March 25^th 2009

Today is the third day that our internet doesn’t work in our room. I asked them to come take a look at it today and they said they would come right away. An hour later they still hadn’t shown up. Then I got a call from the front desk asking me if anyone had come yet. I told them “no”. Still no one came today and seeing that it is 10 pm. I am guessing that they won’t come today. Oh well, I guess that that is just like most other things here….. I will have to ask them a few more times before anyone will actually come.

Today might just be the most boring day of my life. I tried to do some things, I taught my one violin student this morning. I cleaned our room, I went to lunch with Kevin, I read, I played about 50 games of Spider Solitaire. I am just extra bored today, I don’t know why. Today isn’t much different from other days, besides that I am more tired today. I am probably getting sick again, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise.

I also went out and used the computer in the lobby to try to check my email and say Hi to Cassie and mom Player, because it was their birthdays this week, but there was a man waiting to use the computer and he seemed a bit impatient with me. I thought it was best if I kept it short. So I am writing this on Microsoft Word and will copy it onto the blog once our internet is working again, that may be a while.

When our hot water heater broke (each room has its own 5 gallon water heater), it took over 2 weeks for them to come and fix it. They came and looked at it a few times, but didn’t do anything. I guess because the light would turn on, so they thought it was working even though we told them it wasn’t. But it did get fixed eventually.

Eventually…… that it the word I need to remember here. Things usually do get done, eventually.

We are planning a small trip this weekend to Khajuraho. It is a town that is about 250 km south of Kanpur. It is full of temples with intricate carvings. Many of the carvings are “erotic in nature”. It is a small town and it sounds nice. We are waiting for our reservation inquiry to be returned from the hotel that we want to stay in, hopefully we will get it tomorrow. We are going with our friends we met here, Yorn and Leese. They are a couple from Canada. Yorn is here teaching Civil engineering this semester . They are a lot of fun and interesting people. I am excited for our trip with them. It is good to have some friends here that we can discuss our experiences with. Because we have all had similar experiences we can talk about them openly with each other. That is nice. I like to tell you all about them too, but it is nice to have a two way conversation sometimes, and it helps me remember things better.

Jorn also is a pretty good photographer. He showed Kevin and me some pictures that he took right here on campus that are amazing! He has a really nice camera, so when you zoom in they are even more amazing! Most of them are of the birds here on campus. He said that he would give us some of them, I will try to post them. He took most of them on a remote edge of campus where the Ganges has a canal that runs off of it. There are no buildings there, just fields, and apparently a lot of cool birds and deer.

Did I mention the mosquitoes? I HATE them! They are everywhere, swarms of them. The worst is when I hang the laundry out to dry and go out the next day to gather it. There are tonz of them on the dark clothes. You can’t see them at first and then you disturb the clothes line and they all start swarming. The first time kind of freaked me out, it was unexpected. At least now I know. I don’t know why they only gather on the dark clothes though.

Tonight there are a bunch of them in the room. I have killed about 15. I still don’t know how they get in here! I stuffed plastic bags in every crevice I could find the second week that we were here. Somehow they still make it in. It is like they wait by the door and every time we open it, they all rush in.

It was really funny because the other day Kevin asked his mentor/professor here why they didn’t have screens on the windows and doors here with all the bugs and mosquitoes. His professor said “well…….” and just got this look on his face like a light bulb just went off. Like that thought had never crossed his mind. Wow! What a good idea! Screens! Or something. He didn’t finish his sentence, just left it at “well….” .

So it was my birthday a week ago. The big 31. To me that is big. I am officially in my 30’s. Now I must admit that I missed having my close friends and family around me on that day. Actually it didn’t hit me until the day after my birthday. Our dear friends, (I don’t remember their last name so I just call them the “Sundars” because that is the dads name.) threw me a little surprise party! I went that afternoon to give the son, Stephan, his daily violin lesson at 4 pm and they were all hiding in the kitchen, along with Kevin. They had gotten me a cute little chocolate cake and made lunch. The cake was real! I mean it tasted like cake! It was delicious and moist and even had a layer of mousse. That was what I really thought I would miss this year for my birthday. Sheba ordered it special from a bakery. It was really sweet and quite a nice surprise.

I told Kevin I just wanted to watch a movie on the computer and have Dominos deliver a pizza for dinner. We had ordered from Dominos before, but for some reason this time it was very difficult. I won’t give a play by play but basically, it took over 3 hours, 4 phone calls, 3 people, and a lot of frustration to get our order. We were sure that they had forgotten us (for the second time that night) when our doorbell buzzed at 11:20 pm. We had started all this business just before 8 pm. Of course they got our order wrong and it ended up costing almost twice as much as they had originally told us. It was useless to try to argue the price with them though, we knew that so we didn’t even try. Our pizza crust was filled with a (delicious?) mayonnaise like filling too. We didn’t know what it was, well what it was supposed to be, we knew what it was….GROSS! So we just ate the toppings off the top. Actually we had ourselves a good laugh about it, though Kevin did apologize a few times that night. What did he have to be sorry for? He tried to please me and was very persistent about getting that pizza! What more could he do?

Last night as we were leaving to go to meet with Yorn and Leese the “bug truck” passed right in front of us as we went to cross the street. This truck sprays heafty clouds of bug spray into the air. It shoots out the back and clouds up the whole street. I was scared of it. I think that it might kill people if they breathe it in in the concentrated form like that. Even hours after one has passed the air is barely breathable (to me). Sometimes Kevin will come home and his clothes will reek of the stuff. I think they spray it more often in the academic area. We held our breath and ran through as fast and far as we could before we drew our breath in. Leese told us that when she was exposed to it, she broke out in hives! I hope we don’t develop some weird disease…..

Things sure are different here! It keeps you on your toes that’s for sure!