Our very own Mistletoe Moment

Our very own Mistletoe Moment: written for 1000 Fights
http://1000fights.com/mistletoe-moment/

Our MM moment happened in Delhi, India. I know what you must be thinking.... We have been to amazing romantic cities like Paris, Rome and Vienna. Countless sunsets were watched over pristine beaches in Spain and Croatia. We've had many adrenaline pumping adventures in South America. Nope, our moment happened in a slum in New Delhi, India.

I have no idea why we decided to volunteer, I think it was my idea but I can't quite pinpoint the actual reason I wanted to do it. It may have been that I wanted to "give back" which really means I wanted to absolve myself of the guilt I had for quitting my job and flitting around the world spending all of my husband's money, or maybe it was really all about making myself feel like a better person. Whichever reason it was, at the end of the program I felt all the terribly cliched things about volunteering: I really did fall in love with the kids, they taught me way more than I taught them.... You know exactly what I'm talking about, you've heard this before....

So it was our first day of our assignment. We were going to teach English to kids in an alleyway on the edge of a large slum in the Okhla Phase 2 district of Delhi. It really was an alleyway, with an awning made of corrugated asbestos pieces. At the end of the alleyway was the "office" which was a little shack made of scrap metal, bricks, and had the same asbestos ceiling. Attached to the ceiling was a wood beam, with a fan tied to it by a piece of rope. The fan blades were attached to a small motor that had a cord, the cord was cut and peeled back to expose the inside wires, the wires were shoved into an open electrical looking thing. It wasn't a socket. It was like a box, and there was a hole, and these wires were shoved into it. The fan was having a seizure as the blades whirled slowly and precariously over our heads. It was the beginning of October so the temperature was around 38C/100F so as much as I was scared that this fan was going to decapitate/electrocute me I was thankful for it's small, pitiful existence. The guy who runs the school was an extremely nice gentleman who asked us all about ourselves, told us about the school and offered us some Chai. When someone who obviously has so little offers you something, you have to accept. I couldn't decline on account that I thought that tea made in a pot on the floor was going to be dirty. What's a little dirt anyways? (I found out, by spending a month in India, a little dirt won't kill you. Actually, a lot of dirt won't kill you either). One of the children turned on the electric burner, also with exposed wires shoved into the same electric-hole-box that the fan was operating out of.

We chatted, I looked warily at the electric burner, smiled, chatted some more. The director became inpatient and rattled off something stern sounding in Hindi. I guess the water wasn't boiling fast enough? Did I mention this was water they got out of a pipe in the alleyway? Yeah. I was having visions of all the hurt that my stomach was going to experience as a result of this tea. I really, really, really wanted to make sure the water was boiled, for like a really, really, really long time to get rid of whatever parasites were in it. then it came out- a gas propane tank. It was covered in dust, dented and a little rusty. There was a broken piece, that looked like the valve, which they were arguing over in Hindi. They pulled out a gas burner for it and started shoving wires in and taking them out and playing with the valve and arguing. I looked at Bill. Bill looked at me. I can't quite explain the look we both fixed onto one another. A look of terror perhaps? Devotion? Love? My thought was literally that if I died, in a huge freak-Chai-gas tank- accident in India at least I would be with my husband. Staring into his beautiful large brown eyes as my body exploded into flames and the pieces of my ash floated up into the somewhat hazy, muddy sky of Delhi. Such a romantic way to go. I never thought it would be like this. I don't know what I thought it would be like, I never think about dying, it scares the shit out of me. We both took a small breath of anticipation as they turned the broken valve one last time and exhaled a very huge sigh of relief as the flame came on and we did not explode.

After a very hurried cup of tea we went out for lunch. Over vegetable samosas in a thing that was kind of like a restaurant, with roaches crawling on the floor, we confessed to each other that we were both thinking the same thing at the same moment back in the office. The look we shared was one of undying love, and the desire to express so at that exact place in time. We did make it through our two weeks of volunteering miraculously unscathed. Thankful for the experience, but more thankful for each other.

It was the best chai I've ever had.

Vomiting, massages and hospitals... Oh my! Our week in Kerala part 1.

