new years!

8pm January, 1st, 2008 (!!)

Happy new year! New years was funny here in Hyderabad because life seemed to go on as usual (guards guarded, cab drivers drove, Indian men stared, etc.). Yesterday we went to a craft fair in Shilparamam which was incredible. It is really amazing to focus only on the colors of the clothing people where here. It is all so vibrant, especially at this fair, every color imaginable, all swarming around you. I bought some Indian clothes (two pairs of pants, a shirt, and a really gorgeous silk scarf). One of the pairs of pants are hysterical (imagine bright orange skinny jeans to the thigh, and then bloomers around my butt...), but otherwise it was a huge success: I now have really breezy and cool clothing to wear until I can get my own things made by the tailor on campus (this is apparently the best way to get good clothes here, exciting!). Walking through the streets here is a lot like walking around in Kenya, but we were never located so constantly in a city, and so didn't see as much of the dynamic and societal customs of city life, which I feel I will get while here. That being said, going into the city is completely exhausting and almost too intense--I don't plan on going in more than once every week at most, at least at first. Today we went to went on a bus tour of the closer towns near the university and I am really excited because they are really nice and way more manageable than the big city. It is only about 3 miles from the university.

What is most interesting to me about where I am and what I see each day is the stark contrast of poverty and wealth that is literally smashed together all over this city. As I think I mentioned before, all along the roads are these congregations of blue-tarp tents, which i found out are where workers like, who are working on the giant corporate and high-rise apartment buildings that spring up everywhere. The most ironic sign in the world (which I am working on getting a photo of) is a giant billboard reading "Luxury Apartments: Live right" (or something like that) above a huge slum of blue-tarp tents all covered in dust. These people are building the new apartments, and once it is complete they will move their homes (with their families) to a new location in the city to build another billion-dollar high-rise. All over the streets are bare-foot children begging for money (who come running and screaming our way when they see a group of white, rich, tourists like us).

Yesterday I took my first rickshaw. Luckily they can only go about 20 miles an hour, so no one is really speeding super fast, however, just to paint the picture accurately: on the way home we actually drove between a person standing in the middle of the street and and sidewalk. Driving here is complete insanity, but the drivers are so quick and their reaction times are so sharp, it almost seems to work (in a not so safe, kind of insane way).

Last night we went to a restaurant in Banjari Hills, the fancy part of town, came home early and had a rooftop party til midndight when we counted down to 0, set off a some dud firecrackers, and had hand sparklers. A bunch of Indian guys came (who soon brought more, who called more of them, and more and more) who were too drunk and saw all of us hugging each other 'happy new years' and seemed to think it was license to hug us all. Normally that'd be fine, but in a culture where male-female physical contact is limited to married couples onlyd, it seemed weird so we left. It was a strange new years because I knew that no one back home at yet entered 2008--time is so weird like that--and it made me miss being home.