My Roommate Chris: The Iron Chef of Sweets

I had deep fried cookie dough last night. With a Cadbury chocolate center.

That's all.

Survey Post

In the last week, number of times seeing...
A dead dog: 2
A dead mouse: 1
A dead cricket: 80 billion
A mouse in my room: 6
A mouse in my bed: 2
Ants carrying other dead ants: 80 billion
Two men making out: 1 (It blew my mind)
The biggest spider in the world: 2

In last week, number of times eating/drinking...
Bugs by accident: 3
Food that I knew had bugs in it: 2
Amazingly delicious food: 2
Tuna melt: 1
Homemade mango juice popsicles from our freezer: 4
Chai: 40
Lassi: 4 (The lassiwalla on my corner and I are best friends. For real.)
Free meals: 11

In last week, number of times feeling like a complete fool...
In front of my Urdu professor: 30 (Sub point: Number of times Urdu professor has put his forhead on the table in what I can only guess is frustration: 8)
In front of my Hindi professor: 10
In front of any Indian: 200

In last week, number of...
Children talked to: 10
Misconjugated tenses: 75
Overeager rickshaw wallas: 20
Teenage boys that gawked at me and whispered in Hindi (during interviews): 36
Teenage boys that gawked at me and whispered in Hindi (outside of research): 50
Number of kids who speak better English than I do: 22

That's all I have to say. I thought of this list when I was riding my bike by dog carcass number two. I figured it was a susinct way of communicating to you all what my current life is like.

As a side note, I want to congratulate my brother on getting a job as a contributing editor at WIRED Magazine. In addition to being employed, he's like the coolest guy I know.

-allison

Super Shiny Flickr Page

Hey everyone, so there's that nifty slideshow thing I added (after an uncharacteristically significant amount of time spent yelling at my computer) in the top right corner of my blogger page. It's great, right? Well, there's more where that came from!

If you click on it it should send you right on over to my Flickr account page, whoes URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahcarney/.

Good luck getting there and understanding my organization method. Flickr only lets you have three big groups of pictures with labels, so you're going to have to sift through everything. Have fun!

God, I hate formatting.

-allison

Everything in India Either Doesn't Work or is on Fire

So I'm going to have to go over lots of things in this post. Here is a quick table of contents:

Chapter One: Mussoorie
Chapter Two: The Train Back to Banaras
Chapter Three: My New Apartment
Capter Four: Motorcycle

Chapter One: Mussoorie

After a few days in the town, we discovered a restaurant named Kalsang's.

Before I really delve into Kalsang's cuisine, I need to make something very clear. I don't think when I say this it will have the weight it deserves, but I'll give it a try. There isn't cheese in India. Take a moment with that sentence. In India, there isn't cheese. Think about the implications for almost every meal Americans eat.

Yeah. It makes me hate everyone in the States, including my former self.

Okay, so in this restaurant, which had Tibetan and Chinese food, there was one dish that I got every time. It's name was Spinach and Cheese Momos (to get them fried was a 5 rupee charge- needless to say they were always fried). Was the cheese definitely Velveeta? Yeah. Have I had better momos? Sure. Were they the best godamn thing to grace this planet? Definitely. I ordered them to the hotel three times, and ate them at the restaurant at least six. This means that out of the 15 days I was there, I ate them on a total of nine days; If you had caught me on any day, the chances that I had eaten or was planning on eating Spinach and Cheese Momos (fried) would be 60%. Sadly, I have no photos of them, and I apologize for that.

Another culinary experience we had was ordering Domino's in Mussoorie. Domino's in Mussoorie wasn't always bad, but it was definitely not always good. The first time we ordered it we decided to go out on a limb and order the "Cheese Burst" pizza. It was 20 more rupees, and everyone was hoping that it meant stuffed crust. The following is what it actually was.








Now, this was straight-up melted white Velveeta cheese (same as the momos, except this is disgusting) poured on the pizza. And though we ate it, we also admitted it was a grave error in judgement. As of right now, it's sort of a sore spot in the group and whenever anyone brings it up it's more in remorse than anything else.

Despite the culinary highs and lows, the view from Mussoorie were amazing. Here are a few photos to sift through.

That final picture is the view from where we had class every day. It's okay with me if you hate me for a minute while you click on that and maximize the window.

