actual dancing and chengari

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Tuesday August 14, 2007

That about brings us up to speed, I think. Today, as you may have noticed, is a quiet day. The internet has been in the fritz and I haven’t been able to get on all morning. Anyway, it has proven useful to write out the entries for my blog. Posting them will be a problem without the internet though….

Monday morning we went to the Chowk market, because Anisha and Casey are both leaving soon, and wanted one last trip. I ended up buying some metal bangles so that they won’t break when I put them on and cut up my hands. They’re much more my style anyway… so you can all expect massive numbers of bangles upon my return, because they are all super-cheap and they look pretty. We went back to some of the places that Rachna took us to get some material. I bought some really cool stuff to make a shirt and pants out of, as well as some plain black to make pants out of. The store still hadn’t gotten the nice scarves that we all wanted more of in yet, but we reminded him that we were still interested. I’ve decided that I am getting lots more clothes made before I leave, but I’ll just make the waist a bit big so that I can still wear them in Canada when I gain back all the weight I lost!

We didn’t stay as long as we had though we would at the Chowk, but had missed lunch, so we went to Manohar on our way back. I have found a few things that I absolutely love on the menu, and I’m even finding that the spice isn’t getting to me so badly anymore. Anyway, Manohar is great… you know those mushroom things that you get at Chu Chai? They taste like chicken wings, but they’re veg? Well, you can get those everywhere in India!! They’re called kote, and I’ve become obsessed with them. Manohar does them really well…

After that we went back to Ory Basti for our dance lessons. I find it kind of hilarious that we go out there for hours at a time, but we actually only went through our dance three times. They’re doing about six other dances, so they practice all of them, too. Derek decided to come with us. I think he was bored out of his head after a while though… poor guy. His first day in Bhopal he gets the family vacation from hell, and then he’s subject to hours of Bollywood dance!

It was the first day they I had actually gotten to dance, though, and the kids thought that I was absolutely hilarious. Anisha and Casey had already gone through the dance a few times on Saturday when I was in Delhi, but I was utterly lost the whole time. This was not helped by the fact that both the kids and the dance instructor would occasionally forget a move, or be doing it on the wrong side, so I was forever trying to figure out which was the right way to be doing it. Anyway, I apparently had a confused look on my face the whole time, and the kids kept making fun of me… Sigh. At least I can be the source of some amusement for them.

Gangaram sent our auto guy away when he came to get us at 6:30pm, and told him to come back at 7:30pm. By the time we left it was 8pm, and we got stuck at the train tracks in the biggest traffic jam I have yet to see in India. When a train goes through, cars, trucks, motorcycles and people line up along the whole width of the road on both sides. When the wigwags go up (yes, amazingly, there are wigwags), there is no space for anyone to get through on the opposite side. I think that matters were made worse because that particular road is a thoroughfare for gigantic Tata truacks, which really clog up the traffic. At any rate, it took us about an hour to get back to Sambhavna, whereas it usually only takes about fifteen or twenty minutes.

Masaum was waiting for us when we got back, as we were supposed to go to this activist girl, Meera’s, house for dinner. Since it was about 8:45pm, we decided to leave it for tonight instead though.

I think that that’s about it for now… I’ve been doing laundry all day, and have done up all the sheets and blankets from the other beds so that they’ll be nice and clean for new volunteers. I’ve also been in touch with the other CIDA volunteer coming to Bhopal. Her name is Prabjit, and she seems really nice. She’ll get here in early to mid-September sometime, so not long now.

By the way, it has already been a month since I got here!!! Can you believe it??