Spot Remover

My "spot situation" has improved markedly, thanks for asking. I went and visited a local medical clinic yesterday where the doctor seemed convinced that I had been bitten by either bed bugs or fleas. Prednisone and calamine lotion in hand (and one other drug I can't remember the name of... something starting with L), I returned to my room to wash all of my laundry and sheets in the hottest water I could get. This morning all of that, as well as my mattress, is out in the sun in an attempt to kill whatever may be lurking within.

More importantly, today is a very special day. If you haven't already, head on over here and wish my amazing mom a very happy birthday! No offense to any of you other moms, but she's pretty much the best there is. Happy birthday, Mom! <3

Manali, city of dance music!

Ah, it's nice to be someplace new. As much as I like McLeod Ganj in general, after spending two months there I was ready for a change. It's a nice little town but it's exactly that: a little town. I live in a little town in the US, I don't need to spend my entire time in India in a little town as well.

I know I've only been here a few hours, but my first impression of Manali is a positive one. We are staying in “Old Manali” because apparently it's nicer than “the rest of Manali.” We walk down the street and hear dance music playing in various clubs and cafes, there are all new items in the shops lining the roads, and the overall vibe is fresh and somewhat younger. McLeod Ganj has that sort of traditional Indo-Tibetan/dirty hippie vibe. It's not bad, but like I said... I was ready for a change. I danced my way through Old Manali this evening on our short little excursion and again as we came back from dinner. I made a couple of new friends already, too, so that's cool. I'd only been in town for about 3 hours and someone asked me out to lunch... all I have to say is lol. It's fun.

So anyway, the trip began this morning in Rewalsar, since that's where we wound up at the end of the first leg of the trip. We ate at one of the local cafes where I opted to drink my coffee sans sugar because it looked like this:

Oh look, a friend!

We trekked up to the temple (sort of... we drove most of the way and hiked the last couple of kilometers).

My snow lion impression.

There's a footprint that was supposedly left by Pema-whats-his-name himself. We had to do a bit of hiking to get there. You can always tell when you enter a Tibetan area by the sudden profusion of prayer flags.

This old Tibetan monk was asking for donations to offset his medical costs, because he has diabetes. I gave him a few rupees.

In return he gave me this bracelet and a hearty thank you.

Now THAT's a cave. I did not go in.

Nom nom nom...

There are so many red dahlias here... <3

Yup, I guess the foot print's that way.

Oh, there it is. On the wall.

We checked out the cave he did some meditating in, which now contains a number of statues and altars. It was cool without being too claustrophobic.

Gill trying to decipher the Tibetan sign.

Just for reference, that photo of HH is an 8x10.

Then it was back into the taxi for a few more hours. We stopped at a shawl emporium in Kullu (there are signs for shawl places every fifteen feet for miles on either side of the town... I would have taken more photos but we were moving too fast) where we could watch the weavers work. Obviously I had a good time there.

And then, at last... Manali!

The hotel we decided to stay in reminds me of the Timber Wolf Inn where I once stayed in Wisconsin Dells, which is a fond memory so the association is not unwelcome. The scenery's a little different, though...

No mountains like this in Wisconsin that I'm aware of!

It's colder here. You can tell by the way the doggles are snuggled up.

Oh yeah. We saw a yak.

Rooftop Yoga

Sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night it takes me a minute to remember where I am. A faint illumination filters in through the window above the balcony door and reflects gently off some of the more prominent features in the room. This morning I woke to just such a scene. I lay there contemplating, trying to mentally crawl out of whatever dream land I'd just been in, for a minute before I remembered: oh yeah, India.

My own place... in India.

I decided that I really do like my room. It lacks some of the comforts of home, but for now, at least, it's ideal. (Close to ideal... I wouldn't mind if it got a little more sunlight.)

This made me happy. I checked my phone and, after finding that it wasn't even 5am yet, rolled back over and promptly passed back out. A few hours later I woke to a considerably brighter room and decided it looked like a good day for yoga.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed my mat and my keys, and scampered up to the roof. I'd been wanting to do yoga on the roof here since I first looked at the place.

And so today I did yoga, on the roof, in the Indian morning sunlight. It was every bit as glorious as it sounds.