Chapter Two: The Train Back to Banaras

The train itself didn't have much special about it. I, obviously, spent a lot of time sitting in the doorways and listening to music. Though, I will say that this time I got two very extreme reactions. One woman, after giving me a stern talking-to in Hindi about, I can only assume, the danger involved in sitting there, left in a motherly huff. After about ten minutes she came back, but with candy. I gladly took the candy, a kind of spicy tamarind candy that vaguely reminds me of whiskey, and thanked her, telling her it was my favorite candy. The first time I had it, by the way, I was disgusted by it. Now I think it's delicious. It's also two for one rupee, which is great. The other reaction I got was full on screaming by a man who was personally offended by what I was doing. He, like the man on the train to Mussoorie, told me he would be back in five minutes. Like before, I didn't move, and I never saw him again. I'm starting to think India's made up of garbage, goats, and empty threats.

The one truly amazing thing to happen on the train was the fact that Virendra, my Hindi teacher, was given a puppy in Mussoorie, and he had to take it back on the train. He named it Woody. the first picture is of the three boys and the puppy, with the second being the puppy lying on Sam's tummy. I can't even talk about how cute this dog was. It was incredible.

Indian trains are absurdly crowded. The tickets usually get messed up and people usually get on earlier than they are supposed to. The result of this is that many people don't have a place to sit, so they stay in the connections of the train and everything's very crowded and uncomfortable. But, that all changes when a white girl walks through carrying a small animal wrapped in a blanket. Everyone thinks it's a baby, and every single person clears out. It's incredible. I will use this technique on every train ride from here on in.

Chapter Three: My New Apartment

Due to a variety of reasons, chiefly the fact that my old apartment didn't have a kitchen and my room had three doors, I decided to move out. I got an apartment in Assi Ghat (the Western part of Varanasi) which is a lot busier than my old neighborhood, and overall more fun. Here are two pictures of my apartment: my bed and my bathroom respectively.

My first move in my kitchen was to make Macaroni and Cheese, due to the lack of cheese problem previously mentioned. Here is the glorious (yet fuzzy) picture of that.

The next day I made salsa with Ed and then added it to a batch of scrambled eggs I was making. It sort of looked like tabouli, but it was totally delicious. I have three people who can attest to that. I make damn good Indian salsa.

My new apartment is pretty perfect. I love the kitchen and the refridgerator and my bathroom and even my mouse roommate. I haven't named him, but I've seen him about four times in three days. So far, he's been okay. The biggest problem with roommates is a ridiculous ant infestation reminiscent of a story my brother told me a few years ago about his ants carrying a gecko up the kitchen wall to their lair.

Yeah, it's a lot like that.

Chapter Four: Motorcycle

So Pandit-Ji (he runs errands for the program and is generally awesome. For the purpose of this story it is important to know that he speaks no English.) fetches me a Royal Enfield mechanic and brings him to my house. The man and him talk for a few minutes in front of me; I understand about 1/5th of their conversation. Pandit-Ji then finesses me and the mechanic into a rikshaw and we go to my old apartment. Before we leave the mechanic asks Pandit-Ji if I know Hindi. He says yes. This is the first mistake made.

It takes about ten minutes to get to my house, and I ask the mechanic what his name is. He says Rajesh. He asks me my name, and I say Anamika (my Hindi name that everyone loves). We don't talk for the rest of the ride.

At the apartment Rajesh fiddles with the bike, but mostly just talks really fast with a lot of pan in his mouth. Pan can be found in two forms in India, a leaf wrapped around a betel nut and some other goodies, or little packets found on carts on the side of the road that look very much like strips of condoms. In any case, I can understand very little Hindi, and even less when there are two ounces of red mush in someone's mouth. We have a brief conversation, and he tells me I need a new battery. I ask him how much it is, and he says it costs 1700 rupees. That's about 1500 more than I am willing to spend on this 30-something-year-old bike. I ask him to charge the battery first, and he agrees. We then walk to his shop. His shop is a 15-minute walk away without a 400 pound motorcycle that won't turn on. He laboriously walks my bike there, and I, still getting stared at by everyone, walk next to him feeling terrible the entire way.

We get to the shop, and he proceeds to take apart the headlight, the undercarriage, the seat, pretty much everything, while this battery is charging. After three hours (I left and came back) the bike can turn on. I make excited-white-girl noises and him, his guru-ji (Dinesh) and four children stare at me. I smile and promptly look away. He