Happy Holidays!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Holidays aren't exactly real holidays here... but they're close enough. Hannukah was a little not normal. The first day of Hannukah these were our presents:I got a painting of an elephant I already knew about, Daddy got a glass mug, Mommy got herself a hair dryer, and Sloan got a basketball with a gator on it but it said jaws. Our menorah was made out of a plate, tinfoil and diet coke bottle caps.






First Night: Satish and Malti came over to our apartment to do Hannukah with us.







Second Night: Hitesh and his family came over. Mommy exercised with Kamini, and made me and Foram do it too.





Third Night: Purvi, our neighbor's daughter came over to exercise with mom and then helped us light the candles.

Fourth Night: Hitesh's family came over again to have Hannukah with us. We had popcorn and cookies and played Connect Four. Me and Sloany got mommy a pair of earrings. Then we all went on a miserable trip to an exhibit about a swami.

Fifth Night (last night): Satish and Malti came over again, we had a wonderful dinner from Domino's pizza. Satish got 8 pies and garlic bread! Yummy! Our menorah melted on the fourth night so mommy had to make a new one. We had a race; would mommy finish making the menorah first, or would I finish my carrot. Mommy won and I was still eating the carrot while we said the prayer.

Hailey

P.S. Please leave a comment!

Hailey pretty much said everything there was to know about Hanukah but there's one thing she left for me to say. Yesterday (Christmas Day), some of the guys from the neighborhood came over and brought me a blue, glass fish as a christmas present. They said it was good luck.

It was very nice that they thought of me and went out of their way to get a present for me. They asked me four times (I was counting!) if I celebrated Christmas. I didn't answer them because I didn't want to upset them. A few hours later some other kids came over and they gave Hailey and I a Christmas card which they made by hand. It was very generous considering we didn't know them. It was all very nice (and awkward). It will be a Christmas/Hanukah to remember!









I hope that everybody enjoys their holiday!

Sloan

Raj A.K.A The Wasted Cheeseball

When we went to the Jaisalmer fort (Dec. 13, I know we're late) we thought that we would just see the fort and come back. We were wrong.


My family and I started to walk towards the direction of the fort at about nine in the morning. We went to a German bakery which was very, very good. My mom thought that the cinnamon rolls we got smelled and tasted like the ones her dad used to get in the country. They were good. My dad’s backpack had broken so we went to a leather shop and he got himself a very nice leather backpack. There was a guy coming towards us. He said his name was Raj and he asked us if we wanted a tour of Jaisalmer fort. He also asked if he could have the backpack because he knew of a place where he could get the zipper fixed. He said that he wouldn’t charge us, but the only thing we would have to do is come to his shop afterwards. We agreed, but we had no idea what was in store for us. Raj barely gave us a tour. He was the worst tour guide I ever had. He didn’t know a lot about the fort and showed us about three things. Then he started to take us to his shop. He also gave a whole twenty minute speech to my dad about how his father didn’t approve of him and that you should be nice to everybody because you don’t know what you’re going to come back as. It was annoying. It turned out not to be “his shop.” He just worked there with about ten other people. It was a store that actually wasn’t so bad! We got some pillowcases and we are going to have some saris made into curtains. It turned out that we had to go to another shop for furniture! We got a set of chairs and a table to go with the chairs. I guess when we move my mom will have an Indian room. It will be her favorite room of the house. While we were there, Raj was smoking at least one pack of cigarettes. I know he was smoking more than that. Raj kept saying: “I’m sorry if you did not enjoy my company,” (or something like that). We kept saying “enjoy the backpack!” in a happy tone so he would SHUT-UP!
Bu he didn’t.
When we were getting a quick dinner Raj said to me: “women are horrible, do not get married because they will ruin your life,” and “women always lie so don’t listen to them.”
I do not like Raj.


The Five Things I Don't Like About India

1.The people staring at us every second of every day

2.The beggars and the slums

3.How dirty it is

4.People always asking us to buy things or (like Raj) setting us up to buy things

5.People are always trying to rip us off

I Like Elephants

Hello,

This is Hailey who hates trains. If I were you I would take an elephant instead-they're much more comfortable! A little while ago (11 Dec) my family and I went to Amber Fort (in Jaipur) and rode elephants up to the fort. It was really fun.