Despite the fact that exercise invigorates you for the rest of the day, I've always had a tough time getting up early enough to work out before work or school. The fact that I don't have to teach until 11 is working wonders for my ability to finally make this happen. Add to that the fact that the weather was absolutely perfect – low 70s, just a bit breezy, and without a cloud in the sky – and I felt on top of the world.

The fact that I am literally on a mountain probably didn't hurt, either. You can see so far away from up here. It's amazing.

When I returned to my room I flipped on the water heater so I could get a decent shower and did some push ups; my legs get a constant workout whether I like it or not living here, so I figure it'd be in my interest to make sure my upper body gets some attention, too. Speaking of my upper body getting some attention, I had a couple of people ask me about my tattoo today. It was strange, because I often wear short sleeves and I know they've seen it before. Regardless, it led to some new conversation with my students who are always looking to learn about new topics. Yay body art!

I think I am going to acquire a nice set of maps so we can have visual aids for when we discuss the places of the world. They want to see photos from my home. I don't think most of them can comprehend the phrase “my home in the United States is very flat.” The mountains of Himachal are a far cry from the fields of Illinois, that's for sure. They also asked about deserts today, and which country is the biggest in the world, and what's the difference between Austria and Australia? See, I need some maps. The acquisition of such things is the homework I assigned myself for the evening.

Recently I find myself considering the differences between life in the suburban Midwest and life in northern India. I've begun to realize how little you really need in order to have a pretty decent life. In the US we are always so concerned about appearances and having everything be fresh and shiny and new; here, all but the most upscale of establishments have wiggly faucets, most people seem to wear the same four or so outfits again and again, and if something breaks you just patch it up the best you can and hope it lasts a while longer. The size of your personal bubble is much smaller here. You have to develop a tolerance for – or at least the ability to tune out – all the various sounds the human body is inclined to make, especially on a diet of rice and dal in a very dirty environment. (That godawful haucking noise, though... that is one thing I will not miss when I leave India. Ugh. Have a little tact, people.) There's no deodorant anywhere either, but I have a much easier time dealing with that; it's not that hot, so it's not a big deal. Constantly listening to every other person near you hack and cough and spit, on the other hand, gets really old, really fast.

You have to learn to tolerate being very close to all kinds of people. You learn to understand that you will be touched, you will be bumped into, you will probably be splashed by cars on the road because there are no sidewalks to speak of, and you will have to get used to the incessant honking of horns, and taxis, motorbikes, and autorickshaws passing within fractions of an inch of your person. That's just how it goes here. If you let it get to you, you are going to have a very unhappy stay.

I've decided to just roll with it as much as possible. I came in treating this whole experience as an adventure, and let me tell you, I think that has saved my sanity more than a few times. “It's India,” I remind myself. Whatever that means. It works, though. I remind myself that there are however many millions – over a billion, maybe? – people living here that do this every day, and it doesn't seem to faze most of them. It's just life. It's raw, dirty, un-sugar-coated, honest-to-goodness life, and as much as a pain in the ass it may be from time to time, as uncomfortable it can be, and as much as some days I really, really just want a hot tub or dry sheets or for god's sake a decent salad, I am thrilled to be a part of it.

You learn to delight in the small things, like this deliciously juicy kiwi.

It continues to interest and inspire me also that so many of these people seem happy. The Tibetans especially: despite decades of oppression and exile, through innumerable, ongoing human rights violations in their homeland, they are a surprisingly good-natured people. Many of them seem to be pacifists – all they want is peace so they can return to their homes. Many of my students in particular are very eager to learn as much as they can and to improve their English as much as possible. They recognize that English is the international language and that if they acquire a decent level of proficiency in it they will exponentially increase their options as far as career, education, and travel. Perhaps it's because they don't have much to begin with, and perhaps it's because many of them are monks and nuns, but they seem largely uninterested in material gain; they just want a decent education. It's so different from the mentality in the west, where we want an education, sure, but it's only so we can make a bunch of money and buy a big house and pay off all the loans we've no doubt taken out to acquire said education.

