Back in the Guest House

It makes me so incredibly happy to be back in the guest house!  It is a bright, happy room, with the nice cold marble floors that make your feet feel so good when the air is warm.  PLUS I no longer have to make toast by balancing a slice of bread on a  knife and roasting it over an open flame....  not to mention the much better television...  and no band waking us up at the crack of dawn...and, of course, I have even heard that the best ice cream shop in town is right next door... I'll have to check that out this evening!

The guest house has another couple staying at it, too.  They have an adorable little boy who's greatest fascination in life is staring at the pigeons, so that is pretty cute to watch.  I personally loved to watch the pigeons in Chicago, so I'm not too surprised by his obsession.  My all-time favorite pigeon was the one that stubbornly stayed right in the middle of Randolph/Michigan Ave intersection to snack on what must have been a delightful little pile of vomit.  There were cars flying all around it, but it was completely oblivious to them.

Today, rather than observing, I am going to teach in my classroom.  I hope the students understand my accent okay.  We are going to learn how to make predictions and take averages.  I predict it will go quite splendidly.  I will start full time in February (when we move into our permanent apartment, which is much closer to the school) and they are going to become pen pals with my mom's students!  So that will be fun.

I went to my husband's office today.  They had very graciously loaned me a computer with (the Indian equivalent of) a sprint card, so I could use the Internet.  But we are now in the guest house, which has an ethernet cord, so I was returning the computer. And asking for help mailing Carrie's b-day card.   I met my husbands's executive assistant, who seemed quite nice.  And the office has a party once a month or so, where it sounds like we play games or do other fun things, so that will be fun to go to (I've been trying to stop ending sentences in prepositions, as I am teaching English, but it is difficult).  The office smelled like paint today, though.  I don't quite understand why the odor changes constantly, but I guess I could make it a game to see what the flavor of the day is next time I am there. 

Random, Unimportant, and Disjointed Thoughts

I bought my sister a birthday card.  I was hoping for something very Indian, maybe with elephants and sparkles and dangly tassels.  The only cards I could find at the big department store (which has great reviews online) were cards that looked like rejects from America.  And based on the quality of greeting cards in America, it must take a lot to be rejected as a  card.  Anyhow, I decided to pick an appropriately gaudy card, and found one that, among other things, tells my sister she is evergreen.  I'm not quite sure what it means, as a human, at least, to be evergreen, but I figured I could look it up in the urban dictionary when I got home.  Apparently, evergreen means marijuana.  And thus, a person who is an evergreen has ' A condition stemming from profuse marijuana use'.  The card also tells her that she is a magician who's wand makes worries vanish.  So maybe that is code for describing the hallucinations.  Oddly enough, the pictures on the birthday card are a lot of very dressed up porcelain dolls hugging teddy bears, and they do have very odd expressions.  Perhaps they are suffering from evergreen.

The employees at Baskin-Robbins are very nice.  They are trying to teach me Hindi, although I have already forgotten what they taught me.  But they do know (and tease me) about my order each time- that bucket of mint chip.  Today, they ran out of mint chip before it reached the required 530 grams (it is something close to that, they measure it out on a scale).  I told them to fill the rest with whatever they wanted, and they put 'milk chocolate chip' aka vanilla chocolate chip.   It is amazing how boring that flavor tastes after the mint... I wonder who would voluntarily get it...

I also bought a loaf of bread, and some really yummy looking pieces of chocolate flake cake.  I found a bakery, so I didn't have to buy it in the disgusting store.  And it all added up to less than $2.  CAKE and bread.  Only $2...amazing.

It is our 5 month anniversary today (which is, of course, the excuse for the chocolate flake cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream).  My husband is going to work in the office until at least 10 still.  But Rocky is on tv, and I've been working on my lesson plans, so I've been keeping busy.

The curriculum provided for this school is interesting (I will be teaching 5 days a week for 2.5 hours).  I mean, it all looks quite good, until you take a close look and then it is quite obvious that it was all written by a non-native speaker of English and it is full of grammatical errors.  Now, my blog is probably full of errors, too, but this isn't a teaching guide.  I think the worst error was the lesson on haiku poetry.  It states the 5-7-5 syllables rule in a haiku, and then promptly gives an example that is 5-8-5.  I don't want to start criticizing all the hard work that has been put into the text, because it is good.  I have also only been working for one day...and already had an argument over how to do long division... that have this dumb 'add a friend concept' rather than just saying 'add a decimal' so I don't want to be a trouble maker right off the bat.  But they now, thanks to me, have to add two friends- they were forgetting a zero in all the problems...

