Waiting

One thing that continues to impress me here is that I get pretty much anything and everything I ask for. To be fair, I don't ask for that much, and generally nothing extravagant, but still it's remarkable to me that there seems to never be anything too hard to get or to arrange.

When I first got here, I asked if someone could take me clothes shopping, if someone could take me on an outing somewhere, if I would get to go to the field, if someone would teach me to cook, etc. Within a week, I had taken a field visit, learned to roll purri, gone to a park, bought clothes in the market, and more. So on Monday, when I was getting really excited about Helen's arrival on Friday (today), I told Anand that I would really like to be able to greet her at the airport. He said he would arrange it, and here I am, in Ranchi, waiting until her flight is scheduled to get in at 2:45.

The title of this post is "Waiting," because that tends to come along with getting things I ask for. I usually don't have to wait too long, but I do have to mentally adjust to the fact that when I want something (or need something) here, I have to ask, and I have to wait. In the U.S., I avoid asking anyone for things if at all possible, knowing that I am putting them out if I ask, and it's faster if I do things myself anyways. While waiting here, I sometimes find myself thinking, "If they would just show me how to do it myself, it would be so much faster!" But in reality, it wouldn't be. I don't speak Hindi, I am white, and I don't know where to get things or how the bureaucracy works.

Satish told me that I could absolutely greet Helen at the airport, but the easiest way to make that happen would be for me to go to Ranchi with Rahul (who was flying to Kolkata) on Thursday afternoon. I got here around 6 in the evening yesterday, and I had all evening and now I have all morning to wait.

The great thing about this waiting period is that some interns from UNICEF just got here, and they've been lovely to hang out with. They're smart and friendly and three of them are Indian and speak Hindi and one of them is from the UK and can relate to differences from the US, etc.

Plus, the beds here have actual mattresses, rather than the homemade pads that mine have, and the mosquito nets stay tight and high over the beds, rather than drooping and making me claustrophobic, and the weather is cool and they gave us blankets to sleep under, and overall it has just been very comfortable to stay the night. I'm wondering whether we'll stop back here on the way to Hazaribag or whether we'll just go straight there after we pick Helen up.

The driver who brought me here and will bring Helen and me back is named Surtaj, and he is very friendly and speaks a little English. And he is willing to make the effort (sometimes a grand effort) for us to understand each other, which is nice. Maybe I'll work on studying some Hindi while I'm waiting today. 

3

Today marks 3 weeks since I left home. 3 out of 10. This Friday, Helen will arrive. She is (hopefully) bringing me my real laptop, so I can stop using this netbook and start doing some good work on the annual report for NBJK.

I just printed out and handed Satish everything I've done so far, which comes out to 9 single-spaced pages of project descriptions and 6 pages of a table of "Projects at a Glance." I also have a list of abbreviations and some case studies written up. Before I can start putting it together, though, I need to know what kind of design software my MacBook has and learn how to use it.

I'm excited to have a roommate and friend here (although I actually have friends here now, they're just newer friends), and I'm looking forward to having a more functional, less frustrating computer. I've been pretty seriously counting down to going home, though. I'm hoping that with Helen here and more work to do, I will be able to pass the time more quickly. Things are going well, but I miss my "real life."

I just read a NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/business/ammas-multifaceted-empire-built-on-hugs.html?pagewanted=1&src=recg) about a guru in southern India who has created a mini-utopia and who does great public works and who succeeds where government fails. I'm interested in visiting, even though it would be a long journey. I hope it works out.

In my 3 weeks, here are some of my accomplishments in no particular order:

• wrote 9 pages of project descriptions for the annual report
• visited Dumka
• visited Ranchi
• hiked to a waterfall
• went to a Save the Children report release
• saw an elephant
• vanquished a huge family of cockroaches from my refrigerator
• bought a cell phone and an internet dongle
• bought some Indian clothes
• bought curtains for my apartment
• made some friends
• visited a village in Hazaribag
• got about 20 mosquito bites

That's all that comes to mind right off the bat. Let me know if I've forgotten anything. :)

Now back to work.

