The King's Speech

I totally recommend this one...

my favorite part: "And as a sidenote, private parts are private."

India part 10

One day we took a little walk to a village near our hotel. By this time, we were in a much more remote area of the country than we had been -- we were about 2 hours outside of the closest city, Jaipur. We learned during our tour that our guide was from this village, and he showed us his house, his cow, his school, and finally, his mother. He said that he started working in the hotel as a car washer, and had worked his way up to chauffer. I'm not kidding when I say that this tour really humbled me.

This is our guide with his mom. He's wearing a uniform from the hotel. She's not.





There were a few things he said that had us laughing out loud, after which, he'd just look at us with a look that said, "What?" One of those things was "The women work really hard, but the men just sit around. They're lazy." We believed them after seeing things like this...









Again, it always was stunning to see their beautiful saris while doing this hard labor.

For some reason, one thing that surprsed me was seeing little kids like this one running around with no pants on. It's one of those things you don't even consider before hand, but of course they don't have diapers in these little villages. Even families that we saw in tourist attractions, i.e. people that have resources to leave their villages/towns/whatever had bare-bottomed babies with them. I wonder how this factors into potty training.

This is the school in the village. We were there on a local holiday, so the kids were not in school that day. Notice there are no doors in the school -- just doorways. The homes were the same (don't have photos of the homes).

Here are some of the characters we came across....


We were told that it was "cold" so a lot of the kids were wearing hats. I guess they needed hats to keep their heads warm, but the babies still had no pants on?

This guy looks like he's about a thousand years old. Whereas some of the people that saw us just gave us a shy look, this one asked, in very good English, to have his picture, posed in front of this tree and then asked us to send him a copy.

At the beginning of our walk, there was another guy that kind of looked like this one. Trevor had learned the word for "Holy Man" in Hindi during his research for the trip and asked our guide if this man was a Holy Man. This made the boys laugh so hard. We figured that was a sufficient answer to that question.

I'm not sure if this is the baby... but as we were walking along, a woman holding a little baby like this one held him out towards me. I'm not one to say no to an offer like this... but unfortunately, this kid had no pants on and scabby parts on his little bum. I just smiled, waved and walked on.

Obviously, the kids are put to work too, so it's not just the women out there. These three girls were really shy at first. After a few minutes, they warmed up to us and started asking for their pictures to be taken. The oldest girl yelled out something, and Trevor called back the words to her, which sent all three into hysterics. After panicking and asking our guide what he had said to them, Trevor learned that they had said, "Take a picture of me!" and he yelled back, "Take a picture of me!"

This little guy was following closely behind the other three. He looked completely confused about who these crazy white people were.

We asked our guide why these little guys were carrying dirt and rocks in their bowls. He said this is what they use to clean the floors of their homes. I tried to ask him... they use dirt to clean their floors??? I'm sure I didn't get the right story there.

As we walked along, we just gathered a group of kids. I'm pretty sure they thought I was Angelina Jolie and that I might adopt them.

How they loved to see themselves in our cameras! It makes sense that they probably don't get to see themselves very often.

The kids loved to use the few English words they knew, so they called out "Bye bye" and "Ta-ta" and we said it back roughly 8000 times in the two hours we were there.

What an adventure!

30 Rock quote of the week -- 12/9

first, a quote dedicated to Esther: "Do you want to go to the Penn Station K-Mart with me and then watch Tootsie."

and this one from Jack: "We Donaghy's believe that when there is something at all delicate to talk about, it is best to suppress it until it erupts into a fistfight at a church barbeque. "

Glee quote of the week --12/7

I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas episodes and/or music, but this episode was surprisingly good. The quote of the week belongs to Artie: "I told my parents that I only want one thing for Christmas this year. Stop friend-requesting me on Facebook."



Laugh out loud funny!!

Glee quote of the week -- 11/30

Puck, after his ordeal of being locked in a porta-potty, said that he prayed and.... "I promised him if he got me out of there, I would start being nicer to people. But then I realized there is no way I could do that, so I changed it to just Jews."

Considering this was sectionals, I can't say that any of these numbers blew me away. But my pick is "Hey Soul Sister" which the Warblers performed. I think this song is pretty silly. My friend, LT, likes to make up new lyrics to popular songs and insert my name into them. Her version: "Hey soul Sonya, Ain't that Uncle Vanya on the radio...." I think you will agree that these words are only a little more silly than the real ones , which are "Hey Soul Sister, Ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio...."

Anyway.... here's the number of the week (Blaine makes it good, of course, and if I went to school with him, I'd totally be his hag.)

How come nobody told me??

I posted some videos from India, and I didn't know what I was doing and set them to private. Now they are public (I hope), so go back and watch them because they are awesome.

30 Rock quote of the week -- 12/2

An episode about therapy... uh... that's awesome!!

Jack to Liz Lemon: "For lesser beings, like curly-haired men and people who need glasses, therapy can help."