The accents here are very difficult to understand sometimes.  When driving to and from Bandra, there is a new bridge, called the Worli Sea Link (Worli is a neighborhood), and it costs Rs 50 to cross.  So each time I take a cab, they ask me 'sea link?' to make sure I will pay for it.  And I get so confused because it sounds, to me, like a Russian saying ceiling.  Sort of like 'ceilingk'. Every single time.  You'd think I'd be ready for it now.

It is a big no-no to have public displays of affection here.  My husband and I walked past a couple holding hands the other day, and the couple was stared at more than me.  And I am stared at constantly.  I noticed two nights ago, while on the way home from the volunteer work, that apparently the place to 'park' in Mumbai is right along the sea link!  There must have been 20 motorbikes parked, with very intimate couples on each bike.  I thought that was funny.

I tried to watch Glee on Fox.com.... But Fox  blocks all the good video for India :(  So you can't watch TV on the networks here.  Isn't that sad? I want to send them an e-mail telling  them I'm an American so they should give me a magic password so I can still watch... maybe Carrie's magic wand can do that....Seriously, though, I just wonder what else I am missing.  And now, all the darn computer keeps switching me to google India instead of just google.  So when I start to type words, all the search words that come up are Indian phrases instead of American.  Who knows what I am missing...I never had really thought about it before (with the whole google and China thing) but it is just so WEIRD that you can block this stuff that is out in public domain like that.   Well, block, not make it come up in a search, etc.  But it is all odd.

Military time.  It drives me nuts.  I know that it makes more sense, as you don't have to worry about whether or not your alarm has the am or pm selected, etc., etc.  But I'm American, and so I still uses feet and miles, so I'm just stubborn and sick of the military time on everything (well they call it 24 hour clock here, not military time).  I know it isn't even hard to convert between the two.  It is pretty much automatic.  Much fast and easier than Fahrenheit to Celsius, but still.  It drives me crazy for no reason, really.  Well, to be fair, it only drives me crazy for half the day. The first half of the day I am perfectly content.  That's all I have to say about that :) I am unreasonable.

The First Two Weeks- Entertaining Ourselves & Finding a Home

I'd say my main activity has been eating ice cream.  In in the last days 7 or 8 days, we have gone out for ice cream 3 times, and I have brought home two buckets of Baskin-Robbins mint chip.  Their chips are fabulous, by the way. Sometimes mint chip just doesn't have enough chips, or they are those skimpy little rectangular boxes of chocolate. But this is loaded with chips of chocolate.  All sizes and shapes.  I can just imagine someone shaving a large block of chocolate to put in that ice cream. Plus, those buckets are doubling as tupperware.  

Other non-healthy activities have included watching a lot of television.  Our current temporary apartment has only three english stations- the Indian version of the WB; a movie channel that is in an odd full screen mode that stretches everyone like Mike Tevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and a channel that basically plays the junk you didn't watch in the States anyway (it is always gossip news or Rachel Ray or David Letterman early in the morning).   But the WB plays Friends twice a day, so that has been nice.  We've seen The Matrix twice already...  Cats & Dogs wasn't too bad.... but thank goodness I brought the complete set of the X-files.  I've already watched eight episodes!

As a side note, I would like to point out that one of the Indian stations was playing 1960s Bollywood films.  It is amazing that you could just look at the cuts of their Indian attire and hair and STILL know it was a film from the 1960s.  I had no idea that trends were so global.  

Anyhow, slightly (if you don't count breathing the air-I learned today that the fire smell was burning garbage) healthier activities include walking around.  We've done that a lot, as the weather is beautiful right now.  Plus, you have to walk to get to those ice cream shops.  We've mainly been walking along Marine Drive, which borders the Arabian Sea. And I do have to say that the Mumbai skyline is the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen.  You can drive for miles looking at it.  And it all curves around the sea.   So that was quite nice to walk along.  Just don't look at the individual buildings too closely.  That spoils the picture.

Other activities of course include working (for my husband, at least), frustrations with trying to get a phone that actually works (neither of us have an Indian number STILL), apartment hunting (a universally painful subject), and job hunting for me.

