Sunday, November 30, 2008

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.

Friday, November 28, 2008

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!!!!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

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.

Monday, November 24, 2008

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!








Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Halleleujah! The diet coke has arrived.


Hello! It's Sloan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello! It’s Sloan! The past few days we have been doing a lot more fun things here in Baroda. A few days ago we went to a big park. It was really fun. We went with Malti and Satish ( I think those are there names) and played with some real nice men. They were only twenty years old and really good athletes.


After that Hailey kept spinning me I thought I was either having a heart attack or the world was coming to an end! It was not a good experience.
Then we went to a water show. I didn’t think it was so good but, all the Indians were in awe of it. I guess that people that come from a third world country don’t get to see as many things as we do. I also would have enjoyed it more if I I also wasn’t half asleep!


Two days ago we went to another friend’s house (photo below). The moms name is Nita-Ben and the dads name is Rajesh (very popular name for Indians!). The son is Sunny, he's 15, the daughter Purvi just became an architect. They have an older daughter who is studying at Syracuse University.
They first gave us a tour around their house and then served us dinner. Of course, for Hailey they had something different. Wonder why? They had her favorite Indian dish: plain rice!!!!!! She only had four spoonfuls. On the bright side my food was very good. They made us some of this delicious sauce. They also gave us buns to dip in the sauce. All together I gave the meal an eight.





Yesterday when Hailey, mom and I were exploring Baroda we found this wonderful DVD place. The only reason we didn’t get anything is because mom had to go to the bathroom really badly. Last night I went back there with dad. Hitesh insisted that he came with us. At first I thought that it was a stupid idea because he almost got me a haircut, secondly he picked us up in the middle of nowhere and lastly he didn’t know where the heck he was supposed to go. Then he got us something that tasted like a hamburger, a chocolate milkshake and some awesome samosas. After that he dropped us off at the little DVD shack and headed home. We got Momma Mia, and all of the Indiana Jones movies! We also got the new James Bond movie on DVD! That all cost a cheap $10.

THE BEST THINGS ABOUT INDIA ARE:
  • Seeing new cultures.
  • Eating new foods.
  • Not being in school all day.
  • Doing fun and exciting things.
  • The rickshaws are like rollercoasters at Disney World.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Monkeys and Rickshaws



I LOVE MONKEYS!!! We keep seeing these goofy little monkeys playing on top of buildings, jumping on each other and doing all sorts of funny things! Mommy finally got want she wanted or she will soon. We went to get lunch today and she ordered a 72 pack of diet coke (which will be delivered soon). That’s a lot of diet coke but it might not last that long with her…Everybody that we met said that it only rains in the Summer here and today it was just pouring-strange.


The driving is a little nuts here (and loud) so if you look at it from the pictures I took you will think there are at least 100 accidents a day…nope the traffic is a little crazy but the people are good drivers …but the rickshaw drivers are a little off…A rickshaw is like an Indian taxi. We don’t know how to speak in Indian so we show the rickshaw drivers a piece of paper so they know where to go. Then they go "yah yah I know I know"-No you don’t know. Every time we get a rickshaw he goes the wrong way. For example today we asked him to drive us to where we live so he goes yah yah I know I know –no you don’t. He drove us to this weird place and got out to ask directions. Well if you say yah yah I know I know then yah yah you should know!
That’s all for now from trooper #2.
Peace out (again),
Hailey

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Thursday, November 13, 2008

STRANGE DAYS IN INDIA






Hello again this is trooper #2 here in India .Since the last time I wrote on the blog I’ve seen quite strange things: Today when my family and I were walking to somebody’s house and we saw a cow with snot dripping from each nostril-gross! We also saw a goat standing on a gate next to a ripped up building-how the heck did it get up there? Donkeys don’t fly! Today my family and I went to a huge store (it was called Big Bazaar) that had everything (even choco pies but that’s another story that I will tell you about later)
So at this store they had alot of Indian food (some of it didn’t look so welcoming). Luckily for me they had pasta so I’m not always eating Indian food!
Three days ago my parents started home-schooling me and trooper #1 (Sloan) The good thing about school is you get to lie down and eat potato chips, the bad thing is just about everything else.Well that’s all for this week from trooper #2.
Peace out,
Hailey



