Rainy Day

7/20/10 - 5pm

I got lucky today with the monsoons. When I woke up at 5:45 this morning, it was raining a little… thank goodness the torrential downpour waited to pick up in earnest until I was safely inside the school building! It absolutely poured for most of the morning but it slowed down around noon, so when I left school around 1pm I barely needed my umbrella. And by 3pm the sun was back out, just in time for me to meander around Khan Market for a while, with the added bonus of the heat and humidity being bearable. A good deal altogether.

I went to Khan Market on a mission to find a tailor who will make Jason a custom suit. There are two tailors inside the hotel (for some reason) and I found their estimates to be a little high, perhaps, so I thought I'd walk around to find something. Well, I didn't find any men's tailors, but I did find a shop where I could get a custom made Salwar Kameez (what Indian ladies here call "suits") and I'm gonna pick it up in a few days! Normally, I would not get anything custom made- but the fabric plus the labor only cost about $35- how can I pass that up? I can't wait to rock my custom suit- here in India and also when I get back home!

On the walk back from the market I spotted a dog literally sleeping in the middle of the road. There are stray dogs all over the place here. I've only seen one or two stray cats, and from what I have gleaned from my students people don't keep dogs as pets here… so I have no idea where these dogs came from or what their deal is. Some of them are extremely cute and appear to be well-fed but there is no way I would go near one- who knows what kind of bugs they are carrying.

School was very nice today. I am lucky to have such a wonderful cooperating teacher, Mrs. Wilma Kumar (aka Wilma Mam), to take me around the school and introduce me to all the people, to guide me through Indian school etiquette kindly and patiently, to rescue me from a lost taxi driver, to then draw a map so it didn't happen again, to translate the Hindi conversations in the ladies' staff room into English for me, to offer to bring me a tiffin for lunch each day, and on the whole, to make my experience so wonderful. At one of our many trainings before we left for India, it was said that the Indian people, as a matter of course, offer acts of kindness to others that cannot be repaid. Well, the kindness Wilma has shown to me, just in the past few days... there is no way I could ever pay it back or pay it forward.

The thing that Indian kids seem to enjoy (other than saying "good morning mam" whenever they see me) is getting my autograph. One kid in a class asks for an autograph and then the other 46 want one and they want it NOW. So the class rushes me and keeps shoving notebooks in my face. It is really cute, yet at the same time kind of odd. But I think they think I'm famous- one kid asked me today if I knew Miley Cyrus.

So, it's almost dinner time and I am going to try to get some Chinese food tonight, considering I haven't had a proper dinner for 2 days due to not feeling well. The usual evening agenda has lately involved reading, watching TV, and writing with an early bedtime, and that suits me just fine. The big excitement is that the manager of our hotel invited our group to cocktails tomorrow at the hotel's bar- I'm looking forward to more of that good Indian hospitality!