Gori Girl

Gori Girl Meetup: NYC on July 10th

If you haven’t been to the forums lately, Pale Desi & others in the NYC area have been organizing a summer meetup! Here are the details (all credit goes to them, not me): NYC Gori Girl Meet-up Coffee and Yummy Indian Chinese food! I tried to make it an earlier dinner because it seems like [...]

Spring Gori Girl Meetup is On!

For anyone interested in joining the Spring Gori Girl Meetup in DC (we’re doing this quarterly now), the details are below. All are welcome, and feel free to bring friends if you like.

Who: Anyone who’s interested in coming.

What: A chance to chat in person and get some good food & drinks.

Where: Northside Social Coffee & Wine, 3211 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA (Orange line, Clarendon stop)

When: I’ll be there at 6:30 pm, at the latest, as will Aditya, and we’ll stay there until at least 7:30 pm. Then, depending on the interest of the group, we will either continue to stay there for dinner (Northside has a small menu) or will go to one of the local restaurants to eat. If you want to come, but are unsure whether you’ll be able to arrive by 7:30, please send me an email at gorigirl.admin@gmail.com, and we’ll figure out something.

Why: Dude. ‘Cause.

Anyone Interested in a Spring Meetup April 16th?

Well, we’re back from India! And had the fun of coming back to find the blog hacked and needing a big clean-up. But that’s more or less over (forums will be up this weekend or earlier, with no data lost) – so let’s move on to nicer thoughts… like a spring meetup here in Washington DC!

Americanepali and Andrea have already indicated that they’ll both be available to meet on April 16th, so I’m going to tentatively schedule the meetup for that evening. Anyone else interested in joining in?

Winter Meetup ’09 Details

The meetup for next weekend – discussed in this earlier post – is on! Here are the details:

• Place: Café Assorti at 1800 Wilson Blvd. Arlington VA
  • Located between the Rosslyn and Courthouse metro stops in Northern Virginia, this cafe features Kazakh dishes and pastries (think Turkish meets Russian meets delicious). Parking shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you’re driving in – just look a street or two over off of Wilson. It should be a nice place to sit and chat.

• Time & Date: 2 pm ish, Sunday December 6th
  • Aditya and I thought that, given that people are coming from different areas, it’d be best if we don’t do a meal at restaurant at a specific time. This way if you run into traffic (oh, DC traffic), it’s not that big of a deal – just come in when you can, order up a pastry and coffee, and join in the conversation. We’ll be there from 2pm from whenever things run down. If it keeps going for awhile, well, Ray’s Hell-Burger is just across the street for an early dinner. Warning: breakfast (which features strawberry and cream crepes!) is only served ’til 3 pm at Cafe Assorti, so don’t arrive too late.

• Who: Anyone!
  • Anyone is welcome to come, whether you’re new to this blog or not, in an intercultural relationship or not, or whatever. Feel free to bring friends if they’d like to sample Kazakh food.

If you’ve got any questions, let me know below!

Meeting Me and Aditya – You In?

Without doubt this blog has been far more successful than I ever imagined it could be when I started it. Today, just a little over 18 months since I started writing at Gori Girl, we passed the mark of over two thousand comments written here by individuals other than Aditya & I. Two thousand comments, most of which have been detailed, thoughtful contributions to the post I’ve written. I hope you guys understand how thankful I am for your participation here – the discussions and, yes, disagreements have contributed much to my thoughts on things intercultural and India.

Appropriately enough, a post by Normis in the forums yesterday reminded me that we never got around to holding a “Gori Girl” meet-up for everyone in the Mid-Atlantic region this past summer. (What can I say? Summer is always a busy time for us.) So – who’s interested in hanging out somewhere in the DC or NoVA region? I promise you can mock my Hindi pronunciation. More details below the fold.

Win of the Day

Me: “Isn’t today a holiday?”

Aditya: “Well, it’s a Sunday…”

Me: “No, it’s some Hindu holiday… Ganesh Chaturthi, I think?”

Aditya: “I have no idea.”

