Before coming to India, I was told everyone experiences a certain amount of culture shock, so I should be prepared. Apparently, there are 6 stages to the process: 1. Honeymoon, 2. Disillusionment, 3. Crisis, 4. Adjustment, 5. Accomodation, and 6. Productive.
Accommodation (Stage 5) is characterized by "accepting yourself and your own culture as you can equally accept your hosts and their culture." The following chronicles our prep and partying, in celebration of my roommate's birthday which was officially March 5th. Please use the vignette below to analyse which stage of cultural adjustment the residents of 106 seem to be at (and pardon the dangling participle).
Dear Friends of Kristen,
If there’s one thing I’ve learned while in India, it’s that anything worth celebrating…is worth celebrating for a minimum of 7 days. (Indians…also…love…ellipsis…and exclamation points!!! :-) So, in true Indian fashion, I hereby declare this auspicious occasion…
“Kristin’s BirthWeek BreakFeastival!!!”
which will culminate in a party at 7PM on Friday, 11 March.
It is a little known fact at IJM Bangalore that Americans do breakfast better than Indians (::gasp::) and Kristen, being the bleeding-heart-social-justice-benefactor-philanthropist that she is, selflessly wanted to dedicate her birthday to raising awareness about this issue. To this end, we will be serving a proper American breakfast--for dinner. Complete with scrambled eggs, chocolate chip pancakes, fruit salad and the choicest meats (when I say that, it that always means bacon!) We also may play some classic—albeit inane—American birthday games.
Please do let us know if you’re able to come experience the best of both worlds this Friday night. You just might go home convinced it’s best to start your day…the American way ;-)
Peace, love and maple syrup,
106
Kristen at the helm in her party dress by Calcutta desinger Ritu Kumar! There are 36 eggs between those two pans!
Giant white walls call for my signature clothesline decorating trick!
American breakfast--for dinner! An absurd amount of food.
We promised inane American birthday games in the invitation, so I stayed up the night prior creating a culturally relevant version of "Pin the tail on the donkey"or rather, "Pin the tail on the sacred cow". (So close!)
You don't get no respect here without a moush, so Troy decided he'd blend in better by concealing his upperlip beneath that critter.
Not quite Troy.
The result? It looked like my sacred cow was being attacked by sperm! We had this up as-is for about a day, then I had to take it down because I couldn't get this song out of my head.
It may seem like all we do is throw parties and chase wild elephants and hang out with fashion designers, but sometimes you find your self sitting staring at your dinning room wall for 45 minutes figuring out all the things you can spell with the letters in "Happy Birth Week" (perhaps while authoring a blogpost). My favourite above.
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