Updates and Animals

Things are going well here, and not too much of note has happened. Today is Sunday, which means chores. I slept in (!!) because I was so comfortable in Shradha's room, then I had breakfast, chatted with Jeff, swept, did laundry, and showered. Shradha brought me my new curtains and showed me how to hang them up, so I did that, and then I decided to rearrange my room. I really like rearranging things (as many of you know), and with the way the room was set up, I had to sit on Helen's bed if I wanted access to the one outlet we have. I figured it would make sense to put the desk in front of the outlet, since that's a more neutral piece of furniture. I'll take pictures after my laundry has finished drying and is not hanging on my mosquito net.

Yesterday I had a migraine, so I stayed home from work. It was very hot, and I was in pain and sweaty and generally uncomfortable. I took out the eye mask and earplugs that I had from my trip over here, and I was able to get some really good naps despite the discomfort. At one point it sounded like someone somewhere got hurt--there was a little bang and then some screaming--but I figured that I was dreaming and I ignored it.

In the evening when I was feeling better, I went downstairs and Rita greeted me with an odd wrap on her head. I figured it was some cultural thing I didn't understand. But then she explained to me that she had been rushing around in the morning before family was supposed to show up for a visit, and she slipped on a step and bashed her head into the doorway to the house, and she had to go get stitches. She said that Shradha had fainted (but it sounds like she only *almost* fainted).  I felt so bad for her, but she was still in high spirits.

Now I'll go ahead and talk about one of the topics that I said I would write about later. First I'm going to talk about animals, since Lynn wanted to hear about them. Animals are everywhere here, and they cohabitate pretty well with people. My house has two pet dogs, one of which is a labrador named Nashu, and the other...I'm not sure. It has a curly tail and ears that stand up...maybe it's at least part German Shepard? Anyways, pets are not especially common, but stray dogs are everywhere.

The other day I was looking out my window at my neighbors' yard, and I saw two kittens. They were playing, trying to chase each other's tails and periodically stopping to pounce on each other. They were adorable. Similarly, there are lots of baby goats and lambs here, and they're always frolicking, climbing things, and trying to headbutt each other (and sometimes missing). On top of the cats, dogs, goats, and sheep, there are tons of chickens and tiny chicks. Then there are the cows and calves. And the pigs and piglets. And that one time, there was an elephant.

Whenever I'm feeling less enthusiastic about things, it definitely helps to have tons of animals to look at to cheer me up. On the downside, the roosters crowing in the mornings, and the goats crying, and so on, can get pretty annoying.

The cows tend to stay quiet, though. I don't think I've heard (or herd...hahaha) any moo-ing since I got here, which is odd to me. There was one day I ws in a car driving around a roundabout that had a statue with a wall around it in the middle, and there was a calf licking the wall. I was confused until I realized that it was licking posters on the wall in order to pull them off and eat them. Clever. And pretty cute. And a little gross.

Just like all the animals here.

Victories!

I swear, experience abroad has taught me nothing if not that it is a perfect setup for crazy mood swings. Yesterday was my low point so far, leaving me feeling physically and emotionally exhausted and more than a little depressed. So clearly, today had to be the opposite.

Today started off on a good note and just went up from there. I took Shradha up on her offer of staying with her last night, and it was definitely a smart decision. Her bed is king sized, so sleeping with a new person was not an issue at all. We could have stuck a third person between us and we still wouldn't have come close to touching anyone. Also, her room is air-conditioned. OH MAN is it easier to sleep when you're not lying in a pool of sweat.

So I started my day feeling more refreshed than I have in quite a while, possibly since I got here. Then I showered and got dressed, and then the tailor came to measure my windows and door to make curtains! Hopefully I'll get those either tonight or tomorrow. He also took my pretty fancy Indian dress to alter a little (now that I've already worn it to a wedding).

