Remember how I ended the last post? Yeah. About that...

When I returned to Varanasi I hadn't realized that I would be returning to a frigid Minnisotan winter. In reality, it was probably only about 50 degrees during the day, but we were all monumentally unprepared for it. For four days, I swear to god, I had to sleep in wool socks, a wool sweater, a wool hat, and two wool blankets. In that state, I could almost put myself in a place where I began to remember what warmth felt like. I was also really itchy.

Anyway, after those few days of intense arctic weather, it warmed up a little and not the weather is roundabout perfect. At night it's cold enough to use a blanket, but warm enough to not need a wool hat, and during the day it's cold enough for a light jacket or a scarf. It's absolutely perfect, and I want it to last forever. I would maybe liken it to early October in New England minus the trees, brick, and reliable electricity. Speaking of reliable electricity, and using this as a way to get off the topic of the weather, did you know that only 5% of the government primary schools in the Varanasi district have electricity? That's insane! There are a lot of non-government primary schools though (especially within the city), and many have very low school fees due to government subsidies. But still.

Do you know why I know that? Because, if you remember, I have an 80-100 page research paper due on April 15. My Saturday routine included a morning run with Sara, followed by a shower and then a breakfast of flapjacks (there are two places in this city to get good pancakes. I found and subsequently annexed both of them). For the rest of the day, Sara and I sat in my room not talking and writing our papers. I would say we were in my room for a total of 7 hours and I wrote 3 single spaced pages of the most pretentious writing I think I have ever penned. Perhaps that was ever penned. I actually wrote the sentence, "Now based upon clause (1) of Article 29, we can assume that the institutions alluded to in Article 30’s clause (1) are institutions specializing in a certain minority’s language, script, or culture."

Yeah, I wrote that.

But, let is go back to before the running, fun-loving time of this weekend. Last Sunday I woke up and spent the day tooling around my neighborhood, jumping from one cafe to the only other cafe in town, and then at night went to a concert. Just to paint that picture for you, a concert here means sitting on mats on the floor and listening to sitarist or whatever other Indian classical instrument for at minimum one hour. So, during the concert I started to feel a little nauseous, but that happens all the time. An hour later it had progressed to something I don't often feel in India, and I decided to go home.

Over the next few days I partook in some recreational vomiting and spent all my time in bed pondering what death really was, and whether or not your heart had to completely stop beating to mean your life was over. The past week, as you may have gathered, was a bad week for me. I didn't do any work besides some extremely poorly written Hindi assignments that now have more red ink on them than black, and I spent approximately all my time thinking, 'This doesn't happen in America.' I would then move on to what ice cream flavors are available in America, and then would think about what my first mexican food would be. (I eventually came to the conclusion that it would be two chicken tacos with a side of rice and pinto beans with extra sour cream. But this is all very premature; I still have a few months to fine tune it. Perhaps a pupusa is in order, but who can say?)

In addition to a bad case of Delhi Belly (or the India Heebie Jeebies as my brother calls it) I got a cold the day after I arrived in Varanasi. After a short five days I was over the cold, but the cough has since decided to take up shop. I wake up in the morning with a swamp in my lungs. I'm going to repeat that because it's not a joke. There is a swamp inside my lungs. I cough and think, "Hey, I remember that time I went to Florida," or, "What's the difference between crocodiles and alligators again?" I think my lungs are slowly liquefying and I am powerless to stop it. This is all a long way of saying that my health has seen better days. That includes, for your information, any day in the last 20 and a half years.

Well, I am going to take a nap and then talk to a doctor. There are rumors of viral meningitis going around, and luckily two people on this program (Mary Beth and I) have been flirting with the idea of being bedridden for the last week. Wish me luck!

-allison