When I first graduated high school I felt I was pushed into going off to college. I was smart, went the reasoning, so naturally “real college” was my next step. I wasn't ready for it. I was miserable, and I moved home after one semester. I just needed time. Look at me now: my first time outside my home country and I picked India of all places! That's how I seem to do things, though – think about a situation until I can't take it any more and then do something drastic. I'm not sure that's a good trait, but there you have it. In this case, I think it's all working out just fine. There is so much more to the world than a cubicle and a mortgage, and I've only just started to explore it.

If you are into the cubicle-and-mortgage thing that's cool, it's just not for me. I much prefer the unconventional, even if it's not as cushy and comfortable all the time. What's that saying? Oh yeah: pain lets you know you're alive. I'm not saying I want "pain," per se, but experiencing a bit of hardship now and then helps keep the balance. We all love to be pampered, but without a little difficulty from time to time we get soft and depressed, and that's no fun for anyone. I've had almost 30 years of relative comfort; it's funny how too much of a good thing can be just as detrimental as not enough, isn't it? I knew I needed some perspective, so I got my proverbial ducks in a row and made it happen. Was I scared? Of course I was. But I wanted to be scared. I wanted that rush. I wanted to feel like anything could happen, good or bad. I knew that if I just stayed home and hung out in Chicagoland I'd always wish I'd taken a chance and gone somewhere new. 

I'll admit I'm just a little bit proud of myself for finally being decisive about something big.

Adventure, ho! (The dogs seem unimpressed.)

In which I eat real tandoori chicken

A trip to Lower Dharamsala was made today, and Brij took us to what he has proclaimed to be one of his very favorite restaurants in the area: a place tucked back behind the main road where he could eat every day and never get tired of it. I have no idea if the restaurant even has a name... I imagine it does, but that sort of thing doesn't seem to be so important around here.

Fresh meat market. Not my usual kind of place, but thankfully it wasn't exceedingly gruesome.

Real Indian tandoori chicken, naan, and fixin's.

We ordered tandoori chicken with naan and some rice, and as in most restaurants here, we got a plate of sliced red onions to go with the meal.

No, I do not eat much meat. I was feeling like I could use some protein, though, and I figured I'm in India – tandoori chicken is one of those things that just seems like part of the experience. Furthermore, as far as I can tell there are no such things as factory farms here, and none of the meat I've seen since I got to India has looked like it was on any kind of hormones.

Let me tell ya... it was pretty damn good. That poor little chicken, at least, did not die in vain. Its sacrifice was very much appreciated.

After lunch we moseyed through town and Marie and I stopped in practically every fabric store we saw – which was close to a dozen of them – because she wanted to have a salwar kameez (traditional Indian dress) made and I was looking for fabric for a chupa (traditional Tibetan dress). I think I found some that I really like. Since I'll be here a while yet I decided to sleep on it before I bought anything. I really wish we had fabric stores like these near home in the States. They're like candy stores for us textile-aphiles. Marie and I decided we'd go back down sometime, just the two of us, and take our sweet time perusing the fabrics when we didn't have other people to worry about boring.

Now THAT is what I call a selection of colors!

The pretties! Look at them!

On our way down to the bus/Jeep stop to head back to McLeod Ganj, we spotted this little gem. The photo op was too good to pass up.

Isn't this a nice pic, Brandi? It made me think of you. <3

In other news, my knee is nearly healed up, I decided to cover up some of the stubbornest dirt on my walls with what we'll call a mural, and Brij has given me two and a half more pages of Hindi vocab to study. There has also been talk of travel for the next few weekends, and hopefully it will involve dancing! Stay tuned for details.

New bukkits: living the high life in India

The other day my students took their Unit 2 test. It's always interesting to see how people score on exams; some of my best communicators in class don't do as well as I expect them to, and a few of the quietest, blend-in-to-the-crowd students do surprisingly well indeed. One thing I noticed was that even my strongest students had some trouble with the writing portion, in which they were asked to "write a short email to a new friend" and answer six simple questions, such as what is your name, how many siblings do you have, that sort of thing.

So I did what any concerned teacher would do and I devised an activity for them to practice their email-writing skills. I typed up an email from one fictitious person to another and filled it with punctuation and grammar errors. I tried to base it largely on the ones they've seen in class so as not to throw too much at them at once.