Apartment hunting is done now, thank goodness.  It is very different from hunting in Chicago.  There we'd make our own schedule, with the appointments 30-60 minutes apart.  You show up, they talk a lot in their office, showing you the different floor plans and prices and floor levels.  Do you want a city view or lake view? they force candy and coffee on you. Then you go up and see the perfectly decorated and painted show rooms that no one has actually ever lived in (which inevitably already had the light on before you arrive, what a waste of electricity) before rounding it off with a tour of the amenities.   Here, you hop in a car, drive to a building, and wait for that particular apartment's cook/maid/driver to arrive with the key.  If you wait for more than a minute, you can be sure your broker is on the phone yelling at said cook/maid/driver to hurry up, even if they clearly said they wouldn't be there for another 10 minutes only 1 minute before. When they do arrive, you go up an elevator that still has the metal grill bars that you manually shut, wince at the terrible paint jobs in the hallway, take a look around the apartment (which may been completely nice & clean, or more likely, covered in dust and dirt and bugs crawling in the freezer when you open the door), and hop back in the car.  So you'd average one apartment every 15 or 20 minutes rather than every hour.   We looked at 37 apartments by my count.  In Chicago I think we looked at 7 or so before picking.   And Chicago is a heck of a lot cheaper.

We took apartment number 37.  It was apartment number 56 for last year's ambassadors (the people who, in 2010, have my husband's current 2011 job).   We had no desire to look at another 20 apartments to see if we could top their choice.  It is actually a great apartment, located in Bandra (ironically enough, not far from where that 1960s movie was probably filmed).  When we find our camera cord (MIA since the beginning of the trip), I will take pictures to post.  But until then, rest happy knowing we have a good place to live come Feb 1 (ish).  Especially good since it has that coveted washer and dryer!

Trying to Sleep

Is completely and utterly impossible.  There are just too many people.  I wake up everyday at 4:00 am, which is when the dogs (there are a gazillion stray dogs all over the city) start barking ferociously.  Then the car horns start around 4:30 am. Usually the dogs have stopped barking by that point. Yesterday it was all accompanied by the sound of someone getting sick. Over and over and over. It sounded as though it was in my room. Today it sounded like someone coughing up a lung.  The walls are quite thin.  At 6:00 am, the neighbors TV turns on- loud enough for you to actually hear what is being said.  This causes you to worry that the house is on fire- because the bedroom stinks of smoke.  After two days of feeling the walls for heat, I've finally figured out that this is just the lousy air quality of the city.  Promptly at 7:00 am (after struggling to sleep for the last 3 hours) a band starts playing.  With a LOT of drums. In our backyard (or whatever you call the cemented area separating our building from another). It is the drums that finally make me get out of the rock hard bed.  

Of course, those are just the sounds in the current, temporary apartment in Churchgate.   At the guest house in Chowpatty, the dogs and cars were louder (the dogs must love hanging out at that beach), but there was no band. I would still wake up at 4:00 am, though.   It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to sleep through all of the sounds.    Or to give up and sleep in the ear plugs...

The First Two Weeks- The Food

To recap: We have been moving about in temporary housing while we do our apartment search. We move to our new apartment around Feb.1.

The guesthouse (like a bed and breakfast in the US) in Chowpatty had a cook, so we had eggs and toast for breakfast, and various Indian foods (names currently  unknown) for lunch and dinner.  It was all amazing.   Not too spicy, and, hours later, your belly didn't protest, which, of course, we both appreciated.  We move back to the guesthouse this weekend, thank goodness, because for the last week and a half, we've been at the apartment in Churchgate.

The Churchgate apartment is simply an apartment, so we didn't bother to hire a cook yet.  Thus, we have been subjected to my attempts at Indian food.  My attempts at Indian food are hindered by a few things:  (1) I have no idea how to cook any Indian food.  (2) My cooking utensils are the absolute bare minimum.  (3) The grocery store where we buy food is utterly disgusting.

To expand (2), I would like to point out the items we have for my fabulous cooking:
* 2 cups (had been left here)
* 2 yellow Tupperware containers (had been left here, but were in a random drawer and not utilized until recently)
*1 plastic plate (had been left here)
* 1 Pyrex measuring cup (my husband teased me like crazy for bringing it, but it has clearly been THE most useful item that either one of us packed)
* 2 plastic bowls (thank goodness I packed bowls)
* 2 knives, 2 forks, 2 spoons (also packed by me)
* 1 flimsy cheap pot (purchased at the nearby 'department' store)
* 1 microwave (incredibly useful for that oatmeal we've had for every meal)
* 2 gas stove top burners

So our typical breakfast is me microwaving 1 cup (thank you again, Pyrex) of water and mixing it with instant oatmeal. Maple and Brown Sugar flavored, if you are interested.  Each packet has a fun 'fact' written on it for my amusement as the microwave does its job.  For example, did you know that the Skipper would call Gilligan 'Little Buddy'?  I do, it is on every other pack of oatmeal and we've gone through three boxes....

