Downhill Slide to 30

It's official:  Matt turned 26 Friday.  He is no longer a young and vibrant 25-year-old, much unlike his wife, who still has a week to go before she starts her downhill slide to 30.  Friday also marked the seven-month-versary of our second arrival in Baroda.  If that's not a great birthday present, I don't know what is.  

 

Birthday decorations.  That creepy picture is the "Raja of Cochin".  

I wanted to make Matt's birthday something special because we were both so bummed out about still being here - but of course my options were severely limited.  I eventually settled on presenting him with (miniscule, inconsequential) gifts throughout the day, and then decorated the room (poorly), and then "took" him to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Kai Asia.  But that's not all.  In light of the fact we can't order alcohol with our dinner, we devised an ingenious plan to sneak some white wine into the restaurant; we poured it into empty ginger ale cans.  Ha!  Ahh, man, what great achievements can be made when we put our minds to work!  I haven't felt that much like a high schooler since... I was in high school.  It was the best night.

 

This creepy picture is Matt with his birthday cake.  

 

Blowing out the candles.  Those "My Little Pony" dolls are for Bella, not Matt.  I just thought they made a nice addition to the birthday decor.  

 

Trick candle.  Haha.  Works every time.  

Saturday night we went to a party hosted by one of the Indians in the International Women's Club.  I was a little nervous about it because we didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be fairly awesome.  It was a huge blowout with a fully stocked bar, food from both Little Italy and Mainland China, as well as a performance from a couple of male strippers.  There was a huge crowd around the male strippers so I couldn't see anything, but I was told the most they took off was their jackets - under which they were wearing vests.  Ahh, India.  Your conservativeness astounds me daily.  Matt and I boogied for quite a while to all the super cool hip hop music (think Lil Wayne, Usher, Akon, etc), but eventually they started playing strictly '70s tunes, and that's not how we roll, so we left.  I was pretty amazed to see just how deserted Baroda gets after midnight.  We got back to the hotel at 2am, and there was literally no one around.  We stood in the middle of the street marveling at our isolation.  I swear, this place is worse than Yellville (Arkansas).  The only people we saw were the ones sleeping outside by the road.  There were a lot of them.  Talk about depressing.  One day I will take my camera out and photograph them, so then you'll all really know what poverty looks like.  It is unbelievable.

Anyway, on a brighter note, we watched a pirated copy of 127 Hours last night.  That's the one where James Franco gets his arm stuck under a boulder for 127 hours before he cuts his arm off.  It is a metaphor for our lives in India.  I guess that wasn't such a bright note after all.