We left our home stay in Delhi on Saturday afternoon and weren't catching our flight until Monday morning so we booked a cheap (think $30 bucks) hotel by the train station. It was dirty. Don't stay at the chanchal deluxe hotel in Delhi, it sucks. There were dead fruit flys all over the floor and bed and the bathroom was scary. I kind of threw a fit and proclaimed I would not eat food from the hotel because of how dirty it was but there weren't many options outside. I guess thats the thing about staying in india for an extended period of time, at some point you just accept that its fucking filthy. What was i going to do? Go downstairs and throw a fit that my 30 dollar a night hotel in the shithole neighborhood that is the delhi train station was dirty? It was all food carts surrounding the numerous religious icon stores where people were hand carving statues of Shiva. So we ordered room service, specifically the chicken biryani which was delicious as we were eating it. Fast forward to Sunday afternoon and Bill is vomiting and has diarrhea all at once. I can only deduce he had a really high fever from the way he felt to my hands because we didn't have a thermometer. Who travels around the world with a first aid kit?! Pshaw.... On top of all this his recurring bad back had given out so he was immobile. I wasn't feeling so great myself but I managed to keep it in on both ends so I was fine. As Sunday afternoon grew into Sunday evening I started getting worried and I did what anyone would do... I called my mother. I figured that if I looked up his symptoms on the Internet it would tell me he was dying (it did, it said he had malaria) so I opted for moms advice instead. She assured me he prob just ate something bad but he should go to the hospital. The one thing I always told bill was if I got sick to never EVER take me to a hospital in Asia. The last thing I want is a needle for an IV going into my body and I get some terrible disease and die far from Brooklyn. He did start taking the malaria pills we had brought from home as a precaution.

I don't know how either of us withstood the flight the next day, or the two hour drive to fort kochi from the airport but we did. Well, i dont know how i did it, bill ate a painkiller and passed out. He was burning up the whole time and I just kept giving him aspirin and malaria medicine. I knew something was up with me because the smell of any sort of food was making me turn green. Our hotel there wasn't great either but it didn't really matter because we both went to bed immediately. The next morning the lady running the place made us eggs for breakfast and sat with us while we ate. I really felt at the time I would never be able to eat another egg as long as I lived. Bill looked like he got beat down with the vomit stick and pushed the food around on his plate. He was also limping around because of his back. After living with a family for 3 weeks with very little privacy, Kerala was supposed to be the romantic part of our India trip. We were not getting off on a good foot.

Our driver for the week picked us up and was a very nice and funny guy. He made bill sit in the front so he could recline back and relax. We drove almost 5 hours to the mountains in Munnar. It was miles and miles of tea plantations rolling over the hilly landscape. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Everything in Kerala was on steroids. The greens were so deep an lush, the flowers were extraordinarily large, the houses were painted in neon purples, teal and lime. The sky was BLUE! There are no blue skies in Delhi, it's just a continual overcast of hazy pollution. These skies were blue! There were elephants on the side of the road! We drove past countless waterfalls that appeared magically out of solid rock. There was barely any trash on the side of the road. This place was amazing. We finally pulled into the Arunyaka resort. There were a small cluster of cottages overlooking a hill of tea plants and a waterfall. The air was silent except for the sound of the crashing water and the rustling of the wind. We ordered some lunch which we both regretted eating and then drove down to an Ayurvedic place to make massage appointments for the next day, then caught a kathakali show, which is a traditional form of dance and storytelling.

The next morning bill still had a fever so we decided he should go to the hospital after breakfast. Thank god they had cornflakes, we lived off of cornflakes for days. I really need to write the manufacturer of corn flakes telling them they saved my life and see if they give me a free box. We rolled up to the Tata general hospital in Munnar. Tata is an all encompassing brand in India, they make the ever popular $3000 car, a plethora of crap, and they have a beverage company which includes tea. Our resort was down the road from the Tata tea packaging plant, so it made sense that the local hospital was also of the Tata variety. I don't know if any of you ever watched that stupid hospital show set in costa rica on ABC ( for awhile ABC was the only channel we got that's why I know this) but the hospital kind of looked like that. A one story building in the middle of nowhere, the emergency room was 8 beds, all empty. The nurse told us to wait and the doctor saw us after 5 minutes. He told bill it was prob a mixture of altitude sickness and food poisoning and gave him a bunch of medicine. The cost of the visit and the medicine was $3.50 USD. I couldn't believe it, we could still make our massage! I thought we would be in there all day!

