India- Day 6

India 

Day 6

Since I finished and passed the Level 2 instructor training, this day was for “master trainer” training. One of the main reasons for needing to come to India was so that I could be trained to train other teachers.  Anu picked me up on her motorbike this morning- I wish I could have gotten a picture of this. Anu trained me one on one all day. It went really well. Anu told me I passed, so now the whole SIP program in the US depends on me successfully training new teachers. Ah! Luckily the program is still really small and we may not need any new teachers for at least a few months. After I passed the training, Anu said we would eat with everyone in the office as a kind of “welcome to the club.” It was fun- but really overwhelming! She had ordered me take out again (this time- chipati), and almost everyone else had brought food from home. Everybody shares food, so they first each piled a spoonful of their food onto my plate (I was the only one eating on a plate, everybody else mostly ate out of the metal cylinder containers, or off the lids of the containers.) I had SO MUCH food, I was struggling to get it all down! Everybody wanted me to tell them how their food was. They each passed around their food to everyone else at the table too, and would tell people to take more of theirs.  Almost everybody’s food was some combination of the same ingredients- something made of rice (or in the rare case like chipati- made with wheat), then topped with some kind of chutney that has some really spicy peppers and tomatoes, onions, lentils, and usually cardamom.  Everybody was laughing hard and having a great time, but I couldn’t follow any of the conversation, even though some of it was in English. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. Anu explained that there were 5 different languages being spoken at the table. Some people speak Tamil (the local dialect) some speak Hindu (the official language) some speak Bangalore, I can’t remember the others, and then everybody speaks at least some English, since it is always taught in school. They all seem to be very close with each other, despite their own language barriers. I noticed that sometimes while they are working, somebody will take a phone call and can’t understand the language spoken, so they need to hand off the phone to Anu or somebody who can speak Tamil.

After we ate, Anu gave me a ride over to the other SIP office down the street. Even though it was just a few blocks away, there were so many neat things I saw on the streets. A few cows with crazy painted horns (remember cows are sacred here so they are many of them that roam the streets), and some really small temples, like the size of a closet. You can tell they are temples because they are usually especially colorful on the outside and have a lot of idols, figurines, and flower garlands adorning the doorway. If you can see inside, you can see the shrine and the idol(s) inside. Everybody was really nice at the office and asked again how I liked the birthday celebrations. I guess they had sent some of the pictures of the cake on my face to my boss, and he got kind of upset with them and explained how we don’t do that in America. Haha! I told them I actually liked it and thought it was funny. They were relieved. They introduced me to Neha again, and she explained that they have arranged a car for us so she would take Matt (they all call him Matthew here) and I out site seeing all day Friday. Yay! She had been working on the itinerary for the day all morning, and it sounded like a lot of fun.  Everybody also had heard that Matt wasn’t feeling well the night before, so they all asked about him and wanted to know how the dinner went.

After Anu dropped me off back at the hotel, Matt told me he had arranged for us to get massages and facials at a spa in town! We weren’t able to do it on my birthday because of all the impromptu celebrations, but he said he still wanted to take me. The Sowkhyra spa was pretty nice but I didn’t think any of the smells were very good. They all smelled like burnt almond to me. The experience itself was…. An experience to say the least. All I will say was that it started with having oil poured all over my head, and ended with having a 16 year old girl give me a bath.  I have done a lot of weird things in my life, but this was pretty high up there. Matt and I were separated the whole time (being treated by men) so I was actually really worried about him, but he seemed to take it a little better than I did, haha. Also, he didn’t get the personal bath.

We had planned to go to dinner at a place called Baan Thai that looked close to Sowkhyra. This whole thing was very typical. We flagged down a rikshaw (Neha told me it is usually better to just say “rik” or “auto”) and asked him to take us to Baan Thai. He nodded his head (meaning is indiscernible) but he didn’t seem to protest when we got in, so we thought he knew what we were talking about. Really, on the map, it looked like it was just down the street. We just didn’t want to walk since it was dark out and traffic is pretty freaky. He drove for a minute, then asked us to show him the address that Matt had written down. He head bobbed again, so we thought things were good. He drove for maybe 5 more minutes then stopped in the middle of the road (blocking tons of traffic) and jumped out to ask a stranger for directions (again, very typical). He would drive for a couple more minutes, then stop again to ask for directions. This happened 3 or 4 times, and it seemed like everybody was giving him directions. We circled the same few streets again. Finally somebody who spoke decent English saw that we were lost and asked where we were going. He said Baan Thai had closed a few years ago. Ah! Their website looked up and running, but I guess that didn’t mean anything. Made sense though. I felt bad for making the driver go in circles, but he was really good natured about it. We just gave up so told him to take us back to the hotel, which he found with no problems.  We just ate at the hotel buffet (we have complimentary breakfast and dinner) which we’ve decided just isn’t very good. Every other place we have eaten has had much better food than the hotel. Matt hates it, so he ordered some French fries when we got back to the room J I got to video chat with Stephanie for a little bit also!! So fun to see her and little M, who gets cuter every time I see her.  Thanks everybody for the concern about our digestion- we are actually doing fine now. It seems we have adjusted to the food as well as the time.