Follow Me Around the World

Today was our first full day in Dharmasala.  I woke up to a large monkey staring in to my window.  I jumped back a little bit and it was a great way to start my day.  I then had some breakfast with Sarah who happened to be down there after I went on the internet.  After breakfast I went upstairs to get my books and then downstairs to where our mock classroom would be.  As it turned out we didn’t have any chairs so for 3+ hours I sat on a mat on the floor typing on my lap.  That was not fun at all and I was so stiff afterwards.  After class 8 of us walked in the rain to some little cafe Ben had suggested that when he came last year was owned by a Belgium guy.  We said lets try it out and I was glad we did.  We ended up ordering mutton momos (which I had been craving), Mutton Shako which is a ceramic pot of soup with veggies and mutton which was damn good and some belgium fries with this amazing garlic mayo dip.  The meal came to be 110 rupees each but took about 3 hours in total.  2 hours to get the food and an hour to eat and enjoy it.  It took definitely longer than we all thought it would take, but was great nonetheless.

After leaving the restaurant Ben, Angela and I broke away from the others and started to walk around and shop.  It was great to have Angela with us as she speaks perfect hindi and is a great bargainer.  She is a quality bargainer because she knows exactly what the prices should be.  Since I had given all my clothing in to the hotel for laundry, I needed to get some pants and stuff.  I ended up picking up two indian style pants/shorts made out of cotton really loose fitting almost like a Doti.  I also bought ready made full doti, and a tan tie died lungi to go with my white more formal one, and some pastries from a bakery.  Ben and Angela both bought stuff as well.

When we got back to the hotel we all tried to do work but that didn’t happen.  We all sat up on the third floor and just chatted away.  At one point Ben and I danced some Bangra while we tried to get Angela and Addidity to show us how to do it.  Instead Janeen, the Panjabi herself, showed us how to do it.  Eventually I got hungry and ate with angela and others in the hotel.  After that meal I really wasn’t that hungry and just got a tomato and cheese grilled sandwich and a soda.  After dinner I basically just hung out and got to bed at a reasonable hour

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 4:10 am and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.