Jai India!

It's midnight and the whole country is one big party. 

For the first time in 28 years India has won the cricket world cup! 

Today was the big day that India played Sri Lanka for the world cup. The toss deciding who bats and who fields first was at 2:30. I was invited to Ritu Grover's for the game so my sister dropped me off on the way to her own party. The exchange students had all bought India jerseys that we wore in honor of the game. To be honest I think that the beginning portion of a cricket game is pretty boring. The way a game works is that the team that wins the toss decides if they want to bat of field first. Then, unlike baseball which works in innings, the first teams bats all the way through and then the second team bats. Today Sri Lanka won the toss and opted to bat first by the end of their round they had scored 275 runs, which I guess is pretty high. I still don't know a lot about cricket but I understand the basics thanks to people's explanations. It was uncertain at the half which way the game would go but for the last 20 minutes of the game it was sure that India would win and even the last hour of so things were looking pretty good for us. In the late evening we left Ritu's and went with her to a hotel nearby where we all watched the game on a giant screen and ate catered dinner. Every time someone scored a significant amount of runs or made a nice hit people would jump up and start dancing, beating drums, and waving flags. The enthusiasm increased through out the night due to excitement but also due the increased amount of alcohol. In the last little bit of the game when it was really clear that India was going to win, in fact there was almost no way that India couldn't win people were non-stop dancing so much that in order to see the screen you had to stand up. Driving home too was quite and adventure. The main streets were filled with motorcycles and two-wheelers waving Indian flags and with people standing on the back shouting. There were cars with people hanging out the windows and in the streets in several spots people congregated to dance and shout. The longer these groups were there the bigger they got as people on their motorcycles stopped to join in. India is a very patriotic country and more importantly a cricket loving country so when the countries team wins the world cup people go crazy. Chants for the team and for India in general were everywhere. Oh, and don't forget the fireworks and crackers. I think that there as just as many as there were on Diwali, maybe even more...

It's really late here and I'm tired so I'm going to stop there and go to bed...