I got to talk to Jeff in a not-emo mood, and then I chatted with my parents. I had eggs for breakfast (Shradha had sent someone to get them for me on Wednesday when I came back to all my spoiled food) and then headed to work. I didn't have a lot to do at work, so I spent some time cleaning up my computer. I uninstalled some things that I'm pretty positive are useless and that were slowing down the computer.

Score so far: Good night's sleep, curtains, talking to loved ones, good breakfast, faster computer*.

Then I chatted with Vinay ji and I told him that Alok had said he would put credit on my cell phone, but it sill wasn't there. I gave him money and he said he'd take care of it.

I told Rahul that I needed to buy food, and he said he'd help me with that this evening.
I had told Anand that I was not sleeping well with the horribly uncomfortable mattress in my room, and he said he'd ask for two more (one for me, one for Helen).

When Rahul and I were out getting groceries (which sounds misleading in my head. "Getting groceries" sounds like "grocery shopping," which implies the presence of a grocery store. There is most definitely nothing that anyone from the U.S. would recognize as a grocery store here. But going food shopping is somewhat similar to going to a very dirty farmers market.), Rahul pointed and said, "Look! There's your elephant!" I had told him early on that I had never seen an elephant in real life, as far as I could remember. So there it was, this elephant on the side of the road, or as much "on the side" as an elephant can get. It was an elephant! They're big!

He assured me that there aren't usually elephants in Hazaribag, so this one was clearly there just for me to cross one more thing off my India to-do list.

Okay, so the score for today so far is: Good night's sleep, curtains, talking to loved ones, good breakfast, faster computer, credit for cell phone, groceries (for a grand total of $5 I got four kinds of cookies [don't make fun of me!], 1 kg of mangoes, a dozen bananas, 1 kg onions, 1 kg potatoes, 1 kg tomatoes, 1 head of cauliflower, 1 eggplant, 100 grams each ginger and garlic, and a dozen eggs. SCORE.), additional mattresses**, and an ELEPHANT! And there are still quite a few hours left in the day.

*my computer is still sinfully slow, but it's semi-functional now.
**when I tested my cot with two mattresses, my first thought was, "Well, it's still hard as a rock, but at least now it's more like pumice rather than granite!" 

Field Visit Photos

 Scenery

 More scenery

 More scenery

 A tree with large fruits (can you see them? They're camouflaged)

 Tree with large roots

 Villagers. Mentally handicapped boy on the right.

 Baby boars having dinner

 Villagers saying goodbye

 Forest

 Another village

 7-yr-old with cerebral palsy and her little sister

 Walking practice

 Baby baby lamb!

 Fruit vendor

Cataract surgery tools

Empathy and Self-Pity

Preface: I try to actually give a complete picture of my life here through my blog, even though it's tempting to skip over the hard parts and make it sound like I'm some superhero who's happy, patient, and understanding all the time. So, if that's what you'd like to believe, that's fine with me, but you should not read this post.

Today has been interesting. I've been feeling homesick since I got back to Hazaribag, and that was compounded by feeling vulnerable because I have no food in my room. My fridge stopped working when I was gone (I think it fell unplugged, oddly enough), so all of my food spoiled pretty grossly. I had to clean out the fridge, and it still smells bad, but it's cold again. I had to throw out my spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes, bananas, mango, mandarins, and eggs.

That means that today, I really need to go shopping. Shradha (I've been spelling her name as "Sharda," but that's wrong, I found out) fed me dinner last night and breakfast this morning. She also offered to have me sleep in her room, which is more comfortable and air conditioned. I almost took her up on the offer, but since I had not been in my own bed in a few days, I really wanted to do that. I should have just taken her up on it, because I slept very poorly.

