All on the 4th (3rd) of July . . .

While I'm laid up in my room with a pretty bad case of food poisoning, I thought, "what better to do than to update my much-neglected blog?" So here you go-- proof that my link to the outside world is still functioning.

The 4th of July comes early in India . . . since so many of us travel on the weekends, we decided to celebrate the 4th of July (Friday) on the 3rd of July (Thursday). One of the American interns, Shane, went all-out to ensure that we had an amazing day. It began with the two of us giving a presentation on American culture and the history of Independence Day (I put together a powerpoint presentation on "American Stereotypes," proving with verifiable statistics that Americans are not generally dumb, fat, ignorant, and eat only ketchup). From there we went to the cricket fields owned by Infosys, where we attempted to play a modified version of baseball with a cricket bat and a tennis ball. Some highlights of the questions/comments while we attempted to explain the differences between cricket and baseball:

"No, you can only run around the bases once. Run in a square."
"Amit, no! Drop the bat and THEN run!"

It was quite entertaining, and a lot of press showed up actually. There was a reporter from InfyTV, the internal news/features show of Infosys, and a couple of photographers from some local newspapers. I'll have to send out the articles they wrote-- they're pretty hilarious and not at all accurate depictions of the day's events.

From there we went to La Terrace, the restaurant in the ECC (the hostel where all the interns live), which had prepared an American spread complete with hamburgers (and veggie burgers :) ), corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, pasta salad, and ice cream. Then it was back to the cricket fields to set off some small fireworks. All in all, a great day and one of the best 4th/3rd of July celebrations I've ever had.

Sorry there are no pictures! I'll write about last weekend (a safari trip into a tiger reserve!) as soon as my stomach gets a little happier with me . . .