I have since been informed that I may have gone a little overboard. It's a tricky situation: they need to know how to do things like write emails (and sound intelligent), but their grasp of the English language is somewhat slippery, so I have to be careful not to do things like say "my town is called Springfield" and then tell them the whole thing should be in present simple tense, because a whole bunch of them got confused with "called" being a past tense form of a verb. Being a native speaker, I didn't even think of it at the time.

Oh, the surprises one gets when teaching!

It's not so bad, though. Today I had them compare notes, during which time I wrote the entire first paragraph on the board. Then I had them come up and one person correct each sentence, after which I asked the class if the corrections were, well, correct.

The best part, I think, was when a couple of them went back and forth reversing each other's corrections because there was some dispute over whether an apostrophe belonged in a particular word. One student went up and inserted the little flying comma, and another got right up and erased it, the entire class had a nice little giggle, and it was the perfect setup to discuss when we need to put apostrophes by the letter S.

I think I'm going to start doing something like that each class, and hopefully it'll get them used to sentence structure and everything. Does anyone from R-C remember "Daily Oral Language" from Mrs. McGann's class? Isn't that what it was called? I'm thinking I'll do that sort of thing and see how it goes. They seem to do well when they can check each other's work, but when it's up to each one of them individually they have some trouble. I really want to try to get them over that. The culture here is very community-oriented, and it comes out in the classroom. I dig that. It's a little tricky to get them not to help each other on tests, though.

In other news, I have a new trash can at my place!

A shiny new bukkit: I haz one!

I'll have to see if I can get them to do something about my electrics next...

Brij and I were a little excited about the new additions in our hallway this morning. We think it may have had something to do with our telling the guys who run the place that if they want westerners to stay there, as they claim they do, then they should make a little more effort to get the place up to something resembling a western standard of living. Seriously, guys. You could at least replace the shower head that's missing in the one room, and scrub the walls for god's sake. I had to do the walls thing on my own, and if you recall, I also went through a couple hours and half a (rather large) package of butt wipes to scrub down all the trim and the headboard. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but about a week before I moved in I asked them to make sure the room was cleaned before I got there. To be fair, the floor was all sparkly and still even a little wet. Really, though. You could make some effort to make the other surfaces presentable.

That said, I really do like my room. It's small but not too cramped; it's sufficiently "Indian" without being so ghetto I count the days until my flight home. In the immortal words of Goldilocks, it's juuuust right.

I am, however, a little concerned about the temperature situation. My room most definitely does not have heat, and the nights have been getting chilly already. I'm thinking I may have to stock up on blankets in the coming months.

-- For those of you who are curious, my typical morning goes something like this:
Awake to music from Suikoden for my alarm, around 7:30. Congratulate myself on having the foresight to download this ringtone before I left home.
Get up, put on flip flops. The floor is made of tile and is always, always cold. Go into the bathroom and turn on the water heater.
Fill up kettle, turn on. Make sure everything else in the room is switched off because otherwise the breaker trips.
If/when the breaker trips anyway, muscle open the door to the hallway (it sticks) and flip the switch. Repeat until it stays.
Once water in kettle is boiling, make oatmeal and stir in homemade peanut butter I bought from some Tibetans at the temple a few weeks ago. Add dried fruit and nuts or fresh bananas as available.
Eat breakfast, drink some boiled (clean) water, wash dishes in the bathroom sink.
Take a shower. Turn the water off often so as to conserve the precious hot variety; the tank is pretty small.
Flip off the water heater.
Get dressed, turn on wall outlet to charge my phone/laptop/Nook/whatever. Prioritize wisely, because there is only one outlet in the room.
Fill up large bucket in bathroom with water and some powdered laundry detergent. Put dirty clothes in to soak.
Lesson plan or read one of the handful of books I have going at any given time. (Currently working on: God Against the Gods, Koran Curious: A Guide for Infidels and Believers, and They Do It With Mirrors. I recently finished The Seven Daughters of Eve and one night I knocked out Metamorphosis. I recommend all of 'em. Lon, I think The Night Circus is going to be next on the list.)
Brush my teeth with purified water, then scrub the laundry that's been soaking. Dump the soapy water in the sink, refill the bucket with clear water, and rinse. Repeat as necessary. Wring everything out as much as possible and then hang it out on one of the clotheslines on the balcony or drape it over the side in the sun. Hope all my laundry doesn't fall on the filthy ground while I'm not looking.
Collect my stuff, triple check to make sure I have my keys, and head to class sometime between 10 and 10:30 if it's a weekday. Otherwise I keep my balcony door open so I can holler down to Marie and Gill to see if they want to go do anything in town together.