I woke up this morning hot, hungry, homesick, and sick to my stomach. Oh, and it was also 5 in the morning, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm used to being away from and missing my family, since I only see them a few times per year in general. As much as I feel like a middle-schooler complaining about missing my boyfriend, I realize we haven't spent more than two weeks apart since we first met. So I'm just not used to missing him.

Anyways, I waited until 7:45 for Jeff to be free, and it was challenging for me not to cry when I was talking to him. I realized something interesting, though. I just finished a book called Quiet, which is about introverts and the extrovert ideal. The author talks about high sensitivity and high levels of empathy that introverts tend to have, and I related strongly to that.

I realized after I talked to Jeff that my sense of empathy is stronger than my relationship with my own emotions. I get emotional often enough, but I can generally talk myself down from whatever I'm feeling. But if someone else is feeling strongly emotional about something, I feel that more. And even more, if I am upset and I see someone else respond with concern, that concern affects me much more than my own upset. So after I talked to Jeff, I was still homesick, but whenever I thought of how he looked when he was frustrated that he couldn't really comfort me over Skype, I was distraught.

I have the mixed blessing of having a face that shows pretty much everything I feel. When I'm tired or in pain or sick or skeptical, everyone knows it. Sometimes that's a really good thing: when I'm sick, no one needs convincing that I'm not faking it. But combine my empathy with my expressive face, and this morning was really challenging.

Everyone could tell something was wrong, so they were concerned and kept asking me what had happened. And I tried to smile and say I was okay, I just wasn't feeling very good (which was also true. My stomach has not been happy). Their concern kept making my eyes tear up, so obviously that was not convincing, but I didn't want to cry in front of anyone, because I don't know how that works culturally. (Is that a stupid reason? Maybe.) I know that in Senegal, you do NOT cry in public, and that would include in front of people you have not known for long.

Anyways, the end result was that I was given one of the guest rooms on the third floor at the office, which locks from the inside. I was able to just cry until I felt better without worrying about someone coming in and being concerned, and then I slept until lunch. Now I'm waiting to make sure that lunch sits well in my stomach. I'm still feeling pretty wiped out, so I may try to do any work I have in this room so I can do it in solitude. But hey, I'm feeling better!

On a completely different note, I'll be teaching a class in the fall for the first time! I'm teaching an aerial silk PE class. My focus is on grace and control, so I'm going to try to have participants work more on strength, flexibility, and balance than on learning tricks. Learning is easier when you have control, and the tricks aren't pretty if you aren't graceful, so hopefully that structure will work well.

Field Visits in Dumka

Monday Night:

I just arrived in Dumka about an hour ago. I generally find that it's no fun to get to a destination after dark. Everything seems scary and dirty (at least to me). In this case, those things are compounded by the humidity, my own exhaustion, and, unfortunately, by the bathroom.

Anand warned me that the bathroom was a squat toilet and I told him that was fine. And really, it is. It's not ideal, but for a few days, it's not a problem. I can hold it. (Just kidding! But I don't mind squat toilets that much in general.) What I was not prepared for was that 1) the bathroom is jam-packed with mosquitoes. In my view, there are few things worse than squatting over a mosquito-swarmed pit. And, 2) there is no sink. There are all kinds of taps, but since they are not very easily controlled, and since the drains are pretty large, I'm not sure it's a good idea for me to try to wear my contact lenses here. I wear hard lenses that need to be thoroughly rinsed under running water before each time I wear them. Since they are quite pricey, it seems like a bad idea to take the risk of dropping a contact lens and never seeing it again. However, I did not bring my glasses (stupid, I know), so not wearing my contacts means three days of very fuzzy field visits.

Anyways, I'll backtrack a bit. The drive here was 6 hours, and it was fairly pleasant--

Hold that thought. Cockroach in my room. FML.

Ugh. I'll continue this post later. I'm overwhelmed right now.