In the car on the way to the fort we saw camels and elephants all dressed up in shiny things. The people that own the elephants wanted us to ride them to the fort. But our cab drove us to the bottom of the fort where other elephants were waiting for someone to get on their back and ride them up (you could only ride the elephants up to the fort, not into it or down to the bottom again).

All four of us got on one elephant. There was a seat on the elephant’s back so we could all fit.
I was sitting back to back with Daddy and next to Mommy. Sloan was back to back with Mommy. The seat was a square platform and there were bars going up from each corner, and bars connecting those-so we had something to hold onto.

When the elephant started walking we bumped into each other. Me and Mommy were both going to the left and right but at different times so when I went to the left and she went to the right we crashed into each other. Then when I went to the left I went back so I bumped into Daddy...Luckily I wasn’t anywhere near Sloan - That wouldn’t be good!

Our elephant's name was Malti just like our friend in Baroda. When we got off Malti we took a picture with her and petted her-her skin was really rough and her fur was just little bendy spikes coming out of her skin.

Then we got a guide to take us around the Amer Fort but a lot of people call it Amber Fort. First we went to a temple…No ‘dead’ cows allowed inside, as in no leather allowed inside but we brought in Sloan’s leather camera case in anyway. Inside the temple there were people sitting on the floor praying…well singing and praying. This woman was dancing and singing with all these bracelets on so she jingled when she danced. People were also making offerings to the god or something they gave flowers or shells or whatever and every time they made an offering they rang this huge bell so by the time I was out of the temple everything inside my head was going ding-dong and then there was this chubby looking man who kept ringing the bell for some reason. Everyone else rang it when they came in and when they left, I wasn’t watching him the whole time so he could have come in and out fifteen times.

Then we went to lunch and had the cheapest lunch yet. We had plain nan, garlic nan, dal, rice, potatoes and a bunch of other stuff for rs.324 which would be six dollars and forty eight cents in America. We even had leftovers to give our driver.

Also in Jaipur Daddy, Sloany and I went to a museum and the observatory to see the world’s largest sundial. See if you can figure out what time the shadow says it was. I think it was between 3 and 4:00. Mom was in the car sleeping.

That night we went to the train station to wait for our sleeper to Jaisalmer. We were an hour early, but the train was late, so we spent an hour and a half naming the rats. The announcer woman kept talking about a ‘superfast’ train to somewhere. Clearly it was not our train. Our train took over 14 hours to get to where it was going, about two hours longer than it was supposed to.

If you read this entry, please leave a comment.
Hailey
copyright 2008

The Agra "Foggy" Fort

Hello, it’s Sloan! The day after we went to the Taj Mahal we went to the Agra Fort (10 December).

WARNING: You must know that before you read this that the Taj Mahal was much more fun.

When we first when outside that morning at about eight o’clock it was so foggy I couldn’t see twenty feet in front of me. I knew from that point at least that morning was a bad day to go sightseeing. When we got to the fort we had to walk down this path until there we saw some different paths. There was also a big chunk of it blocked off because the Navy or Army was doing training in those areas. We chose one path to walk down (according to the map) and saw many temples and palaces. Even when it was about nine o’clock it was just as foggy.

Another thing that wasn’t so good was that we wouldn’t get a tour guide. Since we had Vijay for our rickshaw driver for the whole time we where in Agra, he repeated his two rules because he still seemed mad from the day before. I’m one hundred percent sure that if we got a tour guide it would have been better.

If we could do anything again in India I would choose to go back to the Agra Fort. I’m sure we could see a lot more and we would definitely hire a tour guide no matter what Vijay says.

copyright 2008

The Great Big Taj Mahal!

Hello! This is Sloan!! Last Tuesday (9 Dec 2008), my family and I went to the world famous Taj Mahal.

The fantastic bed and breakfast we stayed at arranged a rickshaw driver to pick us up. The rickshaw drivers name was Vijay and he was very nice. As soon as we got in his rickshaw, he told us two things not to do:
1.DO NOT BUY ANYTHING
2.DO NOT TAKE A TOUR GUIDE

We only followed half of his rules. He dropped us off at the western gate, and we said we would meet back there at 6 p.m.