Today the after-school excitement was a street market down past the main square.

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of food.

They even had carnival rides. They were old, dirty, creepy carnival rides, but carnival rides all the same. I did not ride them.

On my way there I ran into a few of my students, all of whom cheerfully engaged me in conversation. I also stopped in to the post office to send off a small birthday package; thankfully the experience went much more smoothly than last time. I had to lick oldschool stamps. I can't remember the last time I even saw stamps that required licking.

For now, I'm going to go study my Hindi, so to quote the picture Casey so thoughtfully left on my FB page earlier today......

Namaste, bitches. ;)

Observations on India 2

• Yes, my knee is looking (and feeling) better. Thank you for your concern.
  
  
• You know that saying about “People often mistake kindness for flirtation because it's so rare these days”? There's truth in it. I may need to stop being so nice.

• Prices for goods (and services) easily reach into the multiple 100s in India; you will find yourself tempted to haggle the prices down. Keep in perspective just how much 100 rupees actually amounts to, though: about $1.65. If someone quotes you 600 rupees and your reaction is “My god, that's so expensive!” keep in mind that it's actually only about 10 bucks. If you manage to talk them down 50 rupees congratulations, you've saved almost a whole dollar. Sometimes it's less stressful for you (and better for the local economy) to just accept that the original price is still pretty damn low and cough it up.

• Restaurants advertise when they have ice cubes available, because this is a fairly rare commodity here.

• Restaurants also advertise when they take care to wash their veggies in something better than tap water (I believe most of them specify potassium permanganate.. I'm not a chemist, though, so I may have gotten that wrong) because

• You do not want to consume the water unless it's been boiled first, and for this reason

• “hot water” is the beverage you order here. It's the free, default beverage you get, like you can always get ice water in the States.

• Unless the restaurant you are ordering from has one of the above disclaimers, you probably do not want to order any sort of raw veggie. Sadly, this means salad is very hard to come by, and it's almost impossible to maintain a raw diet (if you're going for that sort of thing).

• Standards of cleanliness, professionalism, and time management are very different in India than they are in the US.

• If you do decide to scrub the walls in your new Indian place of residence, be forewarned that a fair amount of that dirt may be load bearing. Don't be surprised if you get just as much paint off the walls in the process... not that I know from experience or anything.

• Incense is your friend. So is hand sanitizer. This is coming from someone who uses neither at home in the US.
  
  

Glad I got that tetanus shot

People around town are getting excited for the end of the monsoon, and that includes me. This morning I decided to skip the teaching and instead take advantage of the bright, sunny balcony and do some laundry. Last night I actually made the executive decision to wash my pillows and their cases – after I saw how much dirt came out of them, there's no way I could have slept another night on those things. Damn. I'm hoping it's more due to the fact that everything in India is dirty and dusty, and less with the housekeeping of the staff at this establishment.

Regardless, it's my room for at least the next month, and that means ultimately it's up to me to keep it the way I want it. My spoiled American self is adjusting well, I think, to the fact that if I want something done I'd better be prepared to spend some time doing it myself. After I hung and laid out the rest of the laundry I decided to see just how much of the dirt on the window frame was permanent, and to my surprise and delight, the answer was “not much of it.” I had asked, with the help of my good friend and colleague Brij, for them to clean the room prior to my move in last weekend. When I arrived the floor was still a bit damp and so I figured they'd done all they could to ready the place. After I tried out the bed they even switched the mattresses for softer ones and gave me what appeared to be decently clean sheets.