Tuesday Morning:
Okay, I'm feeling much better now. I just woke up, read in bed for a while, and then took a shower. I got over my skittishness last night. After my shower this morning, I dried off and then promptly poured mosquito repellent all over myself (that is an exaggeration, don't worry), so now I'm surrounded by mosquitoes, but they're ignoring me.

I slept pretty well last night. It's much cooler here than in Hazaribag, and the ceiling fan was on, so I actually slept under a sheet, which was very nice. I think the bed here has about 1/2" thicker padding than mine, which makes a huge difference (even though it is still not comfortable).

Last night the program directors here fed us a huge dinner. Anand and I were not really hungry after snacking in the car and traveling 6 hours, so we had to keep begging them not to give us more food. Everything I eat here is great, but I'm starting to really miss simple, familiar foods.

The drive yesterday, like I was saying before, was pretty nice. The road was awful, and getting jostled around for hours on end is tiring, but I napped briefly, read until it got dark, and then chatted with Anand the rest of the way. I'm glad he invited me along. It's nice to spend some time with someone near my age.

Today I'll be visiting an eye hospital and a resource center for disabled children, I think. Anand will be doing other things, so I'm a little nervous about being with people I don't know well. But I guess that's part of the experience. I'm learning a lot about being independent here.

Wednesday morning:

Field visits yesterday were really cool. We visited a 7-year-old kid with cerebral palsy who had been receiving physiotherapy through NBJK's program for 3 years. He was not quite a "normal" kid, but he was normal enough. He was walking on his own, holding my hands, and playing around. Before the program, he was completely bedridden.

Next we visited a blind boy who was about 11 years old. He demonstrated that he could write in Braille, and he could navigate around his house with relative ease. Next was an extremely charismatic 6-year-old boy who had problems moving his right hand. After a year of stretching and strengthening exercises, he had some movement, but he still couldn't use his hand for much.

After that, we saw some members of a Self-Help Group (SHG), which is a group that takes out micro-loans together and acts as each other's accountability network. There was a blind man who ran a small general store with help from the SHG loans, and a girl whose legs were slightly deformed who was studying English in college. They were very friendly and generous, giving us drinks and chatting.

In the evening, we saw a little boy who was slighly mentally impaired. It looked to me like maybe he had Downs syndrome, but I'm not sure. After 3 years of therapy, he had learned to say a few words, dress himself, use the bathroom by himself, and bathe himself.

Finally, there was a 7-year-old girl who was seriously stunted in growth and who had cerebral palsy. She was learning to walk, gaining strength in her legs. She showed us that she could go from squatting to standing and back, and then her little sister (aged 3?) started copying her, which was cute.

After writing a bunch of project reports, it was nice to actually see the work that is being done through NBJK. It seems like the kind of work they're doing is extremely rewarding. If it didn't mean being permanently so far away from home, I would be interested in getting involved.

Now it's 5:45 in the morning, and we're getting ready to head home. We were going to stay through the night today, but the whole reason we came was for Anand to give a presentation abuot the eye hospital to a potential funder. That funder is ill and in the hospital, so there's no reason for us to stay longer. I have enjoyed my visit here, but I'm looking forward to getting back to Hazaribag. My little apartment may not be luxurious, but I miss it anyways. And there are many fewer mosquitoes in Hazaribag than Dumka.

My only concern right now is that my head is killing me, and after 6 hours of getting jostled around, I'm worried about what kind of shape I'll be in. I've taken some extra strength Tylenol, so hopefully that will take care of it.

Later:
Just arrived back in Hazaribag. My head is okay, but I feel a little sick to my stomach. I don't know how I managed to avoid that on the way over to Dumka. Those roads are serious business. Now I get to post this backlog of blog posts, since I have internet again! Hooray!

Btw, posting pictures right now isn't going well, so I'll try to do that later.

Sit, Come, Stay

There are a lot of topics that I could write about at some length. I'll start with a summary of my bad day yesterday, then I'll talk about the title of this post--the tendency of people here to boss me around (in the most loving way possible)--and then I'll give a list of possible future topics. If some of them sound particularly interesting to you, let me know. If not, I'll choose at random and hope you find it interesting.