My family and I soon saw this guy coming towards us. He was a speedy talker. I had no idea what he was saying at first. He asked if we wanted a tour of the Taj Mahal. I was wondering if he really was a tour guide, because he looked really nervous and talked really fast. I knew that my mom and dad were thinking the same thing too (and Hailey) because they were asking him to show them his papers. He took us into this white room and introduced us to another man (supposedly his brother) named Arif and he turned out to be our tour guide. I guess both of them passed the test.

Arif walked us in and showed us this building. It had twenty two domes- ball shaped things, eleven on each side. The twenty two domes stood for the years it took for the Taj Mahal to be built. It turned out that Arif was a good tour guide! He sat us down and explained to us why the Taj Mahl was built, how it was built and who it was built for. It really helped me. Then we headed towards the real Taj Mahal! I thought it looked exactly like a big palace in a fairy tale. It just didn’t look real! When we went inside the Taj Mahal we had to take our shoes off so we didn’t ruin the beautiful white marble. In fact the whole Taj Mahal is made out of complete white marble. The king who built the Taj Mahal loved marble so every centimeter of the Taj Mahal Is made of marble. I didn’t think the inside was so great. All it had in it was a replica of some Kings and Queens coffins (the original ones are downstairs of the Taj Mahal where no one is allowed to go). I always imagined the Taj Mahal being a big building with just green grass around it. There are a lot of other buildings and palaces there which I didn’t expect to see! All we did for the last half hour was take pictures of the Taj Mahal and the buildings that surround it. One picture that I really liked was a picture of me “holding" the Taj Mahal. It really looked like I was holding it! The Taj Mahal was awesome. It is something I will never forget.

Uncomfortable Train

Hellooooooooooooooooooo!!! This is Hailey AKA Anna-Lena AKA trooper#2!


If you ever come to India and get on a train in the middle of the night for the first time you’re going to be freaked out…in a bad way!

First, when you get on everybody is already sleeping and it’s really dark and a little like jail…surviving jail isn’t easy especially without a pillow. When we got on the train we had to climb over people to get on to our bunk or uncomfortable bed or whatever you want to call it. I’d go with uncomfortable bed or hard chair. Next we put the sheets on the thing we were supposed to sleep on (but tried not to). Sloan was already up on the sleeping thing so it was my turn to climb up the two foot ladder. Once I got up there with Sloan I actually liked the train. I listened to my ipod for a while and Sloan played his PSP (PSP stands for Pray Squat Pee - we made that up to use in the bathroom).

In the morning I woke up, Sloan was still sleeping. He stole my pillow so I had to sleep on the hard bed, unfortunately. The man on the bunk below us woke up and got a cup of chai from one of the chai guys. At that same moment Sloan realized that he only needed one pillow and he knocked mine down. It hit the man’s chai and it spilled all over the mini-table. After a little while we did school and couldn’t stop laughing for some reason. Then I got really bored and looked out the window and saw oxen. I made up a song that I will never get tired of. This was the song:
I’m a big ox with little horns
I’m a big ox with little horns
I’m a big ox with little horns
And I’m really, really big.

I went on singing that until daddy got really annoyed so I stopped.

When it was time for us to leave we almost got off at the wrong stop, but luckily the other person in our cabin said “you’re supposed to get off at the next stop.”

Off to see the Taj Mahal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trooper #2 AKA Ana-Lena AKA Hailey

