Lohri!

Day 11: Lohri is a festival celebrated in Northern India and it marks the point in time where the days begin to get longer. Indians celebrate Lohri by building enormous bonfires and throwing peanuts and popcorn into them. Our neighbors were nice enough to let us enjoy their bonfire, built in the middle of the street and attended by 3 incredible drummers.

Monkeys! From a few different angles...

Day 8: Group Bonding at a bird sanctuary an hour outside of Delhi. Turns out, if you pack 2 bananas in the side pocket of your backpack, thinking you'll eat them later and then don't, monkeys attack it and steal your bananas. Then they bring 20 of their monkey friends to follow you around all day. Yeah, that was me.

The first Saturday to ourselves!

Day 7: A day off from orientation! The group decided, on our own, to see the Lotus Temple and Lodi Park, both in Delhi. The Lotus Temple was built to, big shocker, look like a lotus. They accept all faiths. We saw a short prayer service, which included prayers from 3 different religions. As you can tell from the Lodi Park pictures, random tombs, temples, and ruins pop up throughout Indian parks. But, that's pretty normal, we see the same things in our American, neighborhood park. Oh, wait. Also, note the obsession with Indian babies found in the park. This one was, ultimately, returned to it's rightful owner.

Kurtas!

Somewhere around day 5, we decided that buying kurtas and tunics, traditional Indian clothing, was absolutely necessary. We look practically Indian in them. Minus the white skin, minimal Hindi knowledge, and deer-in-the-headlights tourist expressions on our faces all the time.

Our first foray into Delhi

Day 3: We were paired up with young Indian students. We spent the day with them exploring Delhi. These pictures are from an archaeological park. We wandered through ruins, a mosque, a tomb, and the baths once used by the king.