Wednesday, May 21, 1997

I’m watching Bewitched dubbed in Hindi. TV over here is a hoot. Everything is so over-the-top and well, kind of campy. Funny stuff.

As I look out the window, there are the most beautiful flowery trees and shrubs growing up and out of the piles of garbage. I hate to keep harping on the trash, but being a small town girl and all, I’m not used to it. There are orange mimosa trees and some really hot pink bushes that are quite fragrant.

Little kids are running through the streets without any clothes on. The naked boys bother me. They crack me up though. They’re giggling! If you think about it, it is really practical of their mothers not to bother with clothes in all this heat. They outgrow them so fast anyway. I saw a little boy yesterday taking a bath in the street. He just soaped up along side the road.

There are no sidewalks by the way. Everything just goes from store front to street.

They are constantly doing road construction here. They don’t have a lot of time saving modern machinery. I was told they don’t want to take employment away from the masses.

They are having a wedding at the hotel tonight. The lower courtyard was filled with Christmas lights. I ‘clicked a snap’ but I don’t think it will come out.

Chuck and I traveled by rickshaw back to the office today. It wasn’t nearly as fun as I envisioned. The exhaust fumes were awful. There was thick black smoke everywhere. It’s actually the first time I’ve been outside in the streets.

When we finished up at the office and had Rasheesh drive us back, we thought it would be a great idea to walk down to the beach. I had never seen black sand before and I wanted some to take home. We went through the pool area. We thought it was odd that the gate was locked. We realized then that the lock was to keep people from the beach coming into the hotel. I had three Indian boys leer at me. (The slutty American woman in shorts, you know) There was an old woman begging for rupees.

Now we are bored. We want to explore, but were told it wasn’t in our best interest to go out into the city ‘unescorted’. So, we have to wait until Bob and Anup get here from the office. We’re going to ‘the residence’ for dinner tonight.

We figured out how to get the door open between our rooms. That was exciting. So we watched a cricket tournament followed with a rugby chaser.

Now I know what those flat bat things are that all the boys are carrying around.