Maa: “Oh, maybe. I haven’t been keeping track of the dates. Hmm.”

Any Chicagoites Interested in Some Press?

I know we have some ladies (and perhaps gentlemen) here who call the Windy City home. Well, if any of you are interested, I’ve recently been contacted by a Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye reporter, Alexia, about an article she’s preparing to write on “meeting the parents.” Alexia would like to include an intercultural couple in the article, and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in being interviewed:

I’m a reporter with the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye newspaper, a daily aimed at readers in their 20s and 30s. I stumbled across your blog while doing research for a story I’m writing. I’m wondering if you might be able to help with the story, given your blog’s focus on intercultural relationship issues.

Not Dead – Just Busy!

I hate it when bloggers post a “Sorry For Not Posting” post, but it looks like I’m going to have to do it today. I’m very sorry that I haven’t been able to post anything lately, guys, but I’ve been pulling very long hours at work – yesterday was the shortest work day in the [...]

Comments Policy

We had a recent commenter here – Akshay/Amit – who receives the distinction of being the first person who’s been banned from the site (if you missed all the action, you can see all of the non-deleted fun here). He started out amusing – and was even making some points that were somewhat on topic, if not exactly rational – but quickly degenerated into straight-up insults (they weren’t even funny!). So he’s banned. Given that situation, I thought it was a good idea to lay out some clear ground rules on commenting here at Gorigirl.com. I don’t think it’s needed for the most part (you’ll are friendly!), but I’m just trying to cover my ass here.

Any Intercultural Couples Interested in Sharing their Wedding Adventures?

Hey guys – I recently came into contact with a woman in an intercultural relationship who became fed up with the lack of resources for intercultural couples trying to navigate thorny cross-cultural wedding issues. So she’s decided to fill the gap herself by writing a book on the subject (yay for initiative!). She’s looking to interview any sort of intercultural couple who are willing to share the story of their intercultural wedding, or are currently in the midst of planning such a wedding:

Change Happens: Updates From Our Cross-Cultural Household

Gori Girl (the blog) isn’t meant to be just a personal site – while I talk about my life and marriage a fair amount here, the point isn’t to just blab to the interweb about my life (not that I don’t enjoy blogs that do) , but instead to add something of value to yours. However, there’s been a few shakeups in Aditya’s and my lives recently – some of which has & will affect this blog – so I thought I’d just write a short update post, as well as write about a couple new features coming up in the sidebars. So consider this a metablog post, if you will.

Why the Gori of Gori Girl?

There’s been some talk in the comments about the word gori, which, given the blog name, is probably a term you’ll hear thrown around here from time to time. So I thought I’d explain what it means, some of the connotations it can carry, and why I chose it for the name of this blog – as well as my pen name.

What does gori mean?

The following was derived from Aditya’s lengthy comments on the etymology of the word gori – be thankful that I’m sparing you all of the tangential diatribes that developed during our conversation.

Gori is a Hindi adjective that literally means “fair” or “light-complexioned”. The i at the end of the word is a feminine conjugation, so gori is often used as a noun, with the subject being understood without explicit reference. In this slightly looser interpretation of the word, gori can mean “pale female”, “fair woman”, or even “white girl”. The masculine version of gori is gora, which can be translated as white man. Since I’m awfully pale-skinned, at least in the winter, gori can be rightly used as an adjective to describe me, or as a noun in reference me.

I’m Dreaming of FIOS Internet…

So, we still lack internet at the new place, which means the lovely post sitting in Word on my laptop won’t be available to you guys until I can get to campus tomorrow morning. You’d think I’d remember things like this *before* I left for home, but you’d be so wrong. I blame lingering moving amnesia. (This mini post is coming to you via Aditya’s iPhone.) In an attempt to ward off any wrath (or disappointment), I offer up the following two articles on intercultural marriages with Indian partners:

The United Colors of Desi: More and More South Asians Are Marrying Outside Their Race
An article profiling several white-Desi couples. Also includes some gorgeous pictures of happy couples.

Nothing can prepare you
An article written by a male Canadian about his relationship with an Indian woman.