रंदोम हिंदी वोर्ड्स

This is going to be short and sweet because it's late and I'm tired and I need to sleep. I'm finishing up the AZD newsletter for summer, and it's dragging on and on (possibly because I'm using PowerPoint; makes me think about investing in InDesign for myself). Tonight Rachael and I went with Adil and Kadeeja to "visit his friend" where they both teach, at Jamia Millia Islamia University. "Visiting" in this case turned out to be attending a video conference with people at York University in Toronto, who had just formed a new partnership with JMI about social media use (or something...). There were about 8 people in the room in Toronto, whereas the professors at JMI had recruited students and random people like us that he knew to sit in the room, so there were about 60 of us. Apparently he wanted us to participate, but we thankfully wiggled our way out of that one. At the very beginning, he said it would be a two-hour conference, and Rachael, Khadeeja, and I all looked at each other and made the there-is-no-way-we're-staying face. Khadeeja said the baby, who also attended, would be a good excuse to leave early. It ended up being slightly interesting but mostly boring, but it was exciting when they zoomed in on people in front of me who were talking so I was on screen. I stuck out like a sore thumb because of my white skin, blonde hair, bright magenta and green Indian clothes, and the fact that I couldn't stop laughing the whole time. I even took my hair out of ponytail so I could look good for my 15 minutes of non-fame via video conference (one of the Canadian men looked cute, and when he spoke it turned out he had a British accent. It was hard to tell how attractive he actually was, though, because the image was kind of blurry.). After probably bothering every stoic Indian academic in the room with our smileliness and such, we bolted when the camera wasn't on us. Tomorrow is nose piercing day though!

And here is a video I commandeered from Rachael at the Taj!


Uhh oops, I just tried to get water before going to bed, but we have to get it from a big filtered water jug thing and it was all out, so I tried to put the new one on myself and spilled water and banged around enough for my host parents to come out and help me. Apparently Khadeeja had been nagging Adil to do it for hours but he hadn't because he was "talking to his girlfriends" (just part of the series of jokes they make about things like adultery, the caste system, and wife beating!). It's refreshing, though, because I don't feel like I have to be super guarded or overly cautious about being politically correct with them because they're so frank and good-natured. Conversation earlier today:


Me: We saw monkeys here yesterday!
Adil: Oh yeah, be careful with them! They like to harass people, especially women for some reason.
Khadeeja: Yeah, that's because they're Indian monkeys.


यह सोने का समय है!शुभ रात्रि, दोस्तों!