Yesterday was my first not-good day. I woke up feeling lonely, tired, and unenthusiastic. I went to Satish's house in the morning and got scolded for having accidentally switched something off the day before. I got to work and Vinay ji told me to trust people less, to not leave valuables anywhere if I'm not right there, to avoid telling people I'm Jewish ("They don't need to know,"), and so on. I didn't have much work to do, I had somehow gotten over a dozen mosquito bites the day before, and they were mostly concentrated on my elbows, so I was itching like mad, and I still didn't have internet at home, eggs or vegetables to cook with, or a cell phone. Oh, and I also got scolded for still having Anand's cell phone (the battery is dead now, so I had asked for the charger so I could continue carrying it [I haven't actually been using it, but it's good to know it's there] until I got my own phone).

So yesterday I got to the office and pretty immediately was told to go get a phone. The driver who had brought me to the office would take me. He doesn't speak English, but Rahul told him what I needed, and off we went. We ended up back at Satish's house. No one who was there spoke English, so I couldn't ask what I was doing there. Apparently Rahul's wife, Dolly, was getting ready to go to work, so she was going to help me get a phone on her way.

This is where things get much better.

We found me a phone, Dolly showed me the salon that she owns, I went back to work, ate lunch, and had pretty much nothing to do. I downloaded a design program onto a desktop computer here and set about trying to learn to use it.

Eventually Alok asked me if I wanted a ride home, and I eagerly accepted. He asked if I needed anything, so he helped me find eggs and vegetables and then took me home. After I'd been home an hour or so, organizing things, finally studying a little Hindi, fixing my mosquito net a little more, Rita (John-the-landlord's wife) came up to ask me how I was doing and if I would like dinner. I asked if she would teach me how to make what she was making, which turned out to be chicken butter masala. Mmmmmmm.

So here's the recipe, as far as I could get it:
Start with onions. Lots of onions. Saute them until they start to brown.
Add chicken. In this case, chicken is hacked into pieces seemingly at random.
Add turmeric, cumin, chili powder, and some unidentifiable lump of spice.
Grate a tomato, discarding the peel, and add.
Add about a half cup of garlic/ginger paste.
Add some milk, cream, and butter. Serve with chapatti (round naan-like bread). Eat with hands.

Today has been better (and I didn't even make yesterday sound that bad!). I didn't have much work to do, and Anand is in town again, so he asked me if I wanted to go on a site visit with him. Duh!

We drove about a half hour out of the city and into the bush (do they call it that here?) to visit some Remedial Coaching Centers, which are like after-school tutoring programs. We saw a 10th-grade science class balancing chemical equations, a 9th grade English class whose teacher's English was impossible to understand through his accent, and a 10th grade math class learning trig.

 This English teacher is too cool for school. And his English sounds very much like his Hindi.

 The car we took, and the view from the RCC.

 Students

 The RCC

 Math class

 NBJK office in the foothills. This is their garden (it will be more fruitful in a month, when the rains start)

 New NBJK office building. We went up to the roof...

 Lovely view from the roof

 More view

More NBJK office

It's one thing in the U.S. to be in high school and to ask your teacher, "When am I ever going to use this in real life?" It's another, I think, to watch a class full of impoverished village children who have never even been to a city talking about what happens when you combine magnesium oxide and hydrogen. I kept catching myself thinking, "When are they ever going to use this in real life?" I guess that's the point, though. If they don't learn it, they are barred from having the kind of life where they could ever need to use the information. If they learn it, they at least have a chance at getting out and forging their own paths. Makes me even less sympathetic towards most American children, thinking about that.

I actually have more work do to in the next couple of days, and I'm in better spirits than I had been for a few days, so I'm looking forward to completing my second week here. That prospect had not been appealing yesterday.

