Learning to cope

Kids steal stuff
Grannies are groce
No flat surface to do yoga
So I miss that the most

The food is OK
If you eat it once or twice
Except that, the scenery
Is the only thing truely nice

The first few days are always the hardest. It kind of grew on me after that... and I found ways to deal with being lonely, bored, etc. Randomness!

[from Monday, Sep 22]
"Aama, the guest house granny, groced me out today. One moment she drank from this brown puddle next to the outside kitchen, which they use to wash-up. The baby was tied to her back, and for a second I thought she might make the baby drink too. I could just imagine the leeches sucking on her insides, growing to enormous sizes and then taking over her body... one too many horror movies. Another moment, while I was enjoying lunch [again] she starts scratching her shins. It sounded like a saw going through the bone."

"The meals are pretty much the same - mornings, bread (freshly made chapati) and they keep offering me the jam that is one the table, which I opened once and flies came out. Bad idea, but I don't have the heart to throw it away because I suppose I'm secretly hoping that Aama will stick her tongue in there one morning (eeeeuuuwww) - afternoons, potatoes (fried) or spaghetti (fried) with garlic/lentil paste and shalots, smelly but bloody great, and I pass up on the table ketchup too (God knows) and dinner, the Nepali national dish 'Dahl Baht', which is white rice with potatoes, onions and green beans and lentil soup which you pour over it and then mix up using your right hand. Never the left. Unless of course no one is looking..."

"We had guests one evening and there was a small dish of chillies on the table. Hell yeah I took one! And hell yeah it was hot as a MF! So I grabbed the sugar and mixed it with my rice (like Yuri showed me) and then the hiccoughs began. It was a laugh..."

"Had a 'shower' when I returned from the 4-6 class. Standing in the icey cold outhouse/toilet/shower room - chucked 3 pints of cold water and shower gel over my head, scrubbed like crazy and dried off with a pair of boxer shorts because - !!! - I haven't got a towel, nor even a face cloth with me, and I forgot to bring a mirror. So shaving was a mystery. I ended up using my video camera, with the screen turned around and an old pillow case for a cloth. Just for kicks I pressed record and monologued my exact feelings at that moment. Mixed."

"The coolest thing about the kids not understanding me at all is that I can just spurt outlandish B.S. whenever I feel like it. Like today - one of the pud-ke's touched a poster that I had hung up and it half came down so I said "nice one pud-ke, breaking my shit, better fix it before I call 5-0 and you can't sip 40's on yo mommas porch no mo!" And seconds later he had tried to fix it but he wasn't tall enough so it looked ghetto anyhow..."

To be continued...