happy belated gurpurab

I finally found a place that has wireless internet in Delhi! woohoo! Right now, I'm at Goodie Bhua's house writing this on my laptop - I'm not online - and tomorrow I'll go over to the lovely Cafe Coffee Day, just walking distance from here, to get wifi.

Tuesday, November 15 was gurpurab, a Sikh holiday, for the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhi. And on Tuesday morning, I sang a shabad at the GK II gurdwara for probably about a hundred people...! It went well, except I was really nervous. The speaker system was so loud - I don't know that I've ever heard myself sing so loudly before in such an large, reverberent space.

Other than that, life here is pretty normal. I was just practicing sitar for a little bit, doing the same little patterns over and over and over again. I'm not memorizing everything fast enough, so I need to practice a lot more and just repeat everything tons of times.

Monday was my friend Jasmine's 25th birthday, and she had a birthday dinner at Thai Wok, a very swanky rooftop restaurant in Delhi. We met up with all the same crowd of Bani's Sikh camp friends, the same friends of hers that I have been hanging out with on and off since I've been here. The restaurant is located pretty close to the Qutab Minar, one of the most famous monuments in Delhi, so the view of the Qutab was pretty sweet.

This weekend I was alone in the flat for the most part; it was nice to have some downtime. Tayaji and Tayiji (aka my uncle and aunt - my dad's older brother and wife) came for Diwali and Bani's birthday and then left to go back to Chandigarh last Thursday morning. (They live here in Delhi, in the apartment where I'm staying, but they have a house in Chandigarh that they want to sell but the guy renting it out won't leave.)