Mean Monkeys and People That Act Like Monkeys

One day my family and I went out to have a picnic. We bought some tasty Indian food and then we went to the local park: Kamati Gardens. It didn’t go so well. We picked out a grassy area right in the middle of the park, laid our blanket out and started to eat. We didn’t go to the other area because there were monkeys. We thought they would steal our food. As soon as they saw we had food they came over to where we were sitting. They crept closer and closer until one of them stole our chapatti-an Indian bread. Some women sitting close to us told them that if we didn’t want the monkeys stealing our food we should make that were going to throw our shoes at them. We had to do that a lot. Second of all there were some men (if that’s what you want to call them) that were acting more like monkeys then the monkeys themselves! When we saw them coming they instantly saw us and headed towards us. They sat down two feet away from us and then started to stare. Sure, people stare at us all the time but this time it was different. They stared at us in a really mean way. Usually, people stare at us because their interested or “fascinated” but they stared at us to be mean. Then they started to talk to us. Of course while they were talking they were staring. I also think they were saying mean stuff to us in Gujurati. When they asked us where we were from we said we were from Russia. My name was Sasha, (but I really wanted it to be Borat) Hailey’s name was Anna-Lena, Moms name was Tanya and Dads name was Vladimier. Then they asked to see our passports and wanted to know if we had any Russian money. Of course we didn’t. I didn’t think that Russians would have any Russian have any of their money either. I also think they were pretty stupid because I was playing baseball. Russians don’t play baseball. Also at the park their were some other Indians. They weren’t bad. The only thing was that they wanted our blanket. I felt bad for them because they were probably homeless and if they were they didn’t follow us around and constantly bug us. They seemed to understand us better.


Tonight we are going on a overnight train to Agra. It has one of the seven wonders of the world: the Taj Mahal, which we will be going to see. That’s all for know.
Just in case you were wondering Sloan wrote this post. More pictures to come...

Monkey Party

Mom thought the monkey pictures in the story below look depresing because they were in our 'junk yard' so she wants to add more. Enjoy!

Hello this is Hailey…AND I ♥ MONKEYS

Two days ago (30 Nov) we had a monkey party! There are some monkeys that just hang around our neighborhood and around four o’clock every day they choose somewhere in the neighborhood to play and jump on each other. Yesterday they chose just outside my building! There is a little house across the street from us and a yard with barbed wire around it so animals can’t get in, but it isn’t stopping the monkeys from getting in!

First all the monkeys were on a building to our left. When we went to the balcony all of them started jumping off that building. They crossed the road, then went onto an old tire that was standing against the wall with the barbed wire on top. From there they just jump over the wall. Once all the monkeys got over the fence our neighbors upstairs started throwing food down to the monkeys, we wanted to do it too! Mommy told me and Sloan to go get bananas to throw down to the monkeys. Then Sloan came back with a bunch of them . He gave bananas to me and mommy and he saved some for him to throw down too. The monkeys didn’t even bother peeling the banana…I don’t think they know how to anyway.

It was really fun watching the monkeys. We took one thousand pictures of the monkeys eating and jumping on each other! After a little while the monkeys left but we’ll see them another day.


Hailey

P.S. I ♥ MONKEYS

A LONG Trip to a temple

Good morning…or night whatever time it is where you are!

Last Wednesday (26 Nov) me and my family went on a long trip and this is how it went: First we got on a really crowded bus with Satish’s friend but I will tell you about him later. Me and daddy got to sit in the first row of the bus so we got a lot of space : ) Then we got off the bus and went to bank of India or as I like to call it the bank of boring. We went to the bank of boring because Satish’s friend (I’m not sure what his name is but if I did I would definitely spell his name wrong!) works there and he is going help us plan our day. While we were waiting at the bank me and Sloan played war with uno cards-it works!

So then we left the bank and went to get a rickshaw. The rickshaw we got had seats in the back so me and mommy sat there…it was comfortable! Then the rickshaw driver drove us to a mosque it was 500 years old or more! We got to stand on it. The stairs were really dark. It was basically a square shaped old building but much shorter and it didn’t have any doors it had pillars and like I said lots of dark stairs for the look out to watch over India…but not any more! Then at the top were two poles you know like on top of castles they always have a pole coming out of the top with lots of stairs in it so some one could look over the land. The mosque had those poles. Sloan wanted to go up to the top but daddy wouldn’t let him. Then we got back in the rickshaw and this time daddy and Sloan sat in the back.

Then the rickshaw driver drove us up a mountain. On the mountain there were all different signs for different animals like elephants and jaguars and tigers but all we saw were monkeys-but there were no signs for monkeys! Then a car with a police man in it stopped us. He told us that rickshaws were not allowed to drive up the mountain because it wasn’t safe (but they let motorcycles drive up the mountain so I think that is weird). So the rickshaw drove us back down the mountain and we got into a jeep that would drive us up. We stayed at the bottom of the mountain for a pretty long time because daddy wanted a better price for the jeep. Finally we got in the jeep and drove up the mountain. We got out of the jeep when we got to the top of the mountain and got onto a tram. It was really cool, we even went through a canyon. Then we got off the tram and we were in this place about 6,000 feet up-but no matter where we are mommy doesn’t stop talking to people. But what was really annoying is the same question we get asked over and over again: where are you from? Every person we walk by either stares at us or asks us…the question! Next we went up what seemed to me 1,000 steps but it was really somewhere closer to 100 steps to see the temple at the top.