 Our typical dinner is me, with our one pot, first making rice or dosai (from a box, it is kind of like a pancake/crepe looking thing) then cleaning out the pot and using it to make a filling (from a box, of course, usually something with potatoes in it).  Then we top the meal off with a trip to another ice cream shop.  the ratio of ice cream to other shops is incredibly high here.  Maybe I'll do a study of it.

Or we just eat peanut butter and jelly.  I balance the bread on a knife and toast it over the open stove flame...  it usually burns. There doesn't seem to be a 'low' setting on the gas burners in this house.

Anyhow, the starting material for dinner isn't so great, either.  The grocery store where we buy our food is dirty, crawling with ants (and lizards, but those don't bug me as much), and three-quarters of everything inside of it is expired.   Plus, I get yelled at for doing something wrong each time I walk into the store, which doesn't make me particularly fond of it.   For example, apparently, though they don't give you bags for the groceries, and you bring your own, you can't put your groceries IN the bag until after you purchase them. So I was walking along, putting things in my big cloth grocery bag, and an employee came up to me, forced a basket into my hands, and made me put each item into the basket as he watched and admonished me in Hindi..  Isn't that strange? I don't know if he thought I was trying to steal the stuff, or if he thought I was too dumb to figure out the purpose of a basket.

But it is okay- only a couple more days and we are back at the guest house with real food!  And then into our real apartment, where we'll have a cook.

The First Two Weeks - The Flight & Housing

We landed in Bombay on 12/30/10 (although here in India I should more correctly say 30/12/10).   It has been a very quick two weeks.  My husband has already started his job, and I will start my volunteer work very soon.   Here are some quick details of the past two weeks:

The flight- I am just way too old and twitchy for such long flights.  Despite the great food and movies (okay, I watched Twilight, but still, it was fun), I was still that person standing in the aisle while everyone else was asleep. It is just too boring to sit for that long.

We had a layover in Dubai.  That airport is incredibly confusing.  It managed to have two flights to Mumbai, at the same time, same gate, same flight numbers.  Apparently, we went to the wrong terminal. So they were different flights...just in different terminals with everything else the same.  I still don't understand it.  So that was pleasantly annoying.  We ended up going through security four different times.  The airport also doesn't have a map on the wall to tell you where you are going.  So take that as a lesson, and actually listen to the captain when they tell you to check The American Way Sky Magazine to see your terminal (or Etihad Way Sky Magazine, or whatever their particular air magazine is called).

We arrived at the Mumbai airport around four in the morning.  Our bags, naturally, were the some of the last ones out of the shoot.  But by that time, the line through customs wasn't too bad.  A driver was waiting for us....he had no idea where to take us!  Isn't that hilarious?  Fortunately, a la the Indian way, I had written the address on a huge piece of paper and duct taped it to each of our suitcases.  So we found the guest house just fine.

The guest house is located in Chowpatty, one of the neighborhoods of Mumbai.  It is right on the biggest beach, and along Marine Drive, which is absolutely gorgeous.  Just miles and miles of of skyline and the Arabian Sea. Unfortunately, it is also coated in a thick layer of smog, which you notice instantly. So that was a bit of a downer.  Especially today (1/11/10) where the smog was so bad you couldn't SEE the buildings across the bay, and you thought your house was on fire from the terrible smell...but that is a digression...

Anyhow, the place in Chowpatty is great- beautiful marble floors in the guest room, and great cooks to make the food.  Plenty of ice cream shops nearby.  But we only stayed there for a few days, and are now (temporarily) in an apartment recently vacated by Sandeep's co-worker.

The new place is in Churchgate, again, another neighborhood of Mumbai.  It is just a mile or so down the road from the place in Chowpatty. It is big and spacious, but ugly as anything.  I'm quite glad to be leaving it this weekend! The walls are bubbling off in multiple places, the ceilings have mold, and your feet turn black from dirt faster than they do walking outside in the yard barefoot. I did, in the apartment, find a pair of new slippers, with the year 2000 emblazoned on them, so they have cut down a bit on the disgust.   But it does have a washer and dryer, so that is the extent of my complaining about the physical appearance of the apartment. Dryers are quite the luxury here.

Monsoon season

The thornless honeylocusts are nearly bare, but as darkness descends, the trees sparkle with tiny Christmas lights.  I love the fall in Chicago.  The warm rain is falling in sheets, and the clouds are flying past my window, blocking the Sears Tower.  I could watch the storms for hours. It is my idea of a perfect evening at home in Chicago.

Everyone asks what I'm most looking forward to in India.  It is probably naive, but I am incredibly excited for monsoon season.  Walking in warm rain is amazing.  I can't wait to experience some of the strongest rains in the world.
(I apparently wrote that on 11/4/2010 and never posted it....)