After this morning, though, I realize that there is work to be done. Thank you so much for the new pillow Mom – it came just in time and it will be appreciated like no pillow has been appreciated before! Perhaps it's even my new best friend. I set out for Lower Dharamsala where things tend to cost less because a) I had to pick up a gift that I had made for one of you, and b) I wanted some cleaning supplies.

On the way, I slipped and sustained a bit worse than your average scraped knee.

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I can't say I was happy at the prospect of having an open wound, wandering around India past the cow turds in the street and the piles of garbage on the corners. It's swollen now, but I've got it cleaned and Neosporin-ed and bandaged up, so I think I should be ok. I don't really want to walk too far tonight though, which means if this is posted on what is Thursday morning for you at home, I have gotten creative with how I access the www. If not, I guess I haven't out-clevered the Indian internet yet. Give it time.

Ok, so the knee got banged up on the way to Lower Dharamsala, which means I sort of limped through town as I ran my errands. Luckily, I only had to stop at 3 places before I decided I'd found a large enough percentage of the things on my list that I could head back and not feel like I wussed out too badly. The sky was also growing progressively darker, and I've lived here long enough to estimate that I probably had an hour at best before it started raining. Did I mention I'd forgotten my umbrella at home?

I asked the tailor where I could pick up “the Jeep” that everyone keeps telling me goes between Lower Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj and costs 10 rupees as opposed to the taxi which will run you 40 (usually only if you at least look Indian and can speak enough Hindi to talk them down), if not more. Ok, it's true 40 rupees or even 100 is not that much money. I've been spending more than I anticipated, though, and so I'm trying to cut back. Besides, I had also heard the bus/Jeep takes a more scenic route and I was interested in that. Oh, and it's what the locals do, taking the bus/Jeep. I'm trying to fit in. All the cool kids are doing it, you know.

Anyway, as luck would have it the bus pulled up as I was just reaching the bus stop (which I don't think has a sign, it's just where everybody congregates and the bus obliges by pausing for a moment) and I hopped on. I was really glad, because by this time my knee was reminding me with every left step that I really shouldn't be putting my weight on it.

The bus trundled its way over the potholed road that wound up to McLeod Ganj through a military base that proudly displayed signs with Indian soldiers brandishing rifles and mustaches, and slogans like “May God have mercy on my enemies – because I won't!” Totally worth the 10 rupees.

Half an hour later the bus pulled in to the bus station in McLeod, which I had never been to. I wasn't even sure what part of the city I was in, to be honest. Of course, just as we got there the clouds decided they'd held in all that moisture plenty long enough, thank you very much, and the daily downpour commenced. “That's cool,” I said to myself. “I can hang here for a little while.” And so I did. I chilled there at that bus station for an hour before I finally got cold and tired of the gaggle of Indian women who had since disembarked their own bus and decided to literally surround the chair I had sat down in and pay absolutely no regard for where their purses and dupattas were swinging as they animatedly chatted with each other. (That's a fancy way of saying it was loud, a little smelly, and I got whacked in the head a couple of times.)

At that point I flagged down an autorickshaw that had pulled in and asked how much it would cost for a ride to the bottom of Temple Road. After a brief clarification on where that was, he told me 80 rupees. I had decided before I asked that I was willing to pay 100, and a tuk-tuk, as they are also called, would be cheaper than an actual taxi, so that's why I tried him first.

The astute among you may notice that I could have just taken a taxi from Lower Dharamsala straight to my place and paid 100 rupees or less for the 15-minute trip, and now instead I'd taken an hour and a half and spent about what I would have anyway, and was cold and a little bit damp on top of the knee injury I'd have had either way. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble if I hadn't been so stingy in the first place, eh? Maybe so, but I actually welcomed the chance to just sort of sit near the dhaba (Indian cafe) in the station and watch people, and contemplate my situation. It may not have been the most efficient route, but I think it was the right one for today.

I got up to my room where I carefully counted how many switches I flipped on at once and took a shower. Or at least I tried to. I had left the water heater on all night in hopes that I could be guaranteed a hot shower whenever I wanted it, but that seems to have backfired because the “hot” water was only a step above lukewarm. Whatever, I thought, I just need to clean this knee up. So I did that, put on dry clothes, and decided I'd take it easy by snacking on some dried pineapple and recounting my adventure to you, dear friends.

