The past two days have been insane. This is Sunday.
Sam and I woke up bright and early and made our way over to an army base where TFT was helping with a school event. This event was supposed to happen the day before, but there was a political riot, and everything shut down...you know how it is. So the event was an annual program where the kids performed some traditional African dances (???), some amazing Indian hip hop routines and paid tribute to the military by competing in an obstacle course. It was pretty cool. We were the official photographers, and we attempted to help the kids into the harnesses and helmets (key word: attempted). After Raj and the boys praised us for all our hard labour (sun tanning is a lot of work), we headed off to the Oberoi Hotel for lunch and into the mad downtown for shopping/battle. The following is a description of my first (and hopefully last) experience of Commerical Street.
When I first turned the corner and had a glimpse of Commercial Street, I didn't know how we would even get to the first store. There were people everywhere! There were dogs sleeping in the middle of the street, and best of all, there were still cars and motorcycles moving through the crowd, blazing their horns, as if people should not be walking there. At one point, a motorcycle came literally 1 inch from running over my toes (but that's my fault apparently!) We made our way in and out of stores, probably touching more than a million people in the process, and we decided to temporarily escape the madness by turning down one of the side streets. BIG MISTAKE. This is where a man with no arms and no legs hobbled over to me, asked for money and stood on my foot, trying to prevent my escape. Terrifying. After about 30 minutes of anxiety, I told Sam and my dad that I couldn't do this anymore. We grabbed a drink at Coffee Day and just barely made it back to our car. By the way, I bought nothing.
That night we decided to wind down by going to a movie. We walked past the building where we had seen monkeys earlier that day. We went into the theatre, grabbed some caramel popcorn and Indian cuisine and mozied on into our assigned luxury seats (seriously, they were like lazy boy recliners). Just as I was settled in for the film (Season of the Witch-- terrible), we were asked by the screen to stand for the National Anthem. WHAT!? About 5 minutes, and a lot of giggling later, we sat back down and the movie began. We were again taken aback when about 40 minutes in "INTERMISSION" flashed across the screen. What an experience.
After the movie, we arrived home safely, only to realize that our internet was still not working (it hadn't been all day). Being the procrastinator that I am, I had only a few hours to complete an online test for one of my courses. Uh oh. Long story short, and 50 questions later, I submitted my test via Blackberry. Not easy, not my best test.
Stay tuned for Monday.
Sam and I woke up bright and early and made our way over to an army base where TFT was helping with a school event. This event was supposed to happen the day before, but there was a political riot, and everything shut down...you know how it is. So the event was an annual program where the kids performed some traditional African dances (???), some amazing Indian hip hop routines and paid tribute to the military by competing in an obstacle course. It was pretty cool. We were the official photographers, and we attempted to help the kids into the harnesses and helmets (key word: attempted). After Raj and the boys praised us for all our hard labour (sun tanning is a lot of work), we headed off to the Oberoi Hotel for lunch and into the mad downtown for shopping/battle. The following is a description of my first (and hopefully last) experience of Commerical Street.
When I first turned the corner and had a glimpse of Commercial Street, I didn't know how we would even get to the first store. There were people everywhere! There were dogs sleeping in the middle of the street, and best of all, there were still cars and motorcycles moving through the crowd, blazing their horns, as if people should not be walking there. At one point, a motorcycle came literally 1 inch from running over my toes (but that's my fault apparently!) We made our way in and out of stores, probably touching more than a million people in the process, and we decided to temporarily escape the madness by turning down one of the side streets. BIG MISTAKE. This is where a man with no arms and no legs hobbled over to me, asked for money and stood on my foot, trying to prevent my escape. Terrifying. After about 30 minutes of anxiety, I told Sam and my dad that I couldn't do this anymore. We grabbed a drink at Coffee Day and just barely made it back to our car. By the way, I bought nothing.
That night we decided to wind down by going to a movie. We walked past the building where we had seen monkeys earlier that day. We went into the theatre, grabbed some caramel popcorn and Indian cuisine and mozied on into our assigned luxury seats (seriously, they were like lazy boy recliners). Just as I was settled in for the film (Season of the Witch-- terrible), we were asked by the screen to stand for the National Anthem. WHAT!? About 5 minutes, and a lot of giggling later, we sat back down and the movie began. We were again taken aback when about 40 minutes in "INTERMISSION" flashed across the screen. What an experience.
After the movie, we arrived home safely, only to realize that our internet was still not working (it hadn't been all day). Being the procrastinator that I am, I had only a few hours to complete an online test for one of my courses. Uh oh. Long story short, and 50 questions later, I submitted my test via Blackberry. Not easy, not my best test.
Stay tuned for Monday.
Carly - when Mike and I were teenagers and going to see a movie - our national anthem used to be played before each show as well and the whole theatre stood.
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