India's Next Top Model

It has been a crazy week here in Coimbatore!

Last Thursday was Republic Day! Which is India’s Independence Day! I thought it was really cool how we were here in India on this day!

Google even dedicated their homepage to India on that day!

The college we attend (Bishop Appasamy College of Arts and Sceince) had a three-day festival from Thursday – Saturday as a celebration! It was called FACE (Festival of Arts and Culture Extravaganza) 2012. During the day all the different departments on campus had various programming, but each night was filled with student performances! Thursday and Friday night was singing and dancing performances. I’m pretty sure every Indian can both sing and dance extremely well!

Thursday night a couple students from our study abroad group learned some Indian dances to perform on stage while a couple of our very talented Indian friends sang!

Here is Kendra, Celiz, Jamie, and Becky dancing with Nilesh while Deepni and Fabian sing!

Friday night was mostly dance performances! Here is a picture of my peer mentor Shamini (far right) dancing with a few other girls! Shamini is becoming one of my best friends here and she is very talented at both dancing and singing! It was so fun to get to see her perform!

The main event was on Saturday night. Every year the Costume and Design Department puts on a fashion show to display the garments made by the students who are in their final year. Earlier in the week some of the students asked a few of us girls to be in the fashion show! We thought it sounded fun so we agreed to become Indian fashion models for a day! However, it was a much bigger deal than we thought! I’m talking 8 AM – 5 PM practices from Wednesday – Saturday! Us American students weren’t able to be at every practice due to classes and papers due during those times, but we definitely put in quite a few hours a practice over the week! They hired a professional runway choreographer to teach us all the different sets for the show! We definitely experienced a lot of "India Time" for the practices. For example one day we got their at 8 but practice didn't get started till 9! So the next day we thought we would show up at 9, but we completely missed the run through! Just some more Indian things we have to adapt to here!

Before we knew it, it was showtime! Hannah, Jessica, and I got ready, put on our dresses, and hit the stage!

All the models are so beautiful, and in the fancy dresses and outfits look even more beautiful! Us three American students enjoyed modeling these dresses, although I’m not sure if I would ever wear the dress outside a fashion show! I think the girls are so excited to make dresses, they want to put everything on one dress! Its incredible to think that girls my age are making these fancy dresses with all the intricate details and layers upon layers of fabric!

As time consuming and sometimes stressful as the fashion show was, I got to several nice girls through it!

Here are a few pictures of the fashion show!

And here is one of Me, Jessica, Shamini and Hannah! 

I haven’t received any contract offers from modeling agencies yet, but I’m still crossing my fingers ;)