For all it lacks, it really is kind of nice here. Some days I think I might actually be able to live in India for more than a few months. Maybe a different part of India; I hear Punjab is really nice. I think I'll also check out Thailand. I've had a bunch of people tell me lately that Thailand is like India but cleaner. That sounds fun.

Don't worry, I'll be home in December. I can't make any guarantees how long I'll stick around, though. In a lot of ways India has what I've been saying I wanted: walkable cities, all privately-owned businesses, and people being more concerned with appreciating what they have rather than working to constantly make more money so they can buy things they don't need. I think I'll probably end up going for someplace in between as far as lifestyle. I don't know that I'm ready to permanently give up reliable electricity and hot water, or salad, or nice knitting needles.

Technical Difficulties

I've got a post all typed up for you about the adventure we had today, but sadly my phone's battery is low and it doesn't seem to want to upload the photos. The USB SD card reader I got hasn't been working lately either, so I need wifi in order to get the pretties off my phone and onto the laptop, and then on to the internets where you can marvel at them.

If anyone is planning on sending a package to me, please include either a couple of washcloths or one of those bath loofah things you can get for $1. I have yet to see either anywhere in Dharamsala, and I miss being able to scrub in the shower (and it's so dirty here it would be really nice to be able to get clean once in a while).

Observations on India 1

I present to you a random collection of some observations I've made while in India:

* Generally speaking, it smells a bit.

* The roads are wide enough for (usually) two cars and a pedestrian, but only barely, and if you're a little bit creative. Traffic passes much more closely than anywhere else I've ever been, but nobody seems to mind.

* You can drive the wrong way on the road as long as you stick to the outside and put your hazard lights on. Everybody does it; it's just how you get around here.

* There are an awful lot of animals in the roads, mostly dogs and cows. They seem to have an understanding with the drivers that they will move reasonably out of the way as long as the cars make an effort to go around them.

* There are cool birds here I've never seen before.

I'm not sure what these are, but there are a lot of them in New Delhi.

* In New Delhi the streets are filthy, but the subway is pristine.

* There are very few trash cans in public places. Most people throw their garbage on the ground. You can imagine how much I'm loving this.

* Almost all prices are negotiable.

* All the signs are in English but everyone seems to make up their own spellings.

* All the signs are in English, but most people speak Hindi unless you start speaking to them in English (or unless they are trying to get you, an obvious Westerner, to buy something).

* "Fog" is the default weather condition on the mountain in monsoon season. When it really rolls in, you can't see anything in the valley or more than a few dozen feet in front of you.

* Due to the fog, nothing ever really dries here. This means if you leave the windows open your blankets (and your clothing, and your towels...) will be damp.

* There's no air conditioning. Instead there are "coolers," fans with water dripping down. They actually work pretty well to cool the area, but not so much to take out the humidity.

* The menus include "buff," which at first I took to be a misspelling of "beef." You can't kill cows in India, though, and I was later informed that "buff" is in fact buffalo.

* Most menus don't have an explanation of what the items on them are, even when they have vague names like "special dumpling" or whatever #2 is on this one:

Is it made with real goblins?

* Coca-cola is huge in India.

* The vast majority of Indian women wear beautiful traditional clothing, even when doing hard labor like construction.

* Everybody wears flipflops, all the time.

* The power goes out at least once a day.

* Most bathrooms have a shower. It's one room, all tile, with a shower head, a sink, a toilet, a bucket, a squeegee, and a water heater with a switch. No shower curtain. You just take your shower and then squeegee the water on the floor into the drain when you're done.

* If you want toilet paper in a public bathroom, you better bring it yourself. If you want a seat, you might need to shop around.

A traditional/standard Indian toilet.

 
* Many of the floors are made of marble, even in otherwise modest buildings.

We went to a restaurant last night where, in order to get to the bathroom, you had to go outside and walk through some hallways and down a few flights of beautiful marble steps. I seriously felt like I had entered some dungeon or temple in a video game. Obviously this was the highlight of the evening. :)

New Delhi Noob

So today was my first day actually "in" New Delhi. I'm going to apologize for the lack of photos first, because the internet here is super spotty and it's taking me forever to upload from my phone to my computer. Hopefully that will change when I get to Dharamsala in a couple of days.