Bill opted out of his massage and that was a wise decision considering what I ended up going through. Aryuvedic medicine is everywhere in southern India and to get the true healing experience it's a treatment given over time. For example, if Bill really wanted to use the treatment to fix his slipped disc he would consult with an Ayurvedic doctor and participate in various treatments for 3-4 hours a day over the course of a couple weeks. We just wanted a one off massage so our driver took us to one of the many clinics that pepper the landscape of Munnar. It was a tiny little building that wasn't very pretty inside. It was dark and damp and dingy. This is the case with a lot of places in India and then you actually go in and it's fine, so I didn't really think of it when I was booking my 90 minute relaxation body rub. A girl who looked kind of young led me into a dark room. The floor was dirty, the walls were covered in mold as a result of the steam box in the room. There was an enormous wooden table in the center of the room with an oil dispenser hovering over the head of the table. On the side there was a counter with a gas burner and various jars of oils and creams. She told me to take my clothes off so I took my pants and shirt off. She then motioned for me to take my underwear off. The thought that literally went through my mind was "it's India time" I figured that I was in for a penny in for a pound. How many diseases could I possibly get from that wooden table? I already probably had food poisoning and there wasn't any rash a good cream can't cure, right? I took off my underwear and stood in the cold room shivering, stark naked, with a young Indian girl. She unfolded a paper loin cloth thing that she tied around my waist and in between my legs and motioned for me to get onto the table. I was shivering as I lay face down and watched her put oils and spices into a big pot on the burner and then mix some oil into a bowl. She started by pouring oil all over my head and massaging it into my scalp. She worked her way over every part of my body, every crevice, every muscle, down to the tips of my fingers and toes. As the spices in the pot began to boil they let off a very calming aromatic perfume and at one point the electricity went out so for 5 blissful minutes I actually forgot that I was in a set from the movie Saw getting oil rubbed by a minor. After the massage was done she helped me off the table and slid me over, oil dripping off my skin, to the wooden steam cabinet. I sat down, she closed the door and then put the top on so just my head was sticking out and I steamed for 20 minutes. When I wasn't thinking of all the horrible things that might happen to my cooch as a result of it sitting exposed in this environment, it was actually very relaxing. After the steaming was over she came back with a stack of gauze cloths and then proceeded to wipe me down. I would have rather wiped myself down but I guess that was part of the $22 deal I got right? I got dressed and tipped her and ran out of there. Meanwhile, bill and the driver had been chillin in the car and when they saw me, oil dripping from my head, he looked a little scared and asked me if I wanted to shower, which I did. After I got out of the shower though, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was literally glowing from top to bottom. My skin had never looked so brilliant. Bill commented that my face "felt like a baby's ass" and it did. It felt smooth and creamy and had a healthy flush to it. I did not end up getting a weird rash in my nether regions so all in all it really was the best 22 bucks I ever spent on a beauty product. Not to mention they weren't kidding when they said it was a "deep relaxation" massage. I could barely keep my eyes open as we went sightseeing and I fell sleep at 8pm and had the deepest, most restful sleep in weeks.

-Claire

Delhi. The good, the bad, the unexpected.

An alter at the ISKCON temple

India has been calling my name for quite a few years now. It's inexplicable how or when I first heard it but I knew I somehow, someday I needed to come here. When bill and I first started to discuss the issue I had visions of bearded gurus chanting mystically, meditating in an ancient ashram and reaching enlightenment while riding an elephant. There were so many things about myself I wanted to find answers to, so many things I wanted to see, hear, taste, do, and just experience. When we talked about it more we decided to volunteer in Delhi before moving on with the rest of our trip. The plan was to take the train to southern India, stopping in Jaipur, Udaipur, Mumbai and Goa before hitting Kerala for a guided tour through the back waters.

