4

Today marks four weeks since I left Kalamazoo (but not four since I arrived). 6 weeks left in India, then I'll have a mad dash of moving, visiting California, and preparing for the new school year.

Now that I have my MacBook, I'm working on putting together the actual annual report design.

Helen has been doing great at not freaking out about how different everything is here. She even held it together when she went to put her lunch plate in the lunch plate bin and there were three large cockroaches in it. 

We've been taking it pretty easy lately. Yesterday we watched Life of Pi with Shradha after I made a breakfast of French toast (and Helen did the dishes! Yay teamwork!). The French toast came out way better than I expected it to, and it was fun to have something other than eggs. This morning I got up energized at 7, then I did my laundry, took a shower, Skyped with Jeff, and made eggs and hashbrowns and toast for breakfast.

Here are some random recent photos.

This is a chameleon hiding behind a stick. I saw it when I got to Ranchi and I was sitting in the car waiting for something or other. Isn't it cute?

This is me, Shradha, and Helen (I now get a perverse pleasure from using the Oxford comma, since I can't at work) after our delicious French toast breakfast.

This is the view from the back of our house on a very stormy, dusty, thundery day. We've been getting those pretty often, and it has cooled the weather down quite a bit.

I have a few more minutes before I need to get back to work, so I'll talk a little about one of the topics I said I'd get back to.

Driving

Driving is one of those things that I hadn't thought much about before I got here. I realized when I arrived that it should have occurred to me already that people here drive on the left. It was a British colony, after all. But that hadn't crossed my mind, and it still keeps me on my toes, especially when I'm trying to cross the street looking left. So far so good, but I'm hoping I start catching on soon.

Cars here honk a lot. It's not like New York, where people honk because the roads are congested and they're running late. Here, honking means, "Hey, I'm coming up behind you." Occasionally it's also done in anger, but usually it's just to let people know you're there.

People pass on the right. Of course it's not surprising that if people drive on the left, they would pass on the right. The surprising part is how often people pass, and how boldly they do it. It is not at all uncommon for me to be certain that my car is about to slam into a huge truck that is driving straight at us, only to swerve back into the left "lane" (if you can call it that) and only barely miss hitting the car/bicycle/motorcycle we were passing.

All these things are challenging. Where it gets really fun is the fact that the roads are quite narrow in places, quite absent in others, and often overrun by animals. How do you drive when elephants, cows, goats, chickens, dogs, cats, and small children seem to be completely unaware of what a road is?

Answer: You honk more, pray to whichever god(s) you believe in, and hold on tight.