The title of today's post comes from the words that I tend to hear most often here. "Erica, come." "Erica, sit." "Erica, stay." To me, it sounds like I'm being treated like a dog, but it feels like I'm being taken care of. "Erica, come," means, "Here, let me show you where to go," or "Let me give you a ride home." "Erica, sit," means,"I'd like to chat with you for a while, and I want you to be comfortable." "Erica, stay," means, "I am going to take care of this for you right away. I will be back in a moment, so wait here and be comfortable." I always smile to myself when people boss me around here, because I really enjoy having other people ready and willing to help me out when I'm not sure what to do.

Here are potential future blogging topics for you to choose from. Please comment with your thoughts:

Mosquitoes
Driving
Electricity
Furniture
Getting around
Dust
Laundry
Animals
Clothing
Food

Routine

I'm falling into a routine here, at least somewhat, so I'll probably be posting a little less frequently than I have been. I figured I'd give you an idea of what my daily life looks like, though, in the meantime.

My mornings start between 5 and 6, when I wake up. I eat breakfast, take a shower, get dressed, and clean a little. Then I walk to Satish's house to use his internet and Skype with people (so far just Jeff and parents). Around 10, the driver comes and we leave for the office. It's a different group of people who goes every day, and I haven't really figured that out yet. One day it was Satish, Anand, Rahul, Rahul's wife, and me. Yesterday it was Rahul, Sheila (his mom), and me. Sometimes it's just Satish and me.

At work, I go upstairs to my "cabin" (cubicle) and set up my computer and make a list of the work I have to do that day. Lately, I'm running out of things to do because project coordinators are being slow to send in reports and I've already gone through all the ones I have so far.

At 1ish, I head down to the cafeteria for lunch. Lunch is always rice and dahl, some fresh cucumber, carrots, and onion, and two vegetarian things to go with the rice. My favorite so far was Tuesday, when we had something that had a texture like artichoke heart, but I couldn't figure out if that's what it was.

Around 5, or whenever my brain is too fried to continue working, I pack my stuff up and read or surf the web until someone tells me it's time to go. That can be anywhere from 5 to 7:30. When I get home, I clean a little, sometimes I read, sometimes I try to find Sharda (turns out Rayshu is a pet name, so my neighbor friend is actually called Sharda). Night before last, she taught me to cook a little, and we plan to do more of that. Last night, her mom told me to come with them to a birthday party for some neighbors, so I did that.

I've been tired the last few days, and I'm running out of work, and I'm pretty much out of food at home. I haven't figured out yet how/where to go food shopping. I'm not supposed to go out alone after dark, but I usually get home around sunset. I could go in the mornings, but that's my only time to Skype. I still don't have internet at home, which is annoying but not terrible.

I'm not in the best of moods this morning. When I get in to work, I think I'll talk to Alok and see if he can make me feel better. I'm already hungry again (my breakfast was mostly bananas), and there's a long while before lunch. Anyways, I'll maybe post more about the birthday party from last night later. For now I have to get ready to head to work.

Photo Dump: Monday

On Monday, I went to Ranchi with Satish to go to the Report Release for Save the Children's annual "State of the World's Mothers" report. There were panelists, women with babies, presentations, and an excellent buffet. Unfortunately all the presentations were in Hindi, so I spent most of the time reading the hard copy of the report.

 This podium is too big for this woman.

After the meeting, Satish and I picked up two women from the airport and then decided to go for a walk to find a waterfall on the way back home. The walk was about 4K, and its was pretty stunning.

 Satish standing on the most rickety bridge I have ever crossed.

 Turns out, it's best not to look down too much as you cross it.

 Gorgeous views! And we had the blessing of cloud cover, so it was not unbearably hot.

 Rice paddy!

 After 750 stairs down, we reached the waterfall.

 That white building at the top is where we started.

 The stairs going back up...

 Crossing a somewhat less rickety bridge...but it's propped up by twigs, so looks are deceiving.