Sorry I haven’t posted in so long, I’ve been helping my new boy toy Brad Pitt pick out his latest child. Ok fine, I’ve just been doing work but I had to come up with something to top the whole bollywood with Julia experience. One thing I will say is that now that I’m an experienced extra I just can’t watch a movie in the same way. Every time I see someone walk across the screen in the background I just have to analyze their performance. What is their motivation for walking that path? W have they chosen that particular pace? The complexities of the mind of an extra would blow you away. But alas, now you are no longer reading the blog of a h/bollywood movie star, but rather just a tireless NGO worker who packed up her life and traveled halfway around the world to devote herself to the greater cause no matter how challenging that may prove…I know, how incredibly lame!

This past weekend was Diwali, the biggest Hindu holiday of the year. Luckily, since I live in India I get to experience things first hand and don’t have to just read about them to understand them. Diwali, also known as the festival of light, celebrates the return of Ram after 14 years of exile. (www.wikipedia.com) Two weeks ago we celebrated Dasara, which was when Ram won one hell of a battle against Ravana, aka a mean monster slash devil. So now he's back and we are ready to celebrate!

Diwali is pretty sweet in that it combines Christmas and the 4^th of July into one – people decorate their houses with Christmas lights and set off firecrackers (there is also some praying and cleansing of the soul involved but I just saw the lights). By firecrackers I don’t just mean those little sparklers either, everyone sets off their own 4^th of July style fireworks. It actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it: rather than have the city waste its precious money and deal with the logistics of setting up a fireworks show, they just make them legal and let the people set off their own show. Plus, in a city of 12 million, this means that the fireworks are going off literally all night (actually more than just all night seeing as Diwali was Saturday and it is now Monday night and I am still listening to the blasts go off it was cute at first but it is getting a little old). Delhi doesn’t have any skyscrapers, so as long as they were bright enough to shine through the pollution you could see fireworks going off all over the city. We live on the top floor of our apartment, so we were able to climb up on our roof and literally watch fireworks going off in 360 degrees all around us, which was surprisingly cool - until our neighbors set one off that fell about three feet from us and we freaked out and went inside. My other favorite part of Diwali is the traditional gift basket, which for some reason always contains random British and American snacks. They sell them in all the stores and it is literally a basket filled with totally non-Indian items. One of our organizations here bought us one and it contains: one pepsi, one box drink of Tropicana juice, a small bag of Lays, and a few mini Cadbury bars. So random, but much appreciated none the less.