Dur dur d'être Jacqui

Oh hey, Himalayas

The title comes from the song "Dur dur d'être Billy," (toutes les filles et toutes les drogues...) a song that people who understand French might possibly find funny. Or not. Marielle and I changed the song to include my name because it's so hard hard hard to be in Dehradun. So why is it so dur dur dur dur d'être moi?

We live in a very marble-y house in the foothills of the Himalayas. Included with said house are gardens, a meditation house, a library, and the tiniest/cuddliest guard dogs in existence (Smoky and Ritz). Marielle prefers cats, so that leaves me free to cuddle them to death. Marielle has forbidden me to cuddle any wild animals, including (but not limited to) donkeys, goats, puppies, cows, and anything else that might be carrying "deadly tropical diseases." The one downside of the gardens is that there is always the possibility of mountain monkey attacks. I do not entirely trust Smoky and Ritz to valiantly defend us in the event of mountain monkey attacks.

Lalita, our host grandmother of sorts, deals us equal measures of sass and pampering (well, maybe a bit more pampering). We call her amaji, which means "mother." I call Marielle diidi, meaning "older sister," and she calls me chhoti, meaning "little one." I am not terribly pleased with the latter arrangement, but then again, we live in a palace so whatever.

This morning we visited Lakshmi Devi Academy, the school run by KHEL Charities, where we'll be volunteering for the next two months (sidenote: KHEL stands for Kindness, Health, Education, Laughter and literally means "to play" in Hindi). The students are bright and adorable. They had prepared an elaborate welcome for us with marigold wreaths, songs, dances, a speech and Indian toffees. The eighth graders have invited us to go on a picnic with them at the local zoo. It looks like Marielle is going to be teaching a lot of tae kwon do while I do more music and science.

Things we are looking forward to: getting cotton shalwar kameez made for teaching at Lakshmi Devi Academy, finding a bookstore, hiking in the Himalayas, going to the grocery store with our amaji Mrs. Lalita Arya to pick out more yummy goodness, and going to Rishikish for a lights ceremony.

So yes, c'est dur dur dur dur d'être Jacqui.