These were all ideas that were thrown around before we left Brooklyn. While we were in Rome, Mumbai was bombed. We crossed it off our destination list. While we were in Berlin we planned out the second and third legs of our trip and it was looking like we would need two months to do India instead of one. The train schedules were somewhat confusing. To go from Udaipur to Kerala we would have to go all the way back to Delhi if we didn't want to go through Mumbai. We were on the fence with Goa, meaning I wanted to go and bill didn't. We also wanted to leave for Buenos Aires by November 1st so we could keep on schedule for our south America adventures. We are not the couple who will end up traveling endlessly, going wherever the day takes us. Believe me, I would have loved to spend more time in certain places (ahem, Ibiza) but I also want to get home by the end of Dec so I can hopefully get a job and make back all the money I spent on this trip, get health insurance, start contributing towards my IRA again. You know, all those responsible, rational, icky adult things that I find too many travelers don't seem to care about. We decided to stay in Delhi for 3 weeks to volunteer while taking weekend trips to Jaipur and Agra. Then we would train it down to Kerala, then train it to Bangalore before flying home. Then we decided to ax Bangalore because there was a much cheaper flight out of Delhi. We would fly back to Delhi then fly to BA. Then Delhi got bombed and we had already paid for the volunteering so we couldn't not go there, so we should have just stuck to the original plan with Mumbai cause apparently "they bombin eeerrrrbody in India this summer" Too soon? Not funny? whatever. Then, just last week, we decided that a 46 hour train ride to Kerala was too much even if we were in first class so we bought a flight that was the same price as the train. We would spend the 2 extra days in Delhi. So, we will have spent 24 days in Delhi and 8 days in Kerala by the time this month is over. Follow all that? Oh, and we never made it to Jaipur.

The Lotus Temple. Please excuse the lens smug! That will have to get photoshopped out later.

Our first week in Delhi was interesting. We did a lot of sightseeing, got some Hindi lessons, saw a Bollywood movie, and went to the Taj Mahal in Agra. We also saw a lot of Delhi. There's lots of traffic, smog, trash, rubble, public urination, people like you and me and destitute people. Destitute is not the same as homeless. Homeless people in New York City are living a life of luxury compared to the people on the streets here. I didn't have any shock seeing this, I've seen it before when I traveled to southeast Asia for work. I also somehow manage remain very detached emotionally from these kinds of things. I think Bill is a little bothered by it. Especially when we are on our way to the now infamous M Block market and we have to walk past a completely open and enormous raw sewage drain. Imagine the worst smell you ever smelled and multiply it by a million. Rotting, fermenting, festering sewage flowing through the city in a drain the size of a small canal. And there are people working down in it, doing what I have no idea.

The Kamal Nayan Society school.

Our second week we started our volunteer assignment and we saw the real Delhi. The raw Delhi. Our program director took us to our assignment the first day to show us around. The Kamal Nayan Society is a non-formal education school on the edge of the slum in the Okhla Phase 2 Industrial Area. That means it's a chalkboard on the wall in an alley between factories with an asbestos roof held up by two poles. There are no books, no materials and sometimes no chalk. The office is a little shack with a couple chairs and a table. There are 20 to 60 kids a day that come in two shifts- boys in the morning and girls in the afternoon. They are anywhere from 2 to 17. They all wear the same clothes everyday, a lot don't have shoes, one little toddler didn't even have pants or underwear. Yep, a shirt and a little toddler penis greeted me one day. These kids aren't homeless though. They have parents, who often come by the school, most go to government school in either the morning or afternoon, and they have homes in the slum where there is no running water. The water pipe for the slum was right next to the school so every afternoon the parents were there filling large buckets of water and unfortunately the older girls in my class would leave early to help their families carry the water back to their shacks. Basically, these kids were poor, not destitute.That's poor in India. Poor kids in the US have shoes and pants, food stamps, welfare, running water, rights and laws that protect them Thank God.

Bill with our morning students, and one of the full time teachers. Sono (mentioned below) is on the right in the striped shirt.

I panicked the first day. I'm not a teacher, not even close. I almost never interact with small children and if you put me in a classroom in the US with 30 crazy kids I would have walked out. Now I had 30 crazy kids who were screaming in Hindi, in a dirt alleyway covered in trash in a slum. Bill and I finished our first day and I had a serious talk with him about just quitting. This whole program was a hot mess. I was not going to ever be able to teach these kids anything, I was anxious about having to come up with things to teach them everyday. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly William Shakespeare over here so how could i teach English? And math, forget it. I failed algebra and trig in high school. I haven't done a division problem on actual paper in like, 15 years. But we already paid for this and if there's one thing I will never do is throw away money because I'm scared of something. I did regret our choice of spending so much time in Delhi. I felt like I was never going to see the glamourous, mystical India I had in my head before we came here.