Then we did the whole trip in reverse.

Hailey

Neat stuff and... HOW TO BURP IN INDIA!

What’s up!? It’s Sloan.

Wednesday was a very fun and interesting day. We went to a small city in the middle of Baroda and Ahmedabad. Satish’s friend took us there and we had to wait at the Bank of India (where he works, like Satish), until he got in touch with the rickshaw driver. When the rickshaw driver came we went to all of these old temples. All we really did was take pictures. In my opinion the temples were nice, but I didn’t think they were so great. My favorite thing we visited was the 500 year old mosque (even though I’m Jewish).

The rickshaw had a back where you could sit. It was very dangerous and very fun to sit in the back at the same time, especially when we were going to the mosque because the “road” was sand and had literally hundreds of bumps in it. Luckily I was sitting in the back when we were going there so I got to experience Disney World India!

The main reason I liked the mosque the best is because the guy let us go in it. The first floor was probably the nicest but definitely not my favorite. When we went to the higher floors it was the favorite part of my day. It was nice because I couldn’t see anyone; all I could see was lots of green grass, open fields, mountains and flowers. It was a beautiful sight.

After that we had lunch and went to Pavagadh, a temple on top of a mountain. The rickshaw driver and all of us thought that he could make it up the mountain. No sweat right? But after we were about ⅓ of the way there a policemen, who was doing absolutely nothing before this, stopped us and said that we were not allowed to go beyond that point. He doesn’t like Americans or he actually takes his job seriously. He followed us the whole way down. He let us go but told our driver to come back and pick us up in two hours. We took a jeep to the top of the mountain and soon realized that the rickshaw probably couldn’t have made it halfway up anyhow! Now I’m happy the Policeman was doing his job! After the jeep took us close to the top of the mountain we took a tram. We had to sit so our weight was exactly equal on both sides. Other than the fact we couldn’t really move, it was fun. When we got off the tram we walked through this tiny village to get to a temple. We were all wondering how the village could survive the summer when it rained everyday. These people live in tiny brown shacks in their tiny village with a population about 60. Most of them owned small convenience and jewelry stores. Mom bought two wooden bracelets each for ten rupees. Some guy said it would take half an hour to get up and half an hour to get down for a total of one hour. All together it took us half an hour. He was probably talking about people like him who were not as fit as us. We went up and down. For some of it we had to take our shoes off and walk! How exciting!! All we did was go see the temple and walk through a terminal to go back. When we went back down the mountain we were not alone. In the jeep we went back with about 20 other people. Some people were smushed together like pages in a book and some people were hanging on to the handlebar at the side like spider monkeys. The guy driving wanted to charge us 150 rupees but we only paid him forty. He was trying to get us to give him more money but we are smart people so we only gave him forty.

But the Day wasn’t over.

I was in the shower and some kids that I’ve been playing with came over. Hitesh, an adult Indian friend, was also over and brought us some great rice! When I came out they were playing with Hailey’s Nintendo DS, my PSP, my camera, the computer and all of the games. Hailey was fed-up and didn’t want them playing with any of her stuff. She doesn’t like any of them. I was okay with it. It’s probably like Disney World to them because they haven’t played with any of this stuff before. Something that was kind of strange is that they were obsessed with my camera. While we were showing them a slideshow of the pictures we took that day, they took pictures of the computer. Some photographers they are. After they left, Hitesh told us that they were “low class” and “we shouldn’t leave any of that stuff out while they are here.” During the time he was at our apartment he drank five glasses of beer and did much more belching then talking. In India it is polite to burp when you have had a good meal. I still thought it was disgusting. Right when we would say something, “BURP!!!” and we forgot what we wanted to say.

Hotels are gross and weddings are...late!

