dance dance dance dance dance dance

It would be really unfair to this past week if I didn't blog about it.

Last Thursday, the fam and I went to Martha's Vineyard for a brief weekend getaway. Well, actually, Mamtha and I were signed up to dance at Lauren and Vijay's wedding reception on Friday, the day after. We drove for about two hours on Thursday evening, took a ferry off the mainland, and reached the island at about 9 PM. It was rainy and gross. But, we stayed in a nice cottage.


The next morning, it was still raining on and off and we didn't know whether we should try to make it to the Hindu Ceremony, which was supposed to be at Aquinnah Lighthouse, or start getting ready for the performance. We chose wisely when we decided to start getting ready. We spent two and a half hours in Mamtha's hotel room getting dressed and bejeweled--which is actually a pretty fair time considering that we each had to do full braids + hair ornaments with only two mothers for assistance.

Then, we sped down the roads of Martha's Vineyard (by sped, I mean drove at the speed of 30 mph when the speed limit was 20) and got to the wedding reception at 7. Thankfully, it wasn't raining and sun was kind of coming 0ut. The performance went wonderfully, especially since we were not expecting people to actually watch us. However, we seemed to get everyone's attention and they sat around us while we danced for 45 minutes, like it was storytime! It was cute. They seemed to really like our dance and thanked us with gifts and a lovely dinner.


We had all of the next day to ourselves, so we drove around the island to different popular locales such as the Gingerbread houses, fudge shoppes, and the lighthouse. And the Black Dog store, where Mamtha and I bought the same shirt ("how cute", I know). It was a rather exhuasting day and my fam ferried and drove back to the mainland that night.

On Sunday morning, I woke up realizing that I had another dance performance that day. Nritya Haram was taking place at 4 pm so there was really no point in my trying to scrub away the red marker on my toes/fingers. Jyoti and Nisha showed up at my place and while driving to Littleton, we reminisced about the arangetram memories of last summer. After the show, I went to a nice little Nritya Haram afterparty at Praneetha's house with Sravanthi, Bhavana, Swathi, and Sravanthi. It involved food from Olive Garden and Apples to Apples. It was therefore awesome.

Here is a picture of us senior dancers after the Thillana (thanks, Swathi, for the picture).

Over the next five days, I attended rehearsals of Nayaki, the solo performance that Jothi Aunty was doing on the 27th. I was in charge of lighting. I expected it to be just dimming and brightening, but it turned out to be WAY more complicated than that. Here is a poster for Nayaki:


The performance took place yesterday at the Sorenson Theater, in Babson College. I literally spent 8.5 hours there: I got there at 1, helped set up, programmed in all the lighting cues, drew some stage markings with tape, and rewrote the lighting cues into my notebook. It was then 4. I went over the lighting cues again and made some final changes. Then, I had to help adjust some fixtures so that the musicians could have more light. All of a sudden, it was 5:30 and I frantically got changed into my sari. I hobbled up to the technical booth in my heels, basically exhausted and starved from not sitting down or eating for the past 5 hours. The show started at around 6:30 and for the next two hours, my heart rate was pretty freaking high as I repeatedly punched the 'go' button for each cue. Turns out there were 108 separate lighting cues. 108!! Not even kidding. The lighting turned out well except for one issue when the computer froze and I kept hitting the wrong "back" button, so the stage was dark for a fe seconds. But the dancing was, of course, fabulous (we are talking about Jothi Raghavan here). At 9:30, Manasa and I left for Saketh's graduation party. But we left pretty quickly from there because, well, I was exhausted. And I hadn't even danced!!

I can't believe this week is over. Now, I just have to write a 5 page essay to submit on Tuesday and try to study before the next week of DANCE CAMP! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

CAMPING part 2: you have a caterpillar on you

After consuming whatever calories we could find, we gathered around the picnic table and tried to plan how we would spend our day. Those who had gotten at least a few hours of sleep agreed to go on the hiking trails for a little adventure.