So began our 2 weeks of teaching. I took the smaller kids, bill took the older kids. The boys in the morning always wanted to do math so we started out simple so I could see where they were at then we moved onto harder stuff. Cross multiplying, equations, exponents and yes, dividing. When I wasn't right the other full time teacher would jump in. She didn't speak any English but she could usually tell what I was trying to say and would translate to hindi. In between yelling "LADO MAT!" (no fighting) we actually got some stuff accomplished.

The girls were different. First of all, they were cuter and sweeter. They always wanted english. We started with nouns, I would write a sentence and circle the nouns. They wrote the same sentence in Hindi on the board and circled the nouns. We did the same with verbs and adjectives. We did geography, and to my astonishment, when I pulled out a world map not one kid knew where India was. That was an entire days lesson and by the end every single one can tell you where India is on the map! I showed them all the places bill and I had traveled. I showed them pics on my camera of Paris and Morocco. We talked about modes of transportation, you can take a bus or train to Pakistan but you have to take a boat or plane to South America. A big hit was yoga. Out of desperation for something to do one day I started teaching them some poses and they begged to do it every day after. A bigger hit was bill and I clumsily doing a waltz for them. Dancing With The Stars won't be calling us anytime soon but they loved it. They did the waltz, and I made them show me some Hindi dances. They loved to color so I brought in packs of crayons and coloring books. It sounds juvenile but when your a 10 year old kid and the closest thing you have to a toy is a styrofoam container that was trash, new crayons are awesome. Bill spent an entire afternoon teaching a girl how to write an S correctly, but when she finally got it he was elated. I have a profound new respect for teachers. Especially when we realized it's the little victories that count. I could go on and on about all the things we did but you get the idea. Some days were great, and some days sucked really bad.

Namaste!

And then there was Sono, aka Crooked Hands Jimmy. Already famous a la bills previous post, and he was my absolute favorite. It started when he serenaded me with a Hindi song and it was solidified when he made me an origami frog that hops. A kid missing half his arms and has backwards hands and only 1 thumb painstakingly spent a half hour folding a tiny origami frog for me. I've received lots of pictures and cards from the kids that I have to throw away, I mean, I can't lug that stuff with me all over the earth. But the frog I will keep till the day I die.

I was doing my laundry in a bucket in the bathroom the other night and, as I was scrubbing my filthy pants caked in dirt after just one day at school, I started thinking about my initial thoughts on India. We will have to return one day to do a proper Rajasthan tour. I've also always wanted to see Varanasi, and watch the bodies burn on the Ganges in their final grasp at enlightenment. I want to go to the Bodhi tree and see if I feel more like Buddha sitting under it. There will be time to do all this, assuming I'm not dead, in the future. Right now I think I was meant to be here in Delhi. A teeny transformation has been happening all along, I didn't have to wait until I got to India. It started back at home. If you really want to cleanse, get rid of everything you have. I sold a lot of my stuff, what I didn't sell I gave away or threw away. Every single object forced me to ask a question about myself. I got married! I pushed my limits in yoga. I have lived out of a carry on size suitcase for 4 months now. I'm forced to communicate my feelings to bill in a better manner than screaming uncontrollably. My patience isn't endless yet, but it goes a lot farther than it used to. I've mostly gotten over a huge germaphobia problem. I've eaten things when I didn't know what they were. I've realized that I have to just give up trying to control circumstances and let the universe do it's thing because I am a small, tiny spec on the planet. I've come to the shocking conclusion (so far) that people are overwhelmingly good, honest and nice no matter where you are. I had originally planned on having a spiritual epiphany in a remote ashram somewhere in the country, but I think I came a little closer to God in the slums of Delhi. I haven't taken the elephant ride yet though, so I'll have to report back on that later :)

-Claire

Initial thoughts on Delhi (I'm a jerk edition)

We've experienced a lot while here in Delhi and have been keeping notes to help with our blog posts, but as I was reviewing my notes I found it difficult to find a thread to tie the experiences together. Often, our posts are chronological recaps intertwined with related insight (read: crass humor), and a flowing theme. As I went through my notes this time, I didn't feel a theme was coming through in our experiences, but I did notice a tone. It's kind of a nasty one too. Maybe it's from the coffee detox, but my initial thoughts on India were written with the voice of a cranky pants. Rather than rewrite my notes to reflect a more nuanced and in depth description of our experiences, I'm letting the freak flag fly in the name art, humor, and curmudgeons the world over (read: too lazy to edit). Here now, are my INITIAL thoughts on India (I'm a jerk addition)...

