i need a puppy

I love dogs. I love them so much.  Sometimes, they are better than people, because they just listen. And then you can get the best hugs and cuddles from them. And they can at least pretend to look like they care, unlike cats...I want a dog so so so so so badly, but chances are I won't get one for a looooooong time.
But when I do, I am so getting two, and naming them:
Tybalt (pronounced tibalt).  Not that it's an especially great name, or that he is the best character in Romeo & Juliet, (that would be Mercutio) or that he has any really great lines, because he doesn't. No, it's the fact that its Tybalt, said tibalt.
How do you spell that? T-Y-B-A-L-T. Tie-balt? NO. Tib-alt.
Here Tybalt.. good Tybalt.

And doggie number two: Ganesh.
In India, somewhere between Agra and Jaipur, at a rest stop with giftshop selling overpriced merchandise, I found a comic book. It was called The Adventures of Ganesh: That Wacky Little Trickster.  How much I wish I had overpaid for it, you will never know.  The consolation I found was that hey wait! That would be a great name for a dog! So, doggie #2 will answer to Ganesh, and that wacky little trickster.



Shutter Island was great! I highly recommend seeing it. Actually, I recommend seeing it twice! I saw it with my dad and one of my best friends, and through the varying tastes in movies, we all came out impressed, yet slightly puzzled.  Hence the see it twice part! Hope your weekend is going good, and you have a good week!  Wish us luck in our first game this year in Valencia!

movie star hair

smiling face, train to jaisalmer

Originally uploaded by NiklasPlutte

Movie Star Hair

Picture! Picture! Can I take picture? The little girl asks me with round, chestnut eyes.
Picture? Sure, of what? I reply, bending down to the girl, who comes up only to around my belly button.
Of you! She exclaims excitedly.
Me?
Yes! You! Picture! Please?
Ok, I say wonderingly.
The little girl runs to her mother who is wearing a green punjabi suit, and tugs at her elbow, points at me, and hands her the camera. She runs back to me, towing her mother behind her. She smiles at me apologetically, and I smile back, no problem.
The little girl takes my hand in her tiny one and smiles big at the camera. I look at her and her toothy smile (the second grade, I just lost half my teeth kind) and can’t help but smile in return. The camera clicks, winds, clicks again, and we’re done.
The little girl bounds to her mother who hands her back the camera. Her mother tells her something, and the little girl scampers back over to me.
Thank you! She says, beaming.
You’re very welcome, I say. But why do you want my picture?
You have movie star hair!
I can’t help but laugh at that, and she laughs too. I’m not a movie star, I say to her.
But you have movie star hair, she says again.
Come back, calls her mother.
She smiles endearingly again, and skips back to the picnic blanket where the rest of her family sits.
When we leave the Mother India Temple, and pass their family again, the little girl waves at me, with the most radiant smile in the world. 

~molly (:

ok I didn't plan on doing this but I will because I know I won't ever get around to a super detailed post about India.

sorry for that long title.  but it summarizes what i am about to do. which is try to compress India into a post.  i am wishing myself luck.  (BTW sorry that the pictures are bad quality-- i dragged them off my album on facebook :D)

Still in New Delhi, we went to Humayun's tomb.  It was soooooooooooooooooooooo sooo sooo beautiful. The Taj Mahal was in part based off it's design.  The first double dome (i think that's what it's called) in India.  It's really beautiful place, sandstone, with a garden.  Also, we went to the National Museum. and the Craft Museum, which I like more than the National Museum.  A couple carpet shops (ergg) and of course, Professor Butt, who ensured that I will never forget that hand knotted carpets are in fact NOT the same as hand made.  We went to the Gandhi Museum, on the location of his martyrdom.  The stuff downstairs was really interesting, and the stuff upstairs was too.  But th

e stuff upstairs was a little trippy.  Like something from a sixties movie...but still interesting.  It was odd to be in such a peaceful place in the middle of New Delhi.

