Blitzschlag

This past weekend was the annual Blitzschlag gathering for college students in Rajasthan. This is the 6th year that MNIT has held the festival and it's a blast. There was people from 20 different colleges here for the weekend. Friday night was the opening ceremony and there was a dance competition. Many teams were competing and it lasted a long time. It was interesting to see students dancing to hip hop and R&B, especially when they were songs we recognized (even better to hear the old school songs like Summer of '69) There was also the traditional dances and music being played. I'm not sure if I was more entertained by the music and the dancing, or by the reactions from the crowd. I noticed that what the men hooted and hollored about was not the same things that men hollor about in the States.

Saturday MTV was there for Pulsar and the Ghost Riders performed stunts on their motorcycles. It was pretty neat, it was hard to see though and for the first time I was glad that the boys and girls were segregated because there were far fewer girls there than boys and I could actually see SOME of the show rather than not at all.


Then in the evening there was a fashion show. That was an experience let me tell you. First of all, when we get to the lawn; the area is swarming with military and security guards; now I'm pretty sure most of them were not carrying guns; they had large sticks. So one can assume that they are there for crowd control and not for security reasons. Guys are behind our section and are separated from the girls and we get the VIP seats. (why, I don't quite know)

So the first group comes out and their theme is Valentine's and I just though "oh no!" They came out in really skimpy clothes (and I mean skimpy in the Indian sense not the American skimpy) So all the guys behind us start yelling and pushing on the railing because the guys in back couldn't see and were trying to get up front. Well they pushed so hard that the railing broke and nearly hit us all in the head. All I was thinking was if they fall, I am the cushion for ALL of them. Needless to say I was very tense the entire presentation and even the guards who were trying to control the crowd were having trouble.

The show was really good though and Brent (another NDSU student) was in one of the fashion shows. Their group got third place! I was very entertained the entire evening by both the show and the crowd.