Should Have Been Posted 10 June 2009

Today was my fifth day of work, and to celebrate my supervisor instructed the other two Indian interns to show me around Jodhpur! This was also after no one had bothered to show up to the police station/office until around 11 am. First Apana (my coworker) and I scooted back to her house, I met her (entire extended) family and enjoyed a cold coffee shake, her brother drove us back to the police station/office, picked up Sonu (my other coworker), and then dropped us off at Jodhpur's palace. Most of the palace is used as a five star hotel, and it costs a minimum of about $75 just to go inside. The Maharaja Suite room costs $10,000 a night. There were pictures of it in the little museum that we got to go into for about 30 Rs. Surprisingly, it was only built around the turn of the last century. It had all natural air conditioning and a completely underground swimming pool!

I'm settling into a nice little rhythm. I wake up to bed tea around 7:15, putter about journaling, hindi studying, bucket showering, and sun screening until 9. My room has to be completely tidy every morning so that Deva can easily clean everything. I don't know if I've ever lived in such an allergen free environment. At 9 Anitaji serves me a new sort of spicy porridge concoction (today was the first repeat--utbam, or something) with a milky shake. I approve my lunch, say yes to pickle, and fill up my water bottles. A fellow intern picks me up for work, and then I follow my coworkers blindly for a couple hours trying desperately to decipher their hindi. Sometimes we're in a village, sometimes we're in a police station. I rarely know what is happening. I try not to focus on that, though. For a little while I tried really hard to form Hindi sentences to ask the village women so that I could contribute, but I just learned that the village women only speak Marwari, so there goes that. Mostly I grill my coworkers for details on Indian life, village and city both, sporadically name objects in Hindi, and ask simple hindi questions that I generally can't understand the answers to. I get done around 3 pm, 4 pm at the latest, and nap until 6 or 7. I either stare at the ceiling or try to make up some little errand for myself until dinner at 9. After dinner I watch Hindi soap operas with my host family and then I fall asleep again around midnight. I like the work to nap ratio so far.

Shreena's 3 year old cousin, named Ishu?, came over today and he is darling. He demands toffees loudly in hindi and then yells, "dehko! dehko! (look)" while he copies everyone's standing positions. The first time he saw me, on Monday I think, he got really excited and said, "there's a barbie doll coming!" and now he calls me his barbie doll. Maybe that's why I like him so much.

Every day i am charmed anew by the roaming animals. Cows are everywhere, goats sometimes wander through, a donkey or two snack by the roadside, and bored looking camels drag even more bored looking drivers and wagons through the city.

I have only two pairs of pants. I think my project for the week/weekend will be to fix that. I really hope I find an internet cafe and get this posted soon.