Winter!

It is December and winter has finally decided to join us here... by winter i mean it is in the high 70's during the day and the low 60's in the middle of the night... the locals here think that the weather is very very cold. they are just not used to any type of weather that doesn't bake your skin.
here is an example of reactions to winter:
the other evening i was visiting a friend and her husband, around 6pm as i was getting ready to leave her husband offered to give me a ride home on his motorcycle. since i'm lazy and cheap of course i said yes, so he went to put on a sweater for the drive... he comes out wearing a long sleeve button up shirt, with a fleece sweater over that and a beanie to wear under his full head helmet. mind you its probably in the low 70's at this point. then as we are saying our goodbyes i look over and he is putting a newspaper under the front of his sweater for insulation! i didn't know whether to laugh or pretend i was also cold... i was only wearing my short sleeve shirt with a cardigan over it. once we were on our way he looked back at me and was startled to see i wasn't covering my head with my scarf to shield from the cold! don't worry, my ears didn't fall off due to this under caution of mine.
I love these people.

hair

My hair is falling out. I have several theories about why this is happening.
1. its getting below 80 degree's F and i'm shedding/molting
2. I'm slightly stressed
3. I don't actually own a brush or comb so I'm not combing out all the dead/broken hair in a normal way.
4. I don't shower very often so I'm not ruffing up my hair much there either...

you know how loose hair will fall out in the shower, it is just a bit more extreme when I do take a shower because I haven't been keeping up with the maintenance... when I do wash my hair, my hands come away covered with hair... is that normal? I'm reminded of the movie "the Little Princess" where Sarah pretends to put a curse on the bully and tells her she shouldn't brush her hair so much... maybe someone put a curse on me and my hair.

November at a glance...

awesome ingenuity

Cafe Shillong

I want to sit under a tree and listen to his stories.

Water? Panne? Tikasay.

How to travel in style

At the beginning of the month I was able to accompany some friends up to a different district about 8 or so hours north of the city. It was so nice to get out of the city; yes the road was long and arduous, but at least we were in a car and not the bus. The lady, we’ll call her T, we were going with has her own car so we got to enjoy her son’s sometimes erratic driving and some awesome music for several hours arriving late at night to her late husband’s home village. We stayed for several days, visiting and watching soaps on TV, then prepared to travel back to the city…. Now for the good part. T’s son had been traveling throughout the districts while we stayed in the village the whole week and when he came back to pick us up, he brought a friend with him, so me and Jessica and T sat in the back while her son and friend sat up front, switching driving on the hard roads. The point of all this jabber is that while the trip should take about 8 hrs, it took us ALL day to get back… first we had to make a detour into a nearby national park to see the elephants and the famous one horned rhino… that took a while, then we had to stop for tea with some family on the way out of town, then we had to stop and buy some tea, then we stopped for a snack/light pre-lunch.  As I finally settled in to get what little sleep I could while being jerked around in the car we pulled into a nice resort along the highway. It turns out that the friend works for a big hospital in the city and that hospital was somehow connected to this nice resort in the middle of nowhere and he was treating us to lunch. We didn’t just go into the restaurant.. No that would be too fast and easy; no instead we got a room and hung out for about 2-3 hrs! We rested, watched Bride Wars on TV (in English!) then got served our nice lunch in our room. Did I mention that T’s son and friend were not in the room with us?! No it was just us ladies resting and hanging out for this whole time... then after we had been done a while we got a tour of the place while the two guys ate really fast in the room! it was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. I kept looking at Jessica and asking what is going on?! Are we staying here? Are we leaving soon? Why are we here and what are are we doing?! They all just acted like this was completely normal. I enjoyed it and I guess they were just trying to make the trip less strenuous but I just wanted to get home and take a nice hot shower.

Oh and also we had five live ducks in the trunk of the car the whole way back; I’m amazed the birds made it all the way back to the city.. they sat in the sun and heat of the trunk while we took our sweet time and then got thrashed around the trunk as we kept having to slam on our brakes avoiding the potholes and sudden pavement changes… T later said that the ducks were all very tasty!