Hellooooo!!!

This is trooper #2!!! On Sunday night (23 Nov) me and the rest of the Cherrys went to a wedding. I wore a brown dress with one thousand beads on it. My mom wore a kurta. A kurta is like a dress with pants. Daddy and Sloan were just plain boring. Daddy wore a button down shirt with jeans and Sloan wore a white polo shirt tucked into his jeans.

The Thanksgiving party that we were supposed to go to in Ahmedabad was cancelled but we went anyway (I was looking forward to having American food).

We saw our first elephant in India.

The hotel we stayed in at Ahmedabad was gross. They didn’t have a floor for a shower or a little wall, so when we turned the water on it covered the whole bathroom floor. The second reason was that the toilet was gross. The hotel was just bad. First of all they gave us each about an inch of soap. When we got to the room there were no towels and it was always dark in the room. I was actually happy to be back in boring Baroda- I like it better!

Peace out dude.
Haileyooooooo!!!!

WE ARE ALL FINE

We are still in Baroda, far from Mumbai. A friend just woke us to this horrifying news. Needless to say our travel plans to Mumbai this weekend are cancelled.

Ahmedabad, boring things, and a wedding

Hi! Since the last time I wrote on the blog we started traveling, I experienced the worst five hours of my Indian Adventure yet, and we went to Moons wedding. If you think staying at people's house for five hours and having a miserable time is fun, then you're just plain weird.

One day we met this German family coming out of a supermarket. They were nice and invited us to dinner at their family's house the next night. We got there and they sat us down for twenty minutes on their couch. I was the only one on a plastic chair. Luckily we went outside. All Hailey and I could do was play slaps and sticks. It was b-o-r-i-n-g. Then mom and dad went to the beer and wine shop. The little kids (5 and 3 years old) wanted to watch T.V. which I thought would be okay. But it wasn’t. They turned on this show called Hagemaru (or something like that) and the mom served us rice and briyani. The briyani was pretty good! The best thing about going to their house was finding out that the moms brother (his name was Collin) didn’t think we were snobs. Collin thought that all kids from NYC were snobs but he was wrong!

After about 3 1/2 hours at their house the little kids took us in to their “playroom.” Their cousin was there too, he was three. I don’t know how this happened but they started walking in circles and when it was their turn, they jumped on me as hard as they could. Even Hailey was jumping! At first this was fun, but then I got mad. So I got up and yay, good for me, we were leaving!!!!! That was how I spent my worst five hours in India (so far).

We also took our first trip in India! We went to a city named Ahmedabad, two hours away by bus. When we got there, we quickly dropped our stuff off and headed siteseeing! That day we went to the Ghandi museum and ashram. It was the place where he lived from 1918-1930. We went to the museum and to his actual home. If you didn’t know, he was the Martin Luther King of India. Mom hated the hotel and we are going to have a real BIG problem if she keeps thinking about the hotels like that because the hotel wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. Trust me.

The next day in Ahmedabad we went to a synagogue. It is one of the few synagogues in India. There are only 6,000 Jews in India out of one billion people. It only had three prayer books and they were all messed up and almost torn to bits. We told the synagogue we were going to help them get some more. They seemed very grateful.

After that we looked for booksellers in a crowded market. We kept asking people where this book store was. They told us they knew but they probably had no idea what we were saying. Dad got fed-up so Dad and I went back to the hotel. All Mom and Hailey found was a book on good tourist places to go in Asia and a big, gigantic cookie to give to Malti.

Here comes the wedding! The same day we came back from Ahmedabad we finally went to Moon’s wedding! The two people who were happy about how they looked were Dad and Hailey. Hailey was wearing a nice, brown Indian dress and dad was wearing a button down shirt with nice pants and shoes. Mom and I were not. Mom thought her dress was too big. I hated how I looked. I wore a white shirt tucked in to my jeans and brown slip on shoes. Surprisingly I was dressed nicer then a lot of the boys there. We got there at 11:00 at night and left at 12:30 in the morning. Most of the wedding already happened so people were just hanging out. A person that we met there asked us to come to their wedding! Mom said that she and Hailey would go. Dad and I will get the night off. There you have it. What I have been doing the past few days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!