OPEN WINDOWS: You four girls. We four boys. We party.

In Goa I discovered that I was a girl, and that, collectively, I am girls. Walking through the vacation beach town where the Europeans flock, the taxi drivers and shop keepers would call out “Hey girls!” to us as we walked from Hotel Seagull to Calangute Beach. Every time we were addressed it was: “Hey! Girls!...Taxi? Scarf? Taxi?”

The first morning I didn’t feel very much like a girl. I didn’t feel very much like a human. My friends from the program and I hopped onto a sleeper bus the night before and woke up to our stop in Goa. We were looking pretty rough. I’m not sure that “hopped” is an accurate description of what we did, either. To catch our 7:45 pm bus my roommate Alyssa and I took a rickshaw to the Swargate Bus stop. Somehow, in the flurry of street dogs and buses Lindsey managed to call my name above the Marathi flowing from the loudspeakers. With two boxes of pizza and about six girls in tow, we used the Indian GPS (asking every other person/rickshaw driver we met) to find the business/ally way/ family home with the banner reading RAINBOW TRAVELS. Well, we made it! Except not quite. Twenty minutes later we were shuffled into three rickshaws and taken down four streets to the real bus stop/middle of the road/store front.

The sleeper bus was something straight out of Harry Potter. Two levels of beds, both double and single, flanked the sides of the bus. A little bit of Bollywood music leaked meekly out of the left hand speaker as I tried to spy on the bus driver and his assistant from my upper left-hand side bed. As I was trying to count how many stripes were on the left arm of his button-up, I got caught and he switched the cabin light off. Even so, I think that I can safely say that there were more than twelve stacked horizontal lines. The bus ride itself was great fun, and surprisingly comfortable. I promised myself that I would write my public health paper on the trip to Goa; nine hours after laying my head down for a small rest, I was at the beach. Promises don’t exist in the dream world.

The beach was a small walk leftwards from our hotel, about ten minutes and/or ten “Hey girls!” from the room. The beach chairs available were associated with the small cabana restaurants on the beach and included delivery of cold drinks and food. Vendors approached us about every three to seven-and-a-half minutes with everything from homemade dvds to massages to these strange colored balls that inflated when placed in water. I bought about six ice-cream cones throughout the weekend that were sold by men carrying coolers on the beach. My staple food item in the Indian heat.

About three ice-cream cones into the first day, a small girl followed behind her family with a few pots. On the sand near to where my friends and I were lounging, they began to set up a trapeze-esque contraption made of wooden poles and bits of string. Placing the pots on top of her head, the girl began to balance herself on top the string and walk back and forth in front of the gathering crowd. Her performance was graceful and entertaining.

Soon after, a group of military men were walking past our beach chairs. Elections were going on in Goa at the time and they were patrolling in case of disturbances. Alyssa and I gave each other the “how inappropriate would it be to take a picture right now?” look. Until they started taking pictures of us. And then they asked to take pictures with us. I just love India so much.

For dinner that night we went out to a nice little restaurant down the road. I had my first American meal since arriving in India; only then had I discovered the real meaning of comfort food. Before dining, a group of harmless boys by the beach politely stated “You four girls.We four boys. We party!”

After burdening our taxi driver Ryan with my Hindi, we arrived at Tito’s, which is situated in a lively nighttime market. I have no American equivalent for what this little music room was like. It was mostly men who were either reinventing or borrowing moves from Richard Simmons to the beat of Spanish, Hindi, and English music. If there’s one thing I’m bringing back to the States from India, it’s those dance moves.