India Fest 2010

It's about time I let everyone in on some of the things going on with the kids who are actually out of the womb in our family. This was taken at India Fest. We took the whole family and met up with our friend Shubha who at the time had recently gotten back from a trip visiting her family in India. She took all of us around the festival and explained some of the culture to us. She also took Todd to the food area and told him what to order for us to try. She is a real asset to have as we try to help Arin learn about his birth culture. After eating the food, which was very good, the baby and I needed more so we left Arin with Shubha, and ran me over to Wendy's. I was feeling really bad by then, so I was so relieved to get my salad. We all enjoyed going, and I think Arin liked being the center of attention.

Our adventrue into Indian culture

Obviously Arin’s ancestry does not lie in the hills of Germany, as most of the sunscreen-loving members of our family do. Arin is from Kolkata, India, and we do our best to make him proud of that. After looking at some Rupees I had laying around a number of months ago, each of which featured Mahatma Gandhi’s picture. We launched into a month long research mission into who Gandhi was and his significance to India. Even Todd and I had the chance to watch the Gandhi movie, look online, and talk to friends to learn about him ourselves (he is not exactly an important enough figure to America to be delved into in a typical education). All of this culminated in our hosting “Gandhi Day” for our homeschool group. We talked about where India was, Arin explained some significant things he did. We did a science experiment to see how salt could be extracted from water (referring to the salt march Gandhi instigated), and we clothed little Gandhi paper dolls (while talking about how Gandhi made his own clothes)

Lately we have finally made a friend in the Indian community who is happy to share her experiences growing up in India with us. Last Saturday Shubha took us to an Indian restaurant, and ordered for us, thank goodness. We are so inexperienced with Indian food. We tried a number of dishes, and only Nina left hungry. Then Shubha took us to an Indian store. We got some Indian snacks, a coconut, and looked at all the Indian goods. We walked by small statues of Ganesh and Krishna. Arin and I actually learned a lot of what we know about Ganesh by watching “Cheetah Girls, One World” in conjunction with factual bits from the internet. I saw that the movie was filmed in India so we watched it together. Arin really wanted a statue so Daddy got it for him. We also got Nina some Bindhis to wear. We had a great time talking to Shubha about differences between our cultures. She is so open with us, and we are grateful to her for her honesty, and introspection.