Hannah BW

Mumbai: Day 18

Whoa, have I really been here 18 days? That's crazy.

Last night the monsoon returned as I was on my way home from (you guessed it) the ice cream shop (one scoop of dark chocolate, one scoop of kulfi, which can only be described as sweet cream that's gone a little off; it's delicious). I got completely drenched and walked through a puddle. Unfortunately I was wearing my white choridaar, and puddles really do nothing for white pants. Today I wore black jeans. It was raining so hard this morning that I went without my a.m. walk and took a cab to work instead. Then I was bummed because Akshata arrived late and Pratidnya didi sent her back home. In the morning session we're working on parts of the body. In the afternoon session, it's photosynthesis.

I'm working my way through Siddhartha in German (eine indische Dichtung) and it's not as hard as I expected it to be. Plus today while I was browsing in the bookstore I looked up some key phrases in their German dictionary. Opfer=sacrifice. Purchases? One (1) copy of the Economist: 200 Rs. Serious journalism: Px-less. The bookstore has a cafe inside it, which is great, because it's the only place I've found here that has decent coffee. There is a Starbucks-esque chain called Barista, but it's just not cutting it; they put sweetener in their iced Americanos. No go.

I hear that people like to know about the food here, so before I have to run to dinner: the bananas here are tiny, like half of American bananas (yeah, I know there's no such thing as an American banana); my favorite dessert is warm milk with cardamom (I think) and vermicelli noodles in it, called falooda; my favorite drink is lime juice with soda water and cumin/garam masala, called, what else, masala soda.

In other news, I bought a train ticket to Agra AND made a hotel reservation, so that means I actually will see the Taj Mahal. While on my way into the train station an old man pinched my butt, so I hit him (discreetly, of course) with my umbrella.

Monsoon: 2 HBW: 4 (because yeah, I ruined some pants, but if I hadn't had that umbrella, I would not have been able to retaliate against the pervy old man!)

Labels: kulfi, monsoon, perverts, umbrella

posted by HBW @ 8:21 AM