Today Kalden and his friend Palsang (a Tibetan monk) and I went to the Red Fort, which was (if I remember the story correctly) built by Emperor Shah Jahan (the same guy who built the Taj Mahal), and there was a big revolt against the British that happened there in the mid-1800s over the fact that some sort of "beef grease" was used in rifles at the time. Cows being sacred to Hindus, which most Indians happen to be, you can see why this would be a problem.

Oh, and yes, I have seen some cows lying in the street, just chilling. And pigs. And one cat. And lots and lots of dogs.

We got some cool photos of the architecture at the Red Fort (which I will upload at some point, I promise). As we walked through and he explained the history of the place, an Indian man who apparently worked there as a guide began chastising him in Hindi, which Kalden later translated to me that he had been angry that Kalden was explaining things instead of hiring a guide. He wanted us to pay him a bribe; Kalden refused, of course, and the guy tore up our tickets. We walked off (well, I just followed because frankly, I had no idea what was going on) and saw the rest of the fort in peace. Afterward, Palsang had  to go to the Chinese Embassy to take care of some paperwork, so Kalden and I headed over to the biggest mosque in Delhi, where they made me take off my shoes and cover up my bare shoulders, and wouldn't let Kalden in since they saw he had a camera. I went in to check it out and wouldn't you know, every third person had a camera. I'm sensing a bit of a double standard around here.

I am kind of digging the whole rickshaw thing. We have been taking pedal rickshaws and autorickshaws around the city, which seem to be able to be hired for about 20 rupees. The subway system here is also really nice. According to Kalden, it's new. It shows. The trains are sleek and quiet, and the subway stations are all sparkly clean. Unfortunately, this stands in a fairly stark contrast to much of the New Delhi "overworld:" there are nice areas but we've also gone through plenty where trash, well, litters the ground, and I've even seen piles of garbage and mounds of actual feces. The toilets are also weird (just a hole and a bucket of water, sometimes a little spray hose, almost never any paper). Plus you have to pay to use the public restrooms. Needless to say, it's an exotic place and that's cool and all, but I can see how I'll miss some of the comforts of home. Like sanitation. I'm keeping in mind, though, that billions of people live like this every day, so there's no good reason I can't manage for a few months. It'll be good for me, right?

I also got to see one of New Delhi's malls, which is strikingly western. So western, in fact, that I had trouble tracking down some "real" Indian clothing; everywhere we turned it was Starbucks, Tommy Hilfiger, McDonald's, even a Haagen-Dazs store. We also visited the Indian National Museum which was full of very cool sculptures of Hindu gods and Buddha, paintings involving an awful lot of cows, and even a human skeleton preserved from some hundreds of years ago.

Almost all of the public places we've gone so far have had security checkpoints in which "ladies" and "gents" form separate lines, put their bags on a conveyor belt into an xray machine, just like at the airport, and you walk through a metal detector and get a quick pat down by an official of your gender. So far I haven't had any problems, but it's a little weird. At least they're generally nicer than the TSA.

Tomorrow evening I board the "very nice Volvo" bus to Dharamsala. Palsang is also going, but on a different bus; a less nice one, perhaps not a Volvo. We should arrive around the same time, so he's going to accompany me to the Charity and make sure I get settled in. A few hours after that is the opening ceremony, and then I'm told I can sleep the rest of the day if I want. Depending on how jet lagged I am (so far, not very), I may, but I think it might be more likely that I check out the charity and try to make a couple new friends, and determine what essentials I might need to pick up from the store. The next day Kalden and Julie, another foreign teacher, will arrive, and he'll help me get settled into whatever room I'll rent for potentially the rest of my stay. I'm going to make "solid internet" a priority when choosing a place. If that's not plausible, I'm going to do my damnedest to find a place in town (Tibet Charity, maybe a library) that does have it so I can stay in touch with all of you. :)

EDIT: Updated to spell Palsang's name correctly. :)