Jack to Tracy: "A Parent is the one person who is supposed to make their kid think they can do anything, says they're beautiful even when they're ugly, thinks they're smart even when they go to Arizona State."

India part 9

This is another place where we stayed, called the Lake Palace. It is located in the city of Udaipur, also known as the Lake City (not to be confused with Salt Lake City). This was the summer palace for the maharaja, built in 1746, and it has also been converted into a hotel. It is located in the middle of Lake Pichola and the only way to get there is by boat. Of course, that is dependant on the monsoons. We were lucky because this year was a good year for monsoon season so we had a full lake. Apparently, the lake had been completely dry for a few years, in which case I guess they could call this the Dustbowl Palace? Our guide told us that when the boats can't get out there, they take people on elephant, just so it still seems special in some way. Boat vs. elephant? Again, I will say that we were lucky because we got to take a boat and the whole experience was really magical.
(btw, if you are a James Bond fan, apparently the film Octopussy was filmed here.)

Arrive by boat, and then you are literally showered with rose petals! I admit that I lingered a bit under the rose petals. Later we saw people arrive who barely looked up when the shower started. what losers!

The windows in the middle here (jutting out) are the window's from the room Trevor stayed in.

The palace at sunset.



Here is one of the common rooms inside the hotel. It is hard to tell how beautiful it is -- I loved this room because it had my favorite colors blue and purple. I love the blue tiles in all the detail of the room.




Here are the grounds of the hotel. As I was taking this photo, I ran into Kathy who was on the roof taking some photos of her own.


We took a sunset cruise to another palace in the Lake. Here are Kathy & Trev before our departure with the city in the background.

Here's my latest quilt, which I made for my friend, Allison, who just had a baby boy.

Two quilts in one year. I'm back, baby!

(not really.)

India part 8

On our last night in Jodhpur, we had dinner in this little pavilion on the hotel grounds. This woman was cleaning and setting it up for us. It kind of always amazed me that they would wear these beautiful saris to do the most annoying work. But this is jeans and a T-shirt to them, I guess.

First, they dressed us up. Mostly Trevor. Who was not happy.

Then they lit some fireworks for us. Next, we were greeted by these cute boys that danced all the way down the candlelit trail to the pavilion.
There was a whole family of performers -- singing, playing instruments, and dancing with things balanced on their heads. If you notice in photo #2, she's also balancing on a pie plate.

We joined them. We had to. It would be rude not to.


This video cracks me up because the one kid keeps just going back and forth in front of our table....

But then they all get so into this song, even one of the guys in the back. It makes me think of how everyone goes nuts when they hear "Freebird" or something...

Glee quote of the week -- 11/23

This was the feel-good episode of the year!

Curt: "When you call me "Lady" that's bullying, and it's really hurtful."
Sue: "I'm sorry, I thought that was your name. As an apology, I'll allow you choose from the following nicknames--Gelfing, Porcelain and Tickle-me-Doeface."
Curt: "I guess I'll go with Porcelain."

(I confess...I don't really know what that first choice was. I rewound it 8 times and came up with Gelfing. Is that a word? Any other guesses?)

New cupcake place in Chelsea

A new bakery opened up around the corner from Jill's office, so we stopped by after I met her for lunch one day. It's called Lulu's and Jill is in trouble because it's good!

They also had homemade Yodels, which I also tried, of course.

India part 7

We stayed in some magnificent places. This was my favorite, called Umaid Bhawan Palace. It's the maharaja's palace built in 1943, and is decorated with the art deco style from that time. It was partially converted into a hotel, although the maharaja still lives in one of the wings. This is the entrance.

These traditionally dressed butlers were found all over the place. My dad could probably name the year and make of these cars, but all I know is that they looked cool.

Once inside, this is the lobby. First you see this grand staircase, which we could take up to our rooms. Past the staircase, you enter this domed area. I loved these saffron collored banners. There's no way to really portray how beautiful this was, but you'll have to try to imagine it.

Here's another room used for conferences or something...


This was (part of) our room. Through the door to the left, was the bedroom and bathroom, but we had this awesome sitting room. Since by the time we got here to Jodhpur there were five of us, it gave us a nice place to sit and chat and look at the stuff we bought each night.

Here's the view from the back and the hotel grounds.










Here's the pool. Trevor was explicitly told by me that he was not allowed to bring the camera out when bathing suits were involved, but I guess he decided that he was in charge. Whatever!!


We ate breakfast every morning in the back of the hotel. I was going to call it the back porch, but I don't really know what it's called, but it overlooked the whole property.

Here's my favorite breakfast. Seems simple -- french toast with bananas and berry compote but it was delicious!! The bread was really light and fluffy and it was sooooo good!


although it was lovely, eating outside can be a bit dangerous when squirrels actually climbed up onto our actual table. Not to mention .... ick! pigeons! But don't fear because there was this young man holding a flag with a pigeon on it... I guess this was supposed to keep them away?

Our last night we had a dinner outside in this white pavilion. That will be my next post..,

Here's the hotel again from the back, lit up by night.