Tuesday I had cause to celebrate.

Firstly (because it originally happened so long ago), it was my 28th birthday.

Secondly, we wrapped up shooting on our never-ending, but nonetheless fabulous, first project.

We shot our last interview in a hostel, home to 20 Indian girls who range in age from about 6 to 14.
They sang me happy birthday!

I’ll let my expression tell the story for me:

If for some reason the video doesn’t work, try following this link.

Tristan captured this on his 5d Mark II. We then compressed the hell out of it (read: ruined it) so the archaic Indian Internet could handle the upload.

While down in Dharamshala to finish filming, we bought more of the amazingly fantastic fireworks we purchased for the Fourth.

Here’s a picture our friend Eric from Seattle took of the explosive’s Independence Day iteration.

He has a blog. It chronicles his recent Tibetan adventures and continuing Indian saga. Check it out.

It’s hard to imagine a place further away from the land of root beer, apple pie and hot dogs, but Tristan and I were determined this fourth of July to celebrate in style.

This being said, we set out early on an odyssey to buy all things American, and some stuff to blow up.

On our way to Dharmshala we made a stop in McLeod for a soda and happened upon a true gem, an expired can of Budweiser. The red white and blue label called to us from the bottom of a cooler and heeding its siren’s call we shelled out the $3 US for one can.

The pictures alone may be worth the price. We tasted the sweet, skunky golden waters of St Louis, MO and savored every bit before offering the can up to the Indian countryside.

Verily, a taste of home.

Later, after an exhaustive search of the city we found what may be Dharamshala’s only cache of fireworks.

At our wits end, we asked the proprietor of the very last store we came to on the road back to McLeod if he knew where we could buy fireworks.

His reply was simply, “Yes, come in.”

Thinking he didn’t understand us, or may be joking, “No, fireworks, fire works, you have them?”

Indeed he did.

Handing over Rp.120 ($2.50ish) for each of six tubes of questionable explosive strength we headed out to find some kitsch.

I’m fairly confident we bought Dharamshala clean out of American flag bandanas.

They had fifty stars and we’ll ignore the number of stripes (25) but they nearly screamed our one-day nationalist fervor and they were ours.

Heading back we picked up a bottle of whiskey, had some apple pie with ice cream, couldn’t find any root beer and invited our new Israeli friends to an Independence Day party on the roof of our guest house.

As darkness fell our bottle of Pioneer whiskey became lighter and our excitement mounted. This was our first run-in with Indian fireworks, and quite a run-in it was.

Not sure whether to expect the shimmering disappointment of a fountain of sparks, or the exhilaration of some sort of pyrotechnic accident, we lit the first of the fireworks and it was glorious.

Shooting into the sky, tailed by a cascade of golden fire our rocket leapt from its cardboard home. Exploding with the dazzle and noise of a professional firework the blossom of light filling the sky left me speechless.

Well, nearly speechless, I was able to mumble a string of excited expletives in between chortles of amazed laughter.

As the last of our explosions faded from the sky our neighbor, Russel launched into a particularly rousing rendition of “God Bless America.”

Here’s a sample of his singing from one of the daily jams at our guest house:

Russel Jamming

Ultimately, we had a mixed bag of nationalities show up to  rather subdued, but fun party in honor of the birth of a country on the other side of the world.

Breaking free of the culture of perpetual jams, snacks and general laziness, Tristan and I began working in earnest Monday. We devoted an eye-taxing six hours in front of computers cutting up interviews and trying to overcome the notorious 5-D Mark II audio drift which has now become the bane of my existence.

Holed up in our guest house while the first day of monsoon struck Dharamkot outside, we learned a whole new vocabulary while trying to best technology’s shortcomings.

We synchronized audio at a subframe level,  streamclipped and learned all about keyframes. Meanwhile, just under our balcony our hebrew neighbors tried to lure us out to dance in the rain.

It was a tempting offer, but like the (insert manly diligent, probably military metaphor here) before us we strove toward our goal.

The fun stuff being mostly over, we’ve begun the first and most tedious parts of production.

While we toll away in dark rooms over brilliantly captured audio and video, the sounds of Hebrew folk music wafts in through our open windows.

You see, Dharamkot is little Israel here in Dharamshala. Most of our new-found friends are Israeli and I’ve learned far more Hebrew than Hindi.

Had someone told me a year ago I’d be hanging out in the Indian Himalayas with a bunch of Israelis, I would have been forced to question their sanity.

Life certainly is happily and wonderfuly bizarre.