It was about a 5 mile drive to the hiking trails. Lo and behold! We got to the same spot where the GPS had led our van yesterday...to some random ditch that was apparently part of the path to the trails. We passed a sign that said "Fire Tower" and obviously decided to go there as it was obviously something dangerous, exciting, and fun. A fire tower is where, in the olden days, people used to fling fireballs and other such flammable things at enemy planes in order to bring them down.

It was a rather steep climb up the trail. We had to scale rocks. Climb trees. With our bare hands! Well, we could have also just walked around the rocks and trees, but some us had an insatiable thirst for danger, adventure, and scrapes.



Much later, we got to the top of the trail and saw Fire Tower. Turns out, Fire Tower is just something people climb to see if there are fires anywhere. It was a big white tower which had the sign "no entry". Of course, Nipunn climbed it and took this picture from the top.


We then climbed to the summit of the mountain to lounge for a bit, tan (or blacken), and take pictures.

We sat for a while and pondered the essence life, our existence, and our place in the universe. Is there a meaning? Is there a purpose? What time was it? It was 12:30 and we were rather hungry, so we decided to head back for lunch. The sandwiches were gobbled up on about 5 seconds and we made a trip to the Pawtuckaway beach where we had a very spirited game of frisbee tossing in the water. I was definitely pooped when we got back to the campsite...and it was only 3 in the afternoon. We lounged around the campfire some more and were too tired to brush off the caterpillars off our pants and chairs.


These fuzzy little caterpillars, gypsy moth caterpillars according to wikipedia, were basically everywhere. I think there were more of these than there were mosquitoes. Every five minutes, this would be said:

"Hey (insert name here), you have a little friend on your (insert body part here)"

And then (insert name here) would either brush the caterpillar off his/her (insert body part here) or stare at the critter for a few seconds and go back to sleep. I undertook the job of collecting the critters from peoples pant legs and dropping them into the center of the fire pit, where they wriggled around while covered in ash. It was fun to watch. Honestly, there was nothing else to do.

A bajillion hours later, it was finally getting dark and we started making s'mores! Yum. I like to eat s'mores without the graham crackers.


The rest of the day continued at the pace of a gypsy moth caterpillar and there's not much else to mention except for the fact that it started raining once it was dark. Trying to sleep was a huge issue, especially with the sound of big fat raindrops slamming into the tent roof. But like my mom says, "you want a Tempur-Pedic mattress? Go run 10 miles and then you'll be able to fall asleep even on the hardwood floor". If you're REALLY tired, you don't need a comfy bed. Even a leaky tent pitched on wet tarp will do. Of course, some people were wimps and slept in their cars, but most of us roughed it and achieved about 6 hours of sleep.

It was still raining in the morning when we brushed the caterpillars off our stuff, packed it up, and drove off. We ended our camping trip by stopping at an IHOP for breakfast where we again consumed all of our food in about 5-6 seconds. We drove then to Alex's house to hose off all our belongings, flick away the last few caterpillars that came for a ride, and say goodbye to each other.

So that was our foray into the great outdoors. It was basically an awesome trip, including the rain (what kind of camping trip is complete without the rain?) and I believe there are plans for another one! This next one is going to be even awesomer, I just know it.

CAMPING part 1: omg pancakes

I finally have something entertaining to blog about, so I will be as descriptive as possible for your reading pleasure. So my school friends and I went camping last weekend to Pawtuckaway, New Hampshire. The forecast had predicted rain the entire weekend but the weather was actually pretty nice most of the time. It was an epic adventure filled with action, thrills, laughter, natural beauty, and caterpillars.

It was Friday and I had just returned from practicing dance at Mamtha's. I was leisurely packing my camping things, happy that the weather was clearing up when Nipunn and Dennis showed up at my house 45 minutes ahead of schedule. After cramming the rest of my things into Dennis' minivan, we picked up three bags of ice from a gas station and Katherine from her house. We set the campsite destination into the GPS and set off. It was a great long ride to Pawtuckaway thanks to the Friday afternoon traffic.


