clearly I'm posting on IST

 I'll make some excuses for my blog negligence: my Internet crashed on and off (but mostly off) for about two weeks, I've been busy working and traveling and hosting guests, I'm embarrassed by my camera skills, etc. I'm still alive! In the last two weeks, I went to Bombay and Agra, scored an internship, and saw two friends from home since we've last talked. I also have seen approximately 107 cows, although this number does include repeated sightings of the "regulars" who frequent areas around my house in Delhi, about 60 goats, two elephants-- one was moseying down the highway with two people on its back like a taxi with tusks, three camels, a bicycle with a cage on the back full of poor chickens stuffed helter-skelter inside with no room to move and their little feet grappling to catch on the wire mesh of the bottom (would it have been so hard to put a piece of cardboard down first? moorgi-wallah fail), 30 or so monkeys, far too many homeless dogs and cats, parrots, an unsettling amount of pigeons (whom I hate in any country), some really cute chipmunks, and a ladybug! Unfortunately no tigers, although my aunt and uncle's apartment in Bombay did overlook a national forest where they reportedly live-- before the area really took off in terms of real estate, the tigers would prowl around and eat babies and sleep in churches. True story.

view from the balcony of my aunt and uncle's house in Bombay of a national forest

[Sidenote: I know how touristy counting animals seems, but my brother and I used to count cows in Delhi when we were kids and now it's habit! We also used to count Christmas lights in Atlanta every year-- bonus points liberally appointed for beautiful houses or animated decorations.]
I'm having a great time, and even extended my trip by ten days to ensure that I make it to Kurukshetra and to learn as much as I can from the NGOs in which I'm working. The best part of my time in India so far? When I told a little boy selling tourist wares in Agra that I didn't speak Hindi (mujhe hindi nahi aathi), and he replied, "Didi, tode tode aathi!" It's true though-- the Devnagari languages have come back to me full force (Punjabi still and will forever continue to escape me), which is very exciting. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoying their summers! Stop complaining about the heat; when I landed in Delhi in May it was 117 degrees...at midnight. At least y'all have Georgia thunderstorms and ice that you  can enjoy without worrying about catching bacterial dysentery.

I'll leave you with this picture of a lightbulb in its packaging, which has nothing to do with anything, but that I loved:

♥

PS- IST means Indian Standard Time-- it's a bit of a joke amongst Indians in the US and essentially means that you're always running late.