Goa 07!!!!!

In leiu of an acutal Spring Break (which the University of Hyderabad refuses to give its students) my four closest girlfriends and I went to Goa, aka the "party/beach state of India." We fell in love with the place instantly-- lazing on the beaches, loving the sun, enjoying the nightlife, and getting a lovely tan, what's not to love?! These are mostly pictures of the Calangute Beach, where we stayed. The turquoise building is the beach house where we stayed-- only 70 meters away from the Indian Ocean. At many points during this trip we quite nearly killed ourselves/ each other, but looking back on it, Goa 07 was amazing!

HOLI!!!!

Holi… one of the coolest things that we’ve done here. Holi is the Festival of Colors, and it is basically celebrated by throwing colored powder at each other. On Holi, when one throws powder at another, all walls come down, and for the entire day you are equals—it doesn’t matter if the person is your servant or your master, on Holi you are both just people. Besides having a really cool principle behind it, this holiday is SOOOOO FREAKIN FUN TO CELEBRATE!! The SIP students took on our kitchen staff in an all out “Holi War” (get the pun, haha) and needless to say those little Indian men were sneaky! The first picture is one of us putting baby oil on ourselves pre-Holi, because then supposedly the Holi powder would come off easier. The other ones are in different stages of Holi fun, and you can see the powder and water being thrown at everyone. The last one is us at the end of the day—we were so colorful, kind of looked like rainbow blobs! Holi is by far one of the coolest things that we’ve done here the entire semester, love it :)

Chennai

Pictures of "The Chennai" (as our Indian-English speaking tour guide called it.... gah so annoying). Chennai was the city that we stayed in the whole time. The first picture is one of your typical Chennai street, with a billion shops an even more people-- bustling indeed, yet totally normal to us. The second is a picture of the inside of a church we went to at an old British Fort. The last three are all of Marina Beach, which we unfortunately didn't get to see much of at all. In any case, Chennai was a really neat city!

Pondicherry

Here are some pictures of Pondicherry, a town in Tamil Nadu that was first colonized by the French; that influence is still totally noticeable in the city today. The pictures are fairly unimpressive because of the crappy weather, but the city was beautiful, and it's right on the Indian Ocean!

Mammalapuram

These are all pictures from Mammalapuram, a little park-like town deal inbetween Chennai and Pondicherry. There's a ton of carved rocks all over the place, and they're all beautiful. There was a shrine inside the park, and a temple outside of it, but it's more of a touristy/historical place now than an actual religious site.

More temples...

The top picture is a close up of some of the ornate carvings on the temple pillars. If you can't tell, that's how basically the entire temple is-- so beautiful. The second picture is a pretty typical picture of what all temples have-- that huge structure with all sorts of carvings on it. The third picture is of me in the "courtyard" of the temple. This pond-like thing probably has a real name, but I don't know it. I'm also suuuuper sweaty from the sweltering Chennai heat, so don't look at my face too hard :) The last one is a picture right inside one of the temples where there were elephants, yes elephants!!

Temples temples temples!!

Here are some of the pictures of assorted temples that we saw in Chennai/ Pondicherry and the surrounding areas. The first one is a picture of devotees giving pooja (prayers) and the other ones are just of the temple. One of them is an idol that has been decorated.