We were all quite excited we entered the campgrounds (we also had to go to the bathroom after downing large cans of Iced Tea). But oh no! Turns out the GPS had led us into the middle of some random trails rather than the campgrounds. While Dennis took a driving break to relieve himself in the bushes, Nipunn hijacked the van and started driving away.


And then we decided to roll back and pick up Dennis, since the campsite was registered in his name. After driving around to find some signal, we called some friends and got directions to the campsite. Another 45 minutes later, we made it to Pawtuckaway and bumped into Staci, Jeff, Cat, and Jesse who invaded the van and got us to our site. And we finally met up with Alex, Kim, and Kevin. The next few hours were spent assorting our belongings into various tents and locating chairs and flashlights. At about 8, we tried to start a campfire.


Several paper bags and a bottle of lighter fluid later, it was 9:30 and we decided that we were starving and it would be a good idea to ask someone for help. A nice man from a neighboring site used the Boston Herald to light us a fire and we finally got it going. It was 10 when we finally got the food grilling. After eating and horsing around, we decided we should go to bed before too many insects came out and started harassing us.

After about 3 hours of sleep, I woke up at 5 AM along with Staci and Nipunn. We brushed our teeth and took a nice walk through the woods. It was a perfect day. We were told that we couldn't start cooking breakfast until everyone was awake, so we devoured the last brownie crumbs from the day before and lounged around in the middle campsite as people trickled out of their tents. It was 9 AM when the hunger was too much and we pulled out a bottle of Bisquick Shake n' Pour to make pancakes on a skillet. We didn't want to try making a campfire, so we lit a bag of coals. Then, we realized that we didn't have any grease for the skillet! We searched. The closest thing we found to butter was one of those stovetop popcorn things. Dennis decided that he would try to cook the pancakes anyway, without any butter. He proceeded to make a pathetic looking blob of dough that ended up more like a cracker than a pancake.


However, it didn't taste bad, so we used up the entire bottle of Shake n' Pour.


The last came out pretty well and tasted almost like a pancake though it looked more like a Cannoli.


Despite having successfully used the entire bottle of portable pancake mix, we were still hungry. We only then found out that 1 bottle of Shake n' Pour cannot feed 12 people. We devoured whatever snacks we could find before setting out on a trip up the hiking trails to FIRE TOWER! Dun dun dunnnnnn.

To be continued...

...

More pondering

This time, I don't have an excuse for my lack of blogging. With all this free time, one would think that I could spare about 5 minutes to update you on my life. I have greatly disappointed myself. I have shown that I lack both commitment and responsibility.

^There. I just admitted a flaw about myself. Does that make me a sensible person? Yeah? Or maybe I'm just saying that to make you think I'm a sensible person. Here's the question: Is there a difference between modesty and humility? Yes. Say that I made the above statement just so I could come across as one who admits one's faults. I may do this to avoid arguments: If someone were to tell me that I am irresponsible, I could avoid the argument just by agreeing. This is a form of modesty. I would also exhibit modesty when I know I'm great but I don't flaunt it, perhaps for fear or being seen as arrogant.

Now, if I were to make that above statement and truly believe it, that is humility. I am only truly humble when I sincerely believe that I am flawed. They say that the truly great are humble because they are aware of what they have not mastered. This characteristic could be applied to the philosopher Socrates, who is thought to have been a true genius not for acquiring vast knowledge but for simply being aware of what he does not know. Knowing that there is always more to know is a sign of humility and is what spurs on philosophical and scientific thought.


That was my deep and thoughtful segment for today. So, what's new with my life? You guessed it: not much. I've been dancing more lately in order to prepare for this one performance my friend Mamtha and I are doing at wedding in Martha's Vineyard about two weeks from now. I also have decided to take part in the first Nrityanjali Production called Nritya Haram. It promises to be wonderful and tickets are only $10, so you should certainly come. Just let me know if you're interested.
And what else? The letters M, C, A, and T are looming large and scary. I hope to be done with 1/3 of my studying by the end of today though. Next weekend, I really want to go camping with my friends, but we'll see how that works out.

Ciao for now, and please comment so I can know if there are people at least mildly interested in what I have to say. Thanks!