मराठी बाणा (Marathi Bana)

On friday the 15th, my rotary club (RC of Mumbai West Coast) was hosting a fundraiser for 5 villages they adopted in Karjat and two other places. They were having a huge dance/play set up - मराठी बाणा - a quite famous musical showing the best of maharashtran culture. More than 150 artists were on stage and it was a marvelous show! Riina, Finland, and Beatriz, Brazil, had come with me and my family there, and we were all dressed up in saris (not the traditional maharashtran 9-yard saris though) and I wore my new Indian jewelry. We really enjoyed the show the dancing and singing was good - but the long monologues in marathi weren't exactly easy to comprehend. In the intermission we had a billion samosas - yum!


A great evening, and a lot of money were collected - for a very good cause!

A quarter of my exchange is done!

Everyone at home has now been asking for a new post for quite a whilenow. Im sorry for the long gaps between my updates but I must point out that before Im able to write amazing posts about all my new experiences, I actually have to experince them!

So much has happened since last time I made a blog-post, and I wont write about everything, because that would bore both me and my readers to death before i finish.
3 months has passed, and a quarter of my stay is now completed... Yesterday I got a mail informing me about my returnticket - I am leaving on the 7th of july, after 362 days in incredible India! I felt so surreal to be reminded that at one point this year will come to an end, I still remember the thrill of reading a mail wherein I was referred to as an Inbound instead of an outbound!

October has now come, and with it came overwhelming temperatures(yesterday we reached 39∘and today its even hotter!)... Its vital that I remember to bring my waterbottle everywhere I go, and I try to have fresh coconutwater on a daily basis.

A couple of days ago Janina, my good american friend, slept over at my place. We had spent the entire day shopping for fabric and dressmaterials, and my hostmom had taken us to this big wholesale place where we could get some amazing materials for our indian outfits - cause thats another thing I have to tell all of you! I am going to start wearing traditional indian clothes (salwar kameez and stuff like that) every monday, wednesday and friday(because those are the days I have my kathaklessons, and for the danceclasses one must wear traditional indian. It’s really a royal pain to be carrying all the clothes around all day until the lessons and indian clothes are soooo comfortable, so the easiest thing is just to wear it on a daily basis!)!

2 Days ago Rotex Bombay arranged a country celebration, 4 countries were subjects of the day and Denmark were one of them. Since 11 o’clock in the morning I had been at Aanchals place (indian girl who had gone on exchange to Denmark 5 years ago) and we had been baking a danish pastry called Kringle! It turned out perfect, and I totallyburned my tongue when I tried to eat a small piece the moment it had come out of the oven. It was good that we had baked the pastry, because that was just about all that we had to showcase for all the other in- and rebounds, Christian had brought a retro style football jersey from ‘88 and we played Nephew on the stereo!

And yesterday, Janina and I went to Oneza’s place and we baked pastry all day again! This time we tried to make Hindbærsnitter (?raspberry chops?) and again everything turned out great!

A lot more has happened in the last couple of weeks, but this is all I am giving you for now... I hope everything is going great back in little Denmark.

So long
Maria

Festival season and college start

Again it has been a little while since my last post, and I want to inform you all that I have now started college. Im in FYJC (First Year Junior College) at Jai hind college. In my class there is two other exchange students; Marion from france and Severin from Germany. Everyone at the college is so nice and helpful.

Last week there was a festival here in India called Janmashtami. They celebrate the birth of Krishna. A little jar of curd or butter is hung in a string high above the ground (because krishna used to really like dairy-products :) ) and people form human pyramids and try to break the jar. Usually theres a price for the team that breaks the "dahi handi"...

Then there were Ganpati festival wich is the celebration of Lord Ganesh (the elephantgod), I build a big thermacol temple with my hostfamily and we held a big celebration in the apartment all my host cousins and aunts (i guess?) were there for the celebration.

In the society we had a ganpati too, and on monday I moved back with my first host family, and wednesday we were to emerse the ganpati idol into the water, and there were held a big celebration... Everyone were dancing on the street, it was a GREAT experience.