I saw it!! I finally got to see it!! It was amazing!! I honestly thought it was fake when I caught my first glimpse of it. But then I came around the corner and sure enough, there it was! The Taj Mahal and all of its glimmering white marble! It was seriously unreal! I felt like I was in a dream or something! We got up early (as in 5 a.m.) to see it before it got too crowded and hot, and also to see it in the morning sunrise lighting! They say it changes color with the time of day! More bright white in the early morning and pink around sunset! I loved how everything about the Taj Mahal is symmetrical...even the buildings around it are based upon a line of symmetry! Our tour guide was great and told us a ton about it's history and the stones/marble used in the making of it! It was very neat!
This weekend was a whirlwind adventure! We flew to Dehli at 7 in the morning (this means we had to leave Rising Star at 3 a.m.). Then we took a rickshaw ride through the narrow back alley ways of the city! That was probably the freakiest experience of my life! There we were on this little rickshaw swerving every which way to avoid hitting any cars or buses or motorcycles that surrounded us! I honestly thought we were going to die, but we made it! At one point a fight broke out between another rickshaw driver and a man pushing a cart of rice! Apparently they had a little fender bender and were not too happy about it! They were screaming in Hindi and throwing punches at each other and before I knew it, my rickshaw driver had jumped off his bike and was running over to break it up! Finally a policeman came over and calmed things down, but man, I was a little worried!
Our rickshaw driver and the streets of old Dehli
Picture of a slum in Dehli
We went to the spice market and got to purchase some Indian curry spices and tea! It was way cool, but I started having a sneezing fit in the middle of our shopping! My eyes and nose started running, I think because of all the different smells in the air, and I couldn't get it to stop...Not a good situation!
From there we got to eat some yummy Northern Indian food (this would be the typical Indian food you would think of: tikka masala, butter chicken, naan...oh my gosh the naan was soooo good!) And then we were off on our 5 hour bus ride to Agra!
Agra was sooo hot!! I think something like 39 degrees Celsius (which is like over a 100 degrees fahrenheit) But no fear! We stayed in a super nice five star hotel called the Jaypee Palace with air conditioning, a real shower and western toilet, oh and when we arrived they gave us Jasmine lei's and this green poppy seed drink! I felt like a princess!
The next day was our Taj Mahal and Agra fort experience!! We got to swim in the pool and go shopping! And for dinner...drum roll please... The fancy and oh so wonderful Pizza Hut! I got the special Indian pizza which is made with a curry sauce instead of red marinara sauce! Finally we finished our day with some dancing at the Disco (this cute little one room night club in the hotel) and don't worry we got the "Macarena" and "We will Rock You" songs covered! Throw in a little Indian Bollywood music and some Rihanna and that about sums up my 20 hour day! I think I fell asleep mid sentence that night! Sooo fun!!
On our way back, we got to stop and ride an elephant! It was so cool, kind of scary (I felt like I was going to fall off) but so awesome! The best part was when I got off, he took a huge bathroom break...I mean huge!!! Pretty nasty! I also got to hold and play with this cute little monkey! There are monkey's everywhere here, in the city and in the surrounding villages! This monkeywas some guy's pet (so I guess you could say it was somewhat domesticated) It kept playing with my fingers almost like a little child would. It's freaky how human-like they are!
Finally we had to travel all the way home. It took us probably 12 hours all together! We didn't arrive home until a little after midnight Sunday night! But the best part is that as we were driving into the village, fireworks started going off!! They were apparently part of a temple celebration with lights and music, but what perfect timing!! It was like they knew it was the 4th of July or something! It was a perfect way to celebrate! I was pretty happy! And today we sang the national anthem and made french toast/brownies! It's been a good weekend!
I finally bought a painting from the Bindu School of Art!! I took a picture with the artist below! He was pretty funny!!
And I got to see the kids finally! I haven't seen them since last Thursday and I was kind of starting to miss them, so that was fun getting to play with them! My Aunt Michelle gave me some of these funny mustaches that they could play with! Oh my gosh! They loved them!! I posted some pictures below so you could see their cute faces with their new found facial hair!!
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