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to travel more than 4 hours without stopping at a hotel to take a rest again…

Dinner for One?

Today I want to share with you what I eat, and how I make it and how, you too, can eat like me…

Maggie Madness:

Things needed- one packet Maggie noodles (I usually get the flavor “Spicy and Tasty” or “Curry”), one cup of water, a working stove or fire, a pot, possibly a pair of scissors.

Directions-

• Boil aprox. One cup of water on the stove (I am currently using a propane stove, I like it)
• Once water is boiling, open one bag of Maggie noodles and place carefully into boiling water
• Stir slowly and make sure all noodles have been submerged, leave the temp on high

Sometimes I put a lid on the pan and turn down the flame a little but it’s not necessary

• After the first time the water is about to boil over, add half the seasoning pack to the water (this is where I sometimes have to use the scissors) and turn the water down to about medium… since I’m using a flame, I just make the flame a little smaller…
• After the noodles have darkened slightly and are not crunchy, drain water and add the rest of the seasoning packet.
• Stir well and enjoy, (if I am alone or making just enough for myself, I’ll eat it out of the pan, otherwise I use a bowl)

(if you would like some variety, you can change it up by changing how much water you drain, Ginny likes it best with the water completely drained out but I usually like it best with a little water left to keep it from getting too sticky, feel free to be adventurous and switch it upJ)

I usually eat Maggie noodles (basically the same thing as Ramen noodles) at least once a day, if not twice. I eat Maggie’s the way that Indian’s eat rice. Sometimes I will have a tomato with my noodles but not often.  The nationals that learn what I’m eating always laugh, much like Americans did when I said I ate Rice-a-Roni every day. One of our partners felt so bad for me when he found out that I didn’t cook and was surviving on Maggie Noodles, he told me to come over for food anytime I was hungry and he would cook for me… I think he was really worried about me starving…

update...

our water is working again! but now i am paranoid that it will randomly turn off again, they will not catch me unawares again. they don't know who they are dealing with.
here's some photos for you to enjoy:

A gift from some friends...

our very own KFC- opening night

all in a day's work.

Water Project

the water is currently not on in our building; don't be alarmed, its on purpose per the management. they have started rationing our water supply in preparation for the dry months ahead. we now have running water at 6am, 12:30pm, and 8pm. the water will come on for about 30-40 min, if we're lucky. when the water comes on, we jump up from whatever we are doing and do the dishes or take a hot shower or try and do some laundry. the water does not always last the length of the 40 min wash cycle so when that happens i usually have to manually fill the washing machine and change the settings so it will at least spin the clothes the rest of the cycle. we have buckets of water lying around the house for use when the water is not running. and if we happen to be out of the house that day we just have to hope the buckets we have will last us another day. its not too bad now that we have formed a somewhat of a schedule. it's weird to have a schedule based around the water supply. last night we went out for dinner and i thought before we left, "dang it, we wont be home when the water's on- we'll miss it again today... maybe we shouldn't go out..." i don't know if my priorities are messed up for wanting to stay home for water or not staying home for the water.... its not a dire need, we have buckets to store it in... its just inconvenient. i woke up this morning at 6 so i could wash our dishes, fill up the buckets of water that were all running low and fill our drinking containers... only water would make me wake up that early.
it got me thinking about water here. during the rainy season; water is in abundance but its not sanitary to drink; which is why we have clean water projects to bring people clean water and inform them they are getting sick so much because they are using dirty water. but in the dry months, especially towards the end of those dry months, people literally have to deal with not having water available. period. they use water for everything here, from cooking rice to drinking tea to washing clothes. how do they cope with that? i get annoyed with having to wake up at 6 to fill the washing machine with water but they cant even drink water. how can we help them in that? build better systems to conserve and save water during the rainy season so it doesn't dry up during the drought that comes every year.