Mango Season. Stop. Bangalore? Stop. It's almost time to leave... *sigh*

I can only apologize for how long it's been since my last post. There are no excuses, I just got busier and lazier. Sorry!

Soooo....how to catch you up on my life over the past few weeks? I don't even know where to begin. So I'll start with food. You can never go wrong if you start with food : )

MANGO SEASON HAS BEGUN!!! About one week ago I bought my first mango in India from Shop Com (officially the "shopping complex" on campus, but everyone calls it Shop Com) and it was DELICIOUS. The mangoes on the tree outside my house are getting bigger and bigger, and will probably be ripe soon! Except for the fact that we've had a few unseasonal monsoon-esque rains recently, which have caused the untimely fall of some of the aforementioned mangoes. Their absence was sincerely mourned by all the stomachs in my house ; ).

Speaking of stomachs, and this has nothing to do with them, last Friday was the SIP Cultural Show!! SIP stands for Study India Program, and it's the department myself and almost all of the international students on campus are registered with here at the University. Every semester towards the end of the semester, the SIP students put on this cultural show. It was a night of many, many firsts for me, and it was SO MUCH FUN!!! Let me explain: I was co-MC with Viroop, an awesome guy who's also in SIP, I sang the Black National Anthem with Andrew (another great guy in CIEE), I read two poems, one of which was in the previous post, I acted in a skit, and I danced bhangra with the CIEE bhangra team. I have never been MC in any capacity before, never sung on stage like that before, never read my poems for an audience which is larger than my poetry workshop classes or my sister's wedding, never acted in any sort of play, skit, or theater production, and never performed on stage....needless to say I was nervous but I had an AMAZING time and from the feedback from people in the audience I think we put on a good show if I do say so myself ; ). Haha.

What else? I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to Bangalore this weekend to learn how to cook Indian food from this chef we met on our trip to Bangalore. Pros: it's going to be really fun and as all travel experiences, I'm going to learn a lot from it and I don't mean just about food. Cons: it's my last real weekend at home with my host family + Brittany (finals start next week, go until the end of April, and then I leave), and I don't want to miss any time that I can spend with them because (and I am honestly saying this, not just because certain people have found my blog and are reading it *cough* BHARAT *cough*) I have really grown to care for them all during my time here. Seriously. The other day I made a list of things that I've felt I've learned/gained/don't want to forget from my time here in India, and everyone from my host family was on it in some capacity. : ) A good capacity, haha.

*Sigh*

Mmmm. Before I get too emotional, I'm going to move on to other things. Have I had any adventures recently? Yes. Life is an adventure!! Haha don't roll your eyes, I'm only twenty-one. : ) I also said that because for some reason I've forgotten what my adventures were, and so I'm going to have to create another post in which I write them all up. I would promise that this post-of-recent-adventures is going to happen, but finals are looming on the horizon, so I'll just say that I will try my best.

I miss all of you. I miss New York. Sarah, I'm wearing something which I've bought for you as a gift and I hope you don't mind. I just wanted to make sure that it works. So far, the verdict is yes ; )