Hi, it’s Sloan! The past few days we have been doing a lot more then what we were doing the previous time I wrote. We went to Baroda’s version of Central Park. I played baseball with another kid. He said it was his first time playing baseball but, that was hard to believe that because he was good! We also went to Hitesh’s house. He has two kids, he was also the guy that drove us back from the airport and he has been nothing but nice to us. We had a very nice time there. We had dinner and played with fireworks. Not to mention blowing some stuff up while at it! Today we went to BIG BAZAAR! I was happy going there because I got a basketball. We can now go to the basketball courts Moon told us about. Speaking of Moon, five minutes after meeting her dad when we were walking out of our apartment he told us (he calls me Harry Potter which I hate) to come up to meet his wife and daughter. His daughter turned out to be the one and only engaged Moon! After three minutes we became such good friends they invited us to Moon’s wedding. She is getting married to a man named J.T. and the wedding starts at eleven o’clock at night (I’m usually wiped out sleeping by then!) I want to go to see what it’s like but, what Hailey said I’ll be nocturnal again. I also saw a goat standing on a fence. Man it had good balance! The goat is my friend because when I took a picture of it looked at me! Man, I love that goat!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The search for diet coke never ends.....

Everone pays rapt attention as Michelle wants to know why no one in India has 2 liter bottles of diet coke.

Satish and Malti


They are the best. From tea in the morning to helping us with so many things (cellphones, internet, bank account, cleaning person, shopping). They have treated us like family. Happy Birthday Satish!

Coming online











Hi
We just connected to the internet. Here is our post from the day we arrived:


Well. We’re here. It took us a total of 28 hours from JFK to Ahmedabad. The kids were total troopers and we even got upgraded to business class from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. On the downside, we actually got in at 6 AM Indian time after a 2 ½ hour delay in Mumbai.



Hitesh picked us up from the airport and we drove about an hour to Baroda. There he took us to his home for breakfast. We were able to meet his wife and children. After, we went to the apartment which was lovely. Everyone immediately crashed and we woke up 3 hours later for a jaunt to the supermarket with Satish. Needless to say the kids were NOT happy so it was short and then right back to the apartment where they passed out before they hit the bed.


Right before we closed our eyes there was a knock on the door. It was Hitesh and his family. They had come by to make sure we were eating dinner and to see if we needed food. Hitesh insisted he get us some samosas which were delicious. Now, it was bedtime for Bonzo.
So far, both Hitesh and Satish (good friends of Kirit, the man who is letting us stay in his apartment) have been remarkably warm and welcoming. They treat us like family. It is nice to have someone who cares when you are so far away.

Hi, I am one of those “troopers.” My name is Sloan and so far India has been a good experience for me. I have seen painted camels, non-painted cows, but, I have not seen an Elephant. The few bad things that have been going on are adjusting to the very new food and time. This morning I think that my sister (trooper #2) and I wokeat about midnight. All we have been doing since then is playing video games and board games. The food has been very different too. Even the orange juice tastes different. I know that my experience in India will change and become very fun. I can’t wait until that happens.

Hello I’m trooper #2 or you can just call me by my real name: Hailey India is not the best thing in the world according to me it is a little dirty (not to mention the toilets aren’t so pretty either) they do have some very interesting animals just hanging out on the road! Even though the plane ride wasn’t all that fun (or any fun at all!) it can be great to see new things sometimes but everything isn’t great for example I’m just sitting here typing this and then all of a sudden trooper#1 (my brother) and I hear someone throwing up it as coming from the next door apartment and lucky for us our windows were open so we could hear them perfectly fine! And another thing that isn’t so great is the pills.Wecan’t chew them. whoever created pills that you can’t chew if you think that’s weird e-mail me @ puppyprincess19@yahoo.com
See what’s going on next week in India stay tuned for scenes from next week @ Hailey and Sloan’s Indian adventure.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Leaving in 9 hours!

We're just about finished. Awaiting the support troops (Aunt Ra,Grandma Annie) then we're off to JFK.