Slum dog Millionaire
A staffer was aghast when we told him Americans think all of india is like slum dog millionaire. After a week here I'd say the movie was dead on. Notwithstanding that our host family (who are upper middle class with a nice house in a nice neighborhood) watch WWTBAM every. single. night... Every ounce of the city feels like a landfill. Even the entire road to Agra is covered in rubbish. Picture the now legendary streets of Napoli with their mountains of trash... Now, take away the trash bags, spread the trash around, mix it up with some rubble, repeat for over 80 miles, and then cover it all in feces (human, cow, whatever). The never ending pile of trash is only interrupted briefly by charred remains of trash that had been burnt earlier in the morning. The worst was, we passed through the birth place of Krishna (he's a BFD here) and there was no letting up. People keep saying that India will surpass China as the worlds largest economy by 2020, and I laugh a little on the inside. That the poverty here is so overwhelming and the attitude towards it is predominantly one of acceptance instead of outrage is comical. Our program director even admitted the problems of this country could easily be fixed if the politicians had the courage to stand up for what is right rather than fear of losing an election. Sound Familiar?

The Taj Mahal is imperfect. 
I'm not saying that it isn't beautiful and deserving of its status. Its a magnificent building that stands as a testament to enduring love and unrivaled craftsmanship throughout the ages. However, according to Muslim tradition, you're not allowed to build anything perfect so as not to strive for godliness. Therefor, you must intentionally include an imperfection. In the case of the Taj Majal, it is the inclusion of the second tomb. The first tomb is of Shah Jahan's wife which is perfectly centered in the structure, Shah Jahan's tomb is to her left. It turns out he wasn't exactly role model material. The Taj Majal was built on the backs of slave labor, by a foreign ruling power, who spent more money on his own throne than he did on his wife's tomb. I'm not kidding you, go look it up on Wikipedia. Plus, Shah Jahan supposedly designed it himself. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmk. If it weren't for the white marble, all the Mogul tombs in I've seen pretty much look the same: Persian influence, five domes, "webbed" windows, etc.  It's said that the architect's intention was the placement of the second tomb as the imperfection, but I choose to live in a world where the architect had a sense of humor and the content of the tomb is the imperfection :)

The Gandhi Smriti
Everyone in the world who is capable of doing so should visit this site. It was here that Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and it is a very moving experience.  I remember seeing the Gandhi movie as a kid and believe to this day it planted the desire to see india in me. The  grounds contain a path illuminating the struggle for Indian independence and his role in it. Additionally, the house itself hosts both an interactive installation upstairs, and hallway after hallway downstairs of walls lined with every ounce of truth the man ever spoke. This leads you to the room in which he lived in with nothing more than a few personal effects, a bed and his spinning wheel. All still exactly how he had left them.  

The grounds are also where he was assassinated by some fongool who reassures us that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. It'd  be easy to mention Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, or even John Lennon amongst others, but none of them lived in Delhi and I'd prefer to stay focussed. The universe blesses us with treasures and we as a species invariably wipe our ass with it and leave it on the side of the road to burn. Well, that's how they do it in Delhi, in the west we'd wipe our ass with it, flush it down the toilet and claim moral superiority based on our excrement disposal habits. I sometimes wonder what monkeys must think of us (especially cause there all over the place here)... I'm completely convinced if you could translate monkey, their word for human would equate to "insane", "bat shit crazy" or "hairless assclowns". It makes perfect sense that they throw poo at us, It's probably out of outrage.

The food
I thought I could eat Indian food all the time... Until I did. After a week straight of some of the most delicious food I've ever eaten, it was time for a break. Busting out the "stick with what you know" directive, we headed to Pizza Hut. Surprisingly, it was pretty good. I don't usually endorse chain restaurants or fast food, but if I didn't live in Brooklyn, I would consider their pizza top notch. Now, it's hard to say if this is the Indian food binge talking, but it was better than any non gourmet pizza we'd had since we've been on this trip... I say "non gourmet" because our friend Davide also happens to be a pizza chef and his pies are bangin. All that, and they served beer. It was only king fisher, a low alcohol Indian beer the German girls referred to as "piss beer", but it's so good when it hits your lips. We hadn't had a beer in almost two weeks as we only drank wine in Paris and Tangier. We're not supposed to drink or at least not come home drunk while with our home stay, but we already have day dreams of going there bright and early, drinking king fishers all day over cheesy bread pizza and jerk chicken skewers, then sobering up over cheese cake and scrabble at the local coffee shop. That's how our last Sunday evening went, but next time we want to make it a marathon session. Especially cause they play late nineties pop rock and slow jams on the radio. The highlight was watching Claire realize that the 19 year old German girl we were eating lunch with was only a child when these songs came out. It's a scenario we've been through together ourselves with 80s music, so watching her cringe for a change was epic. (Editors note, we had gone back to Pizza Hut twice more in the span of seven days since first writing this.)

Volunteering day one
the volunteering turned out to be exactly what we were afraid of. It's basically baby sitting. This is the exact experience we had with New  York Cares back home, but for some reason we thought it would be different here. You think we would have learned our lesson... The irony is, we had been learning a lot about the similarities between Delhi and NYC, we just never put two and two together.

Volunteering day two
We arrive about 20 minutes late as it took longer than expected to get there.  What we didn't expect, is that none of the adult staff had arrived yet either. Benefit of the doubt, they probably take the bus. We specifically know the head of the Kamal Nayan society lives 45km away and is handicapped. He looks young, but is skinny and walks like an old man; hunched over, small steps and seemingly non fully functional legs. My initial thought was maybe MS, but without a speech impediment I can't tell. Nor do I have any desire to ask. What I do want to ask, is where he gets his clothes from. We're talking Saturday night fever snazzy. Big, and I mean BIG wing tipped collars, shiny pants, and conservative James brown hair replete with neatly trimmed sideburns. He's a pair of Elvis glasses away from being awesome. Don't get me wrong, a crippled man who grew up in the slums of Delhi who now spends his life dedicated to other slum children is awesome in it's own right, but his sense of style is the kind of awesome that makes you believe he could be a character in a Tarantino film.

Speaking of the handicapped, we also have a new fan at the "school". When a little 14 year old  kid serenades your wife with hindi folk songs, it's something special. When said kid was born with no forearms, backwards hands, a missing thumb, a hunch back, an extra ear pinna and only one incisor, it's super special. He's one of my students, and remarkably one of the more well behaved, inquisitive, attentive, and eager to learn. Claire originally wanted to nick name him crooked hands a la the Sopranos  but immediatley acknowledged how much of a bad idea that would be. We've  settled on calling him Jimmy until we can learn how to pronounce names in Hindi better. Did I mention he doesn't have any shoes and wears the same clothes everyday. Think about him next time you think your life is tough, then go complain to someone else, I don't want to hear it.

The  people here are really nice
Like the way Californians are nice for no reason. If someone says hello to you, it's not because they want something from you (a natural NYC reactionary thought), but it's because they are simply saying hello. Even the touts are friendly. They don't give you a dirty look or curse you under their breath when you ignore them or say no. They simply say "maybe next time" or worse, "have a nice day". I really hope it's the thousands of years of Dharmic living that's has made people here so friendly because I'd hate to think it's from something in the water (see initial perceptions above).

I know what you're thinking
That it sounds like I'm having a horrible time here. On the contrary, we're having a great time here. In fact, we're having a better time here than we did in Berlin. Not to say that Berlin is worse than a city drowning in landfill, it's a little more complicated than that. Without going in depth, we're chalking it up to being here with a purpose. When we went to Berlin, we had no plans, no itinerary, and it rained all the time. Now that we're in Delhi, we have our volunteering, our tour of Kerala, and four straight weeks of 95 and sunny. The rest is apples to oranges.