Sorry for the late update...
I'm finding it hard to set aside time for writing. Now that school has started whenever I have free time I feel obligated to read or something. But I'll talk about the highlights of the first couple of days here.
Saturday we went phone shopping, most people decided not to bring their phones and just get phones once we got here. The way it works in India is you buy a phone and then buy pre-paid minutes. And once you run out of minutes you go back and buy more. About 15 of us just piled into this one room phone store all wanting to buy phones and none of us really knowing how it worked. The guy acted like that happened all the time and basically just showed us three phones and asked us to raise our hand depending on which we wanted. I choose the middle-priced one for 2100 Rs (which is around $40) and I'm very happy with it although it didn't come with Bollywood ringtones like the cheapest option did. Explain to me how that's fair.
Sunday we went to a dance teacher to talk to her about giving us lessons and she was finishing up a class so they preformed a little for us. The class was comprised of little girls and they did some classical forms first then they danced to Sajanji Vari from Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd and Pappu Can't Dance from Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. It was great; the kids were all very cute. And after class they all touched their teacher's feet before leaving. However our program coordinator wasn't happy with that lady or her dance space, which was very small.
After visiting the dance teacher, we took rickshaws to another part of the city across the river to a more commercial road. There we went to a big store that sold DVDs, CDs, and books of all kinds. It was pretty western though so I couldn’t find Harry Potter in Hindi but I did buy two DVDs - Johnny Gaddaar and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. From there some of us walked a couple blocks to a restaurant called the Blue Nile which served Iranian food (Indian food as well). The kababs and biriyani were really good. After that we took rickshaws back to the hotel. On the way back, one girl, Claire, asked the rickshawwala (in Hindi) which road we were on because there were a lot of stalls selling things. First he says, “oh Hindi!” and she says “haan haan (yes yes) then he tells us, “chor baazaar” (thief bazaar). We ask if we heard right, chor as in chori (robbery) and he says yes and then asks us what it is in English. We became friends, and the rest of the ride back he was our tour guide pointing out different buildings, the river, etc. He tells us it’s a dream of his to go to America. We ask him where and he says, “America!” and we say, yes but where in America? New York? Yes, he says, and Washington and Los Angeles. Claire tells him not to go to LA, it’s not that nice and too expensive. He asks, so Washington is cheap? He also tells us about his 3 year old son, Vivendra and asks Claire if she’s married. She said no because she’s a student right now and he says, you can do them both together. I’m not sure if we asked him for us name, in any case I don’t remember it now but that was a very nice ride back.