I'm a celebrity?

Only three weeks in, and I'm already slacking on blog updates. I suppose that means I'm having fun, being busy, etc.

But I'm sitting on the terrace on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and I've got some time to bring you up to speed!

Starting with last Thursday (the 15th), when we went to yet another tomb (Delhi's full of them). This one is called Humayun's Tomb, and to be honest, I didn't get much of a chance to explore it and its gardens. Why? you ask. Well, apparently I as a white girl with curly hair have something like celebrity status here in India, especially with small and not-so-small children. Humayun's Tomb is a short walk from the IES Centre in New Delhi, though it turned into a rather long walk because the side closest to us was the back entrance, where we could not enter because there was no ticket stand. So we took a lovely scenic stroll through a relatively posh neighborhood on our way around this giant park/tomb/garden complex. As we reach the road where the main entrance is, we see maybe seven or eight giant buses and about two hundred nine- to thirteen-year-old boys milling about. As we're walking by them, several come up to a few of the other students and me, shaking our hands and asking our names or giving us high fives. Okay, cool. Kids are friendly everywhere, and we certainly do seem to be a novelty to them. I, with camera in hand, turn around after we've walked by all of them and want to take a picture of the crowd of kids being kids. 

Mistake number one.

Children start flocking to me, wanting their picture taken. Okay, cool. I can take pictures, right? Yes, but apparently not enough pictures, since they start following me when I try to continue walking towards the gate. They were cute, they were making goofy faces, and they all listened quite obediently when Cate started talking to them in Hindi, explaining that we were university students from the U.S. So she comes over to buy the tickets, and they stay a bit away from us, content with just laughing and waving.

For a minute. Then they come over and want their pictures taken with us. Fine - about five or six of us virtually always have a camera in hand, which should be plenty to keep them happy. Of the fifteen of us there, my friend Jon and I seem to be the ones attracting the most attention from the kids, who we later found out were all government (public) school kids on a field trip. I also found out later that apparently they thought Jon was some Bollywood actor whose name I forget. Which is funny because he has a not-so-secret-anymore obsession with Bollywood.

So we finally get our tickets and go through the turnstile, and the kids remain on 

the other side, pressed up against the giant (closed) gate, screaming and applauding as if we were rockstars exiting a concert. Again, kind of cool, but by then I was glad there was a large metal gate between us. It's really weird to get that much attention for reasons unknown to you.

So we start walking down the center walkway through some green space towards the tomb and some other buildings, and we stop to turn and look at the kids. Cate told us she was pretty sure they'd already visited the tomb and were waiting to leave. But then, all of a sudden, the gate swings open, and these kids start flat-out sprinting towards us. Have you ever see a stampede of elementary schoolers? It's a bit unsettling.

Anyway, they follow us around like little puppy dogs, and once again, I'm receiving the most attention. It got to the point where one of the teachers (of about two that we could identify) told them they weren't allowed to touch me (shake my hand, pull me over to take pictures, etc.) because they almost started rioting, and at one point I had at least two children tugging on each arm, trying to pull me in polar opposite directions.

It was exhausting, my camera batteries finally died, and we didn't stay at the monument long. I'll have to go back another day because I never even saw the inside of the tomb.

Friday the 16th we went shopping and bought cute Indian clothes for not-a-lot of money, which was lots of fun.

Saturday morning we were up well before dawn to leave for our Agra-Bharatpur weekend trip. We left the residence by five a.m. and were on the train to see the sun rising through the fog. It was nice, aside from being REALLY early in the morning. The other nice thing was that they served us tea on the train in individual tea kits (see left). Thank goodness I'm in a country where everyone drinks tea. They served breakfast, too, but it was sketchier and unidentifiable, and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat it.

Riding on a train through the countryside is incredibly calming. India in the fog at sunrise is an absolutely stunning site. I got some interesting pictures from the train ride of blurry palm trees in a green and purple haze. Pretty nifty.

When we arrived in Agra, it was less than ten minutes before I saw my first monkey; we weren't even out of the parking lot yet. Then, on the bus ride to the hotel, we saw a whole lot of them:

In case you can't really see, every single monkey in that picture is holding a banana, and they were just kind of scurrying about and doing monkey gymnastics on the wall and side of the street. So that was pretty exciting.

More on Agra and Bharatpur after these messages. ::Insert your favorite pointless advertisement here::

Really, I just want to eat lunch. More on Agra and Bharatpur after that. :)

Also, I'm thinking of starting a Picasa account for my pictures. Flickr gives not a lot of uploads per month, and I don't want to have to pay for an upgrade. If I do end up creating one, I'll post the link for it here.