Tuesday Market

Chai is called tea when it’s served cold. A couple of girls at school told me this the other day. Just from talking with them for about a half an hour, I sealed this bond with them I think. Every time I see one in particular, she puts her hand out for me to touch it and insists on holding and squeezing mine. Makes me smile every time. Both of the girls are Hindu and are in 5/6 grade. Students at school ask me if I know Hindi. I don’t, but I am tempted to sit in on a Hindi lesson in one of the younger grades though. It took some getting used to the fact that grading is called checking here and notebooks are called copies. Rohan has been exceptionally chipper during homework time. He has been singing and smiling and we have been getting a lot done! He was coloring something last night and singing and got so carried away he looked up to smile at me and just decided to mark my forehead with the crayon he was using. Silly boy.

Have any of you ladies had ‘threading’ done? It’s a method for shaping your eyebrows and I guess you can get it done in the states but I never heard of it until I came here. A person uses string to ‘pluck’ your eyebrow hairs really fast. I got it done (big whoopin 25cents). But I’m not going to lie… it hurt a little! I was grinding my teeth! The walk to Seleque takes about 45 minutes from Shishya. On Tuesdays there is a market with fresh fruit and spices as well as other food and random things.




So apparently on Wednesday night the chickens at the chicken farm near by were either having a dance party, or someone was holding a wedding there because music played until at least midnight. (The flies from the chicken farm are starting to drive me a little batty. Some days they just seem to be EVERYWHERE and on EVERYTHING). Also two monkeys ran through campus and on our roof that Sharon described as being comparable in size to a boy over at the home. You never know what you’ll get around here.

I haven’t registered with the Embassy yet and am planning on doing it before Liz and I leave for our two-week break and vacation. A couple of days ago there was a bomb that went off in Uttar Pradesh (which is a state that boarders ours to the southeast that the Taj Mahal is in) at a world famous Hindi temple in the southeast part of the state. You can read the BBC article here. (I had no plans to visit that area at all while I was here). I guess Goa, where we will be spending New Years, pools a lot of people together from all over the world and I guess it isn’t uncommon to have threats there too at New Years. Even though I seem to have a hint of worry, I know it shouldn’t prevent us from alternating our travel plans. It’s India. I knew these sorts of things happen here.

I would love to see the youth center that Ken is running in Dehra Dun. It sort of seems right up my alley but unfortunately foreign volunteers don't work there. Right now Ken is working on a sex education program and message around the high schools and colleges in the areas. I guess Liz heard him say that it’s normal for parents of a teenage pregnant daughter to encourage her to kill herself f she got pregnant out of wed lock (the woman who said this and believed this was right was a professor at a university.) Sex education seems so important and Ken is taking on a challenging task! I would love to get in on that education he is doing; and learning what his message is exactly. It sounds so incredible and so important! Hopefully I can at least make it into the youth center to check it out sometime.