of the older kids giving speeches on Indian independence, famous freedom fighters, and their thoughts on Indian independence. When the kid's speeches were done, Dr. Susan and Jim said a few words and Celina thanked everyone involved with getting the program set-up. It was so interesting to see how differently the people here celebrate their independence than we do in America. There was a great sense of formality and tradition in the program and it was an honor to witness. Speaking of honor, there was one other cool part about the independence day program. Each year at the independence day program, leaders within the school and organization are honored for their work. The people that are honored receive a jasmine wreath and sit at the front during the speech portion of the program. The people honored this year were Jim and Pam Gates (the country directors at RSO), Dr. Susan Hilton (the national director of RSO), Hirudayanathan (the Indian principal), Celina (the director of education) and lastly.....ME (random year-long volunteer). It truly was an honor to be included with this amazing group of people and honored at their independence day program. It is an honor I will always cherish because it came from my indian family.

Kala putting jasmine and roses in my hair. I never have a bobbypin on me when she goes to do this so she always ends up giving me hers even though I tell her not to--she is one of the kindest women ever.

Dr. Susan honoring me with a jasmine wreath.

All of the honored guests during the students speeches--not my cutest face but oh well.

Marchpast--Yes, I am the world's worst videographer.

So you would think being honored at the Indian Independence Day program would be the culmination of an awesome day...nay, things got better from here. Rajakumari (one of my dear friends here) has been wanting me to bike to her house on my new cycle to eat with her family for quite some time now. We have set multiple dates but for some reason they never worked out. We finally decided that Independence day would be the perfect day to come over because her whole family would be there and there was no school so we would have all day. Originally, Rebecca was going to accompany me on this journey but she had been sick all weekend, so Dani was invited in her stead (Dani is the overarching volunteer director for Rising Star who came with her nephew just for this last session). We planned to leave at 2:00pm but with the new set of volunteers coming, Dani had to work and we were not able to leave until about 3:45. Now, this was my first, official off-campus bike ride so the journey was bound to be a little crazy from the get-go. Dani was a rockstar and channeled Mother Teresa throughout this ride cause I definitely wasn't the fastest. In my defense, though, the roads we were riding on were anything but smooth and by the end of the ride I was getting fairly decent. Anyways, we set-off from RSO with sunny sky and even sunnier faces with the hopes on getting to Rajakumari's house in about 45 minutes max. The first part of the ride went by well enough: I stumbled along and Dani helped to encourage and not make me feel too completely stupid. About we were almost halfway there when it started to sprinkle--the sky had been darkening throughout our ride. By the time we reached the halfway point at the catholic hospital that we often work with, we were caught in a full-on, torrential downpour to the point where we couldn't see to ride any longer. We pulled off to the side of the road and sat at a covered bus stop for a minute debating on what to do next. A woman at the bus stop was trying to talk to us in Tamil and from her gestures I could piece together that her main point of communicating was to ask why the hell we were biking in a rainstorm and how ridiculously wet we had gotten (we were soaked). While she was talking to us, Rajakumari called my phone to tell us she was sending her brother on her scooty to pick us up. Rajakumari's brother arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes later and we had to think for awhile the best way to go about getting to Rajakumari's house. We finally decided on locking our bikes and hiding them in a nearby bush and then all three of us cramming on the scooty like true indians and driving to Rajakumari's house. We stored the bikes and waited a few minutes to see if the rain would slow down a little before taking off on the scooty....it never slowed down. So, we crammed on the scooty and took off into the downpour. If we weren't soaked to the bone before we definitely were after 2 minutes on that scooter--how he was able to see in the driving rain is still a mystery to me. Ten minutes later we pulled up to Rajakumari's house soaking wet and happy to be alive and have made it. I have said this many times before and I'm sure will say it many times after--Indian people are some of the most giving people I have ever met. Rajakumari had prepared a bunch of food for us and was ridiculously kind an accommodating once we got there. She heaped food onto our plates until we were stuffed to the brim and then she just boxed stuff up and sent it home with us. One of the funnest parts of the meal was that all of Rajakumari's little cousins were over for the holiday. Two of the older cousins (I think one was in 8th standard and one was in 6th) had never seen a foreigner before and they thought we were the craziest/coolest thing around. They had tons of energy and kept pointing out random features and saying they were super, i.e. "Face so super!", "Teeth so super!" "Hair so super!" "Clothes so super!" These girls were very expressive so they had all kids of actions to go with there phrases. They were definitely worth our crazy ride to get to Rajakumari's house.

Dani and I with Rajakumari and her ADORABLE cousins!

By the time we had finished eating and playing with the kids, the rain had stopped so we headed back towards the bikes. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Rajakumari thought it necessary to have us go back to hospital on separate bikes instead of all three of us cramming on the scooty. So, lucky me, I got to ride back to the catholic hospital on a legit motorcycle with a friend/neighbor/acquaintance of Rajakumari's. Thankfully our bikes were still there and unharmed and we were able to bike back to RSO with no problems (unless you count my horrible biking skills as a problem). 

So basically in my first bike ride ever I had to deal with all the worst elements: potholes, rain to the point where you can't see, mud...it was super!!! JD, look how far I've come from central park!

Overall, it was a CRAZY adventure that words really can't do justice to describe--you had to have been there. I'm sure there are more adventures like this in store for me throughout this next year...it's gonna be awesome.

Vanakkam