Flash forward through the super nice domestic terminal in Delhi, to hopping off the plane in Varanasi, possibly my favorite place we went.  It's a holy Hindu city, and also a holy Buddhist city I think.  It's one of the worlds oldest living cities.  It's considered a "small" city.  Small being a population of about 4 million. :D  It's a lot different than New Delhi, which is much more urban.  Varanasi is located on the banks of the river Ganges. The monsoon this year was bad, so the river was kinda down, but not all the way.  While we were there, there were a lot of pilgrims, dressed in saffron clothing, which has a special meaning, that escapes my mind.  Might be sacrifice.  They walk from their homes, and take water from the river, because it is holy.  A lot of people are cremated in Varanasi, because of its h

oliness.  There are two main crematoriums, and one electrical one.  The two main ones have around 200 crem

ations a day.  We took a little boat out on the Ganges, and made our way over to the crematorium.  The people there don't mind if you watch, you just can't take pictures beyond a certain point.  It was really...I'm not sure the word to use...interesting? I'm not sure.  The atmosphere made it so that it was macabre or morbid at

all.  Death there is treated a lot differently than it is here, so the dead bodies wrapped in their cloth didn't seem scary or bad.  They seemed more peaceful.  We took the boat back in, and watched the evening ceremonies, which are to honor Mother Ganges.  Those were really cool.  We were on the banks of the river, seeing the moon rise over the Ganges.  It was really indescribable.  We went out on the river again the next day, at around 4 in the morning, which was no biggie, since I was already up.  We then went to temples, museums, and a couple historical locations.

Back to New Delhi.  Into the car.  Onto the road.  Holding onto my seat.  I was told on multiple occasions there, by multiple people, that there is a say

ing in India that goes "to drive in India, you need three things: brakes, a horn, and luck".  SOOSOSOSOSOSO true. All the way to Agra, there were cars coming down the other side of the road, animals and people in the street, yadayadayada.  I fell asleep, woke up in the middle of the night, looked up at the spedometer, and saw the number 100.  I flipped out for about 10 minutes before I realized that it was 100 kilometers per hour.  Not miles.  Whatever- it felt like it.

We checked into out hotel in Agra around 9 hours after we left New Delhi.  I deci

ded to order fried rice, and my dad ordered

 paneer.  I had had paneer in other restraunts and it was ok.  This stuff my dad got, I might have puked a little in my mouth when I saw it.  Too bad my dad has never mastered my technique of making it look like you loved the food you actually hated.  It really works.  He got a little sick.  But not too bad.  ANYWAYS.  The next morning, we got up, and went to the Taj Mahal.   WOAH.

So, everyone has seen pictures of the Taj Mahal, and heard of it's astounding beauty.  Ok. The pictures, the descriptions, they don't come anywhere near the truth.  I was literally left speechless by its beauty.  Me, speechless, that is qui

te a task.  It is such a beautiful building, with the gardens and reflecting pool.  Only bad thing was the breeze (that OH SO AMAZING breeze) rippled the water in the reflecting pool, so you couldn't see the reflection.  It's just amazing and wonderful and breathtaking and.... great.   After that, we went to Agra fort, which had some seriously cool stuff.  But my dad has a terrible fear of heights, and almost got a little sick in one

of the towers.  But that's ok, I liked it.  :D

Onto Jaipur, the pink city.  The hotel there was super nice.  Had a really big pool.  :D

First, we went to the Amber Fort.  My method of transportation: elephant! That was one awesome ride.  I really liked it.  But then, after, I felt bad for the elephant, because it was hot, they wanted to go sleep, and the elephant drivers or whatever they're called, kept hitting their heads with bars.   But still, it's an experience I'm glad I had.  In the Amber fort, there were some awesome rooms, especially the mirror room, where the walls had mirror on them.  I liked that.   City palace was also cool.  We ate lunch next to th

e Maharaja.  or he ate next to us, cuz' we were there first.  That was cool.  We also bought a bunch a pictures, which we got framed, and I might take pictures of the pictures and post them.  Maybe. If I'm not too lazy.  We went to another fort, possibly called Jagra (not sure-can't remember-don't feel like checking) fort, where there was a HUGE cannon, fired once, and a hella lot of monkeys. They were cuties (:  At some point in this huge fort, I lost my dad.  I spent about an hour walking around the fort, end to end, 3 times, in 100 degree heat + humidity, with no water because he had the bag, to look for him.  I swear I almost hit him when I found him.  We went to the monkey temple, which was SUPER DUPER cool. Because of the monkeys :D  I got to feed monkeys!! They took the food out of my ha

nds!!!!!!!!  We went to the Maharaja memorial, which was really cool, because it seemed kind of forgotten.  It was really beautiful, but seemed a  little abandoned.  I liked it.

We hopped a propeller plane (EEK I HATE FLYING SO MUCH) to Udaipur.

Udaipur was by far the smallest city we went to. Not even a million people.  Lazy little town.

We stayed at the Lake palace, which was the summer palace of the Maharana of Udaipur, now converted into a hotel.  A really nice hotel.  REALLY nice.  My favorite pictures of that hotel aren't on my computer at all, so I can't post them, but it was really beautiful and peaceful and relaxing.  It's in the middle of a lake, and you have to take a little boat to get out there. So cool.

We went to the Monsoon Palace, which is on top of a huge hill, and you have to take a really really windy road to get there.  I have no fear of heights, but that drive was a little scary.  Once you got to the top though, you got a great view.  We also went to the city palace, which was the Maharana's winter home, and where the Mah

arana currently lives.  That place was really cool, so great rooms with mirrors in the walls, stained glass, great views.  So beautiful.  By this time, the schalazium (it's a stye on the inside of your eye) in my eyes was really bad, so we had to go back to the hotel, where I moaned and groaned about it.  It was really bad.  Hurt.  Still hasn't quite gone away ):

I was sad to leave Udaipur, and even sadder to leave India.  But we had to, and took the long flight home from New Delhi to Chicago (we got delayed) and I watched Wolverine, 27 Dresses, and Star Trek.  I watched Star Trek 3 times.  We arrived in Chicago before customs opened, so we had to stay on the plane for half an hour, until 5 AM

.  We rushed through that, and ate fast, and then, the flight back to LA got delayed 2 hours.  Whoop-dee-doo.  Back to LA, that flight seemed a lot longer than the 4 and a half hours it was.  Got home.  Went to sleep, after over 48 hours awake.  Got up at odd hours, attempted to get back into the swing of things.  

It was an amazing trip, and if given the chance, I would definitely go back.

Have a great Sunday, and a wonderful week :)

~ molly (:

New Delhi Part 1

After around 24 hours of traveling, no sleep, and pretty bad airplane food (better than usual though...), my dad and I arrived in New Delhi, India.  I was ready to collapse the moment I stood up.  We exited the plane, and made our way through baggage claim, and found the man who was to take us to our hotel.  To do this, you exit the building, and go outside.  The first thing that hit me was the smell.  It just smells different there.  Not in a bad way, like even in clean places, the smell is just different.  It's kind of a thick smell, a crowded one.  The second thing that hit me was the heat.  It was around 9 at night, and oh my god, it was around 90 degrees farenhight.  Yipes.  The last thing that hit me was the pollution.  Coming from a pretty polluted city, I didn't think that the pollution would bother me, but right away, my eyes started watering.   I mean, I got used to it, but it was just a constant thing.

We went to out hotel, and after showering (I hate the feeling of not being clean....eww) I basically passed out on my bed.

Waking up at around 4 or 5 in the morning the next day, we were out of the hotel to explore at around 9.  Mistake.  Nothing is open til like 11, and we went walking without water.  I hardly ever sweat, like I can play a 2 and a half hour softball game at catcher in 100+ heat, and barely break a sweat, but within 10 minutes, I was dying.  Also, exhausted still from travel.  Back to our hotel we went, and back to bed I crawled.

The next day in New Delhi, we had a guide and a car.  We headed off to Lal Kila, the Red Fort.  This place was immense.  The walls towered above you, and once inside, gardens spread out in front of you.  I could just imagine what the Red Fort had been in its day, even grander than now.  I wish I could tell you more of the history that the guide explained to us, but I just can't remember.  I really, really wish I could, but I can't.

We left the Red Fort, and headed to  Jami Masjid, the largest mosque in India.  To get there, we walked through the market, Chandni Chowk.  It was fascinating.  I don't know if you have seen the Harry Potter movies, but it looked kind of like Diagon Alley.  The picture I put with this post is from there.  The movement, the life, it was just so full of it.  Once we got to the mosque, it was quite different.  It was quiet, peaceful.  As I don't wear a burka, I had to borrow one from the mosque, as did most/all western women.  It didn't have the head covering part, and the only reasons I detested wearing it, were that it was my three least favorite things in clothing : 1. Pink. 2. A dress. 3.  Flowery.  Aiaiaiaiai.  A nightmare come to life.  ANYWAYS. Jami Masjid is the largest mosque in India.  I can't remember the number of people that can pray there, but it is over 30,000 I think.  It is a really beautiful building.  I would post more pictures with this, but I just got a new computer (YAY) and I am not uploading all of my 2,000 some pictures from India onto it. But it was beautiful, set in Old Delhi.

I'm not one to write long posts, so I will end New Delhi here, and do a part II soon!

Have a cheery weekend!!

~molly