Lost in Paradise

Well, the wedding was a fabulous wonderful success. I stayed with Shanti at her older brother's house and the boys stayed at the other brothers house. We were all fed extremely well (3 meals a day plus snacks) and were made to feel right at home.

We got there one day before the actual ceremony, we missed the big party the night before, but that's ok. We spent Saturday shopping for appropriate clothes and on Sunday were busy with festivities from 10 am to 11 pm. Now, busy might not be the best word. A lot of hurry up and wait action. Depending on how fancy you are you either had two or three changes of clothes. You arrive at the center around 11 in something nice and traditional (some men wore western clothes) and had a buffet lunch. Then you hang around for a few hours and if you are a woman change into fancy saris. All the sister in laws wore these beautiful red/maroon outfits with so much gold you would not even imagine. Then around two these drummers and musicians started playing outside and all the women are dancing in a circle and then some of the men started dancing all funny like and waving 10 ruppee notes everywhere to get the drummers all riled up. It was a blast. Then the ceremony, none of which we could hear because a band was playing pop hits in the background so loud. The bride looked amazing. She was so covered in henna and jewelry you could hardly see here. She just sat still and smiled for basically 7 hours. Kudos to her. At one point all the family members got up and started dancing around again to welcome the bride into the family and give her her family/wedding sari. There is really just too much to write. During the dancing and singing at the end of the ceremony, while scott was going wild with his camera, Matt and I were sipping Chai that was delivered. I guess its a long ceremony so you need to keep the guests alert. When we first sat down we were all served juice. Too wacky. Then after the 2 hour ceremony we all changed into our evening clothes. Shanti lent me a sari and we went to this apartment with all the other girls to get our makeup done and get all spruced up. I looked pretty darn amazing if I might say so myself. I couldn't walk in the traditional way you wrap a sari so they basically wrapped like a mermaid. It was great. I will upload pictures probably in Mumbai.

basically the point of this blog is to say I am out of commission for the next ten days or so because we are staying at a beach shack in goa. We literally rolled out of bed this morning to lie on the beach all day. The ocean water is warm. We aren't staying at the rowdy party beaches so its us and a bunch of old European tourists. its great. Its paradise. We are going to get seafood for dinner. I can't even describe how amazing it is here. If it wasn't for the women selling you sari's, fruit, and jewerly on the beach you wouldn't know you were in India. Not that India isn't nice...i mean..well, anyway. I'm going to continue working on my tan and will write again maybe towards the end..or maybe in mumbai. We weren't originally going to stay for so long, but because its busy season we couldn't get a train out of here until the 13th...oh well..too bad. not really.