Hindi tori tori!
(this means, I know a little Hindi, which makes life an adventure every day!) So this weekend was quite an adventure���we were quite busy but had a fabulous time! Thanks to all of you who were lifting us up Saturday on our tour of the city���we really had a great day and had lots of opportunities to talk to people. Our first adventure of the day was getting dressed���since we were going to temples, we (by we I mean us girls) had to be dressed very conservatively, wearing the traditional Indian Salwar Kameez/Punjabi Suits. This was interesting because I haven���t found a suit yet���they don���t really make ready made stuff for big tall people! But, I���m getting some clothes made this week (which is very fun) and I did have one Indian shirt, so I wore that with my scrub pants and a dupta (scarf) that kind of matched (look at the pictures and judge for yourself!) Anyway, we started our tour at the Baha���i temple, which is shaped like a giant lotus blossom���very pretty. After the temple, we went to the crematory. Very interesting, seeing people prepare the bodies of their loved ones and then place them under huge stacks of wood and burn them. There was also a fountain nearby with water piped in from the Ganges river, since people believe that its water is holy. Our most interesting experience, however, was at the Jain temple. The Jain���s have a number of men throughout India that are naked monks. As in, they don���t ever where clothes. At all. So there���s one in here, and we got to sit and visit with him for about 45 minutes. We had a great conversation with him, although it was definitely funny that he was naked the whole time :) We headed to lunch next���south Indian food! I was very excited because we had LOTS of puri (little fried pieces of bread), which we made back home���soooo good! After lunch we went to a Sikh temple. This was interesting���everyone had to wear a head covering and as we walked into the temple, we saw the book that they worship under a little canopy. After we left the temple, we walked through an area where they were cooking food for all the worshipers, and I got to help roll out roti (flat bread, like a tortilla). Very cool. As you can imagine, this was a pretty long day���we ended up just driving past the Parliament building, and then made one last stop at the India Gate, which is a giant war memorial. This turned out to be my favorite stop of the day because as we approached the gate, this man ran up to me with a little basket and when he opened it up, a cobra popped his head up! I had to pay him 20 rupees (50 cents) to let me take a picture, but it was well worth it! Sunday evening I had another fabulous adventure���my friend Nicole from college has been in India the past 4 months, working on a research project for her master���s degree. She came back through here on her way back to Atlanta, so we got to hang out and have dinner Sunday night���such a wonderful way to end a great weekend!

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