First of all...a huge sorry for not updating until now! I'll get better at updating ;)I feel I should take time out to tell a little about my host family!

So...I live with the best family ever! I have a younger sister who is 17 named Saylee who is studying engineering. She is the typical 17 year old...she goes out and likes western music and fashion (she is indeed very fashionable!)She is also very intelligent, and I love hearing her speak English because she has a very classy/ cute accent! Anyway, I have a brother, Sanket, who is 14 and hands down the most social 14 year old I have ever met. He has like 1,200,547 friends, and they come over often. Also, there are two girls Poonam, who is 20 and Geetha, who is 23. Both are paying guests and stay in a room off of our flat.

There are always people over. My host mother (I call her Ai, which is "mom" in Marathi) is the most social butterfly! She goes out during the day to friend's homes, and if not, then her friends are over at our house. My baba works in Mumbai during the day, so he's usually out. I love that there are always people over (and I'm very lucky in this sense because most of the other ACM students live with just host parents, and no siblings). Actually, there are only 2 ACM students living with more than 2 other people, and I'm one of them!...;)

I keep realizing more and more just how BIG Pune really is. It's has about 3 million people, and I guess it's because there are not towering sykscrapers or 5 laned streets, and its streets have exotic trees that its easy to forget just how gigantic of a metropolis it is. Pune is spread out rather than up, and the farther out you go, the more you realize that it is pretty sizable.

Yesterday ended the 10-day long festival for the goddess Chatishringi. On Saturday I and 3 others went to her temple and it was KHOOP crowded! The line going to her shrine was miles long I swear! We wanted to go to the top, but we would have waited all day to reach it. Yesterday, to celebrate the goddesses' birthday, my ai cooked this really nice meal and we had lots of company over! Most of them were girls my age, so naturally we had a great time messing around!

Well, I hope this update doesn't disappoint anyone. I'm sorry I've been so sucky. A few weeks ago, we visited the Ellora and Ajanta caves, which are these ancient Jain, Buddhist and Hindu caves that have been carved out of rock with just a hammer and chisel! Pretty amazing. Our hotel was nice too...get this (it was outdoors!) and it had this serene garden where you could eat your breakfast and look out at the waterfalls and caves in the distance! Pretty neat! Well, that's it for now! Until then!

Nothing could compare to what happened yesterday. Yesterday was the biggest celebration of the 10-day long festival for Ganesh (you know, the elephantine god). He's a pretty big deal here in Maharashtra, and yesterday was apparently his birthday.

There was a huge celebration on Laxmi road, and all of us ACM students gathered at Allison's house to celebrate (since she lives off Laxmi). Music is blaring in the streets, and titanic floats of Ganesh cruse down them, followed by masses of people. So yesterday afternoon, we venture out into the parade. One guy stops us and says "hey, I recognize you from the paper!" We were in the local newspaper the otherday...this lady interviewed us on what we wanted to experience at this festival. He points to Nate and me and says "I recognize you guys...you all are celebrities of India!" Pretty cool, but that isn't the half of it.

People took notice of us during the parade. Some people who were a part of the parade ushered us into the center of the crowd, and before long hundreds of people are encircling us, watching just the few of us dance. Cameras flash and people smile. I must admit I was a bit shy. Some girls joined us...they grabed our hands and would churn some dance move and expect us to imitate. We were all really into it.

Everywhere we went, we kept getting surrounded. People would ask us our names, and where we were from. Smiling girls kept taking my hand and asking for me to dance with them. "What's your name" they woulds ask.. "Sydney? ohhh...are you enjoying our country? Do you like your experience here?" The answers were always the same "Yes, I love your country, and I am having a great time!"

Before long we were at the very front of the parade leading it! The trumpet players in purple uniform were all around us, and one man asked us to wave at the camera crew. I was kind of shy having so many people crowd around us, taking pictures. The young girls loved to dance with us, and the entire atmosphere was one festive whirl. If ever I or any of the others went to the side, someone would always grab our hands and pull us to the clearing of the center of the crowd to dance. Several times I crossed hands with a smiling local and spun in the center...which was a lot of fun! It was so weird having so much attention. But We all realized that they like knowing that foreigners are getting into their festival and enjoying themselves.

At night was ever better. It was so crowded in the streets. Drums were banging loudly, techno music blaring, fist pumping. Large Ganesh floats with strobe lights lit up the streets, and occasionally fire works went off. One person would yell out into the crowd "Ganpati Bapa!" and the entire crowd would yell back "Mordia!" Literally "Hail Lord Ganesh".

At night all the streets were blocked, and Laxmi was a burst of energy, beating drums, excitment, music and energy. The crowds were SOooo intense...it reminded me of the ingauration of our President. At some points we could not even move in the streets, everyone was so pressed together. At one point I really feared I would fall in the pressing crowd and get trampled...taking Garrett with me, but thankfully that didn't happen. None of us American students can fathem how this festival is half of what it usually is (the swine flu has made this year's festival half of what it usually is, according to everyone, but I don't see how it could have been any more corwded or lively.)

No doubt, this was one of the most interesting and unforgetables nights!