My thoughts at this very moment...

So I just finished posting a blog, but had such a hard time (and a bad day) that I felt that I needed to vent by posting a blog about posting my blog. Does that make sense? So here are some things that have annoyed me today…

This morning we had no water. This is a common occurrence and on more than one occasion I have used a bucket of water to shower; we learned early on to always have one bucket on hand for such occasions.

It has been incredibly hot lately, and especially today. For a couple weeks we had heavy rain, which cooled the weather considerably, but now we are back to extreme heat. At night I have resumed what I have termed sleeping Starfish Style, which means that I lay on my back with my arms and legs as far away from my body as possible to avoid any unnecessary contact that would generate more heat.

I am sitting on my living room floor under a fan because it is soooo hot. It is almost 10pm but the temperature is still unbearable. While I am sitting here on my floor I have been using my flip flops to kill the innumerable amount of bugs that are crawling everywhere around me. The migration of bugs into our house has increased, and today there are new bugs crawling around. They look like earwigs, but are much bigger and seemingly stronger since it takes on average three hits with my flip flops to kill them. After hitting the bugs I sweep them behind me; I just counted over 30 dead bugs so now I’m sitting among corpses. We also have these tiny little ants that seem to be meat-eating ants. Given the option between a piece of food or a dead bug, the ants always choose the bug. They find their way into my bed and bite me. Today a bunch of these ants were busy dismantling a bee that died in our bathroom. I was so fascinated by it that I didn’t want to sweep them away. Now the bee is gone.

I spent the majority of my day doing laundry, a job I HATE. I used to hate doing my laundry in college…going to the laundry mat, filling the machines with precious quarters, and waiting around for them to finish. That sounds amazing to me now. Doing laundry here means filling up buckets, scrubbing the clothes on a concrete slab, rinsing them, rinsing them again, wringing them out and hanging them out to dry. Have you ever tried hand washing a sheet or sari? Or wringing the water out of a towel? It’s hard! I hate it! I really miss washers and dryers.

Today I switched out my mattress. The one I had on my bed is molding in the humidity. I think it is full of some kind of hay material and anything that touched my bed took on a lovely musty/moldy smell. I couldn’t take it anymore so I took a mattress that was vacated recently by one of our interns who returned home. I’m hoping it will at least mold more slowly than the other.

I guess I should include some positives amidst all this venting, so here are 3 revolutionary purchases that have made my life better:

1. Peanut Butter-We found peanut butter at Diraj and Sons (a store known for carrying hard to find items) and were overjoyed. For some reason it all comes back to peanut butter. In China, peanut butter was also a comfort food. Peanut butter toast was the perfect ending to a mediocre meal, or in extreme cases, it was the meal. Now I have my peanut butter with a banana wrapped up in a roti. Delicious!

2. Pillow-The pillow that was on my bed when I arrived is also made of some hay derivative. One day I noticed a terrible smell in my room and sniffed my way around looking for the source. It was my pillow. Thus began my search for a pillow stuffed with some kind of poly filling. After much searching I found one and happily handed over my precious rupees for an odorless night’s sleep.

3. Fabric Softener- No matter how much I scrubbed my clothes, they never smelled very good. I have a pile of clothes I brought from America that I haven’t worn yet because they still smell like home and I know that if I wear them they will never smell good again (I know I’m weird, but that’s beside the point). While shopping at Big Bazaar (a Wal-Mart type store) I saw a tiny little bottle of softener and had to try it. It works! Now my clothes smell nice after washing.

Ok, the bugs are increasing in number and are trying to crawl into my lap top. Time for a dousing of deet so I can head to bed…

Feverish Foreigners

We have Swine Flu.

At least that is what everyone seems to think around here. The day after returning from a week-long trip to Chennai we went to school and were surprised to hear that a picture of us at the Vyara train station was in the state newspaper. Why would they possibly put a picture of us in the paper? I clearly remember seeing the man take the pictures as I dazedly stepped off the train after 36 hours of traveling. During the train trip to Chennai I had actually yelled at a man for taking pictures of us, but after such a long trip I was too tired to care about this one man and his cell phone camera. What harm could a couple of pictures do?

A lot; especially if the pictures are included in an article about Swine Flu, a very hot topic here in India. In the article it said that we had been checked by train officials for Swine Flu after stepping off the train, which is completely untrue. It also went on to say that people should be cautious of foreigners as we tend to be the carriers of Swine Flu. It was so unbelievable that I just had to laugh. I hoped that few people had seen the picture and read the article. We didn’t get that lucky.

As we were driving home from school the next day our van passed a bus stop and someone yelled “Swine Flu!” at us. Kirsten and I just looked at each other and laughed, but it was hard to deny the fact that it actually made us feel bad. Then, while we were eating at a community dinner to celebrate Independence Day the server started muttering about Swine Flu to the other servers. Now I really felt bad. Did everyone think we were infected? Then again, as I went to class to teach my 9B students chatter about Swine Flu started. “Teacher! Your picture!” one of the students yelled. She ran out of the room and returned with the article. “Ah yes, that’s me” I said dryly. Great. Hopefully it will blow over soon.