My Pretentious Study Abroad Blog: Hindi word of the day: किनारा (kinara

So I meant to catch up on the blog completely by today but unfortunately it was not destined to be. On the plane ride back from Jaipur, I started getting some nasty stomach pains that continued throughout the next day and then on Tuesday I woke up with a 103 degree fever, chills, feeling like I was going to pass out, and all the enjoyable effects that come with the flu. I'm better now but then last night was the AMAZING India-Australia quarterfinal cricket match and I had my final IPED paper due today so I ended up getting 2.5 hours of sleep last night and am now deliriously exhausted. Perfect time to post.

Anyway, I don't have all that many photos to post from Goa because I <cough>brokeanothercamera<cough> so I'd like to spend a bit of space talking about things I do other than travel. I realize that what I tend to post about on this blog is traveling on weekends, but I actually do things other than be a tourist sometimes. These past few weeks have been crazy busy with homework, which is (shockingly) much harder to do in India than at home. Not that I do homework at home either but anyway. My classes here are fantastic--despite the warnings I heard from every friend who'd been abroad and told me that classes are a joke on study abroad programs--but sometimes it can be hard to motivate myself to want to do work when there are so many other amazing things to do. Like last night, when I had the option of A) finishing my ten to fifteen page research paper on India as a superpower or B) watching India play Australia in the cricket world cup quarterfinal with my host fam. If this was a choose-your-own-adventure novel and you chose option A, you would be a total loser who doesn't deserve to read choose-your-own-adventure novels. Just sayin'. Watching the game was incredible. If India won, it would go on to play Pakistan in the semifinal, which would be kind of equivalent to Israel playing Palestine in terms of how violent/big of a deal/emotional it can be, especially since the winner of the semifinal is only one step away from winning the world cup. It was a nail-biting finish and when India finally got the four-run hit it needed to win, fireworks started going off all over and everyone was running around outside shouting. Abhishek texted me, "We are running wildly with a 10 ft. Indian flag! Fuck..! I love my country so much. =) ." My host fam (Baba, his sister, and her two daughters--one of whom you saw in the sari post) and I went out for a celebration coffee. It was splendid. Unfortunately then I had to come back and finish writing my paper. So I downed two Diet Pepsis (Christie showed me a shop where they sell them here and I kind of freaked out. Finding diet sodas here in general is really tough, so seeing a Diet Pepsi was basically a miracle.) and got to work. When it hit 1:30 a.m. (A fairly early bed time when I'm back at Wes, but completely unheard of for me here. Usually 10:30 is pushing it.), I decided to go to bed. But the caffeine in my body decided otherwise. I fell asleep listening to the closest thing I had on my iPod to a lullaby: Elliott Smith. Advice: unless you want a night filled with the most terrifyingly bizarre dreams ever, don't listen to a suicidal songwriter to fall asleep.

ANYHOW. That was my explanation for why this post is the way it is. I had two hours of sleep last night and then today met Pooja for lunch and ate wayyyyy too much at this amazing Italian place so I am now nauseously overstuffed in addition to being deliriously exhausted. Okay, here's the Goa post.

Two weekends ago, Zach, Stefan, and I went to Goa. It was supposed to be a group of like nine people but everyone else dropped out at the last minute because they had tons of essays due the next week. So the three of us headed to the beach state on an overnight sleeper bus, which was an experience. It was AC'd up the yinyang so it was freezing cold and it fit two people to a bed which got a littttle awkward since there were three of us (yes, Stefan did end up sleeping next to a random stranger). But once we got to our hotel, checked in, and headed to the beach, all wazz well. For the next three days, we lounged on beaches, ate delicious food, and watched crazy tourists do crazy things. That's pretty much all there is to say about Goa because that's literally all we did. It was the most relaxing thing ever. Here are some photos:

The inconvenient dog. This dog (who I assume belonged to the hotel since he was always there) was adorable but also always managed to be in a location directly in our footpath, such as on these stairs which led to our rooms.

Loungin'.

Hilarious Russian tourists who brought a bouquet of roses, used them to spell out 'Goa' in the sand, and then proceeded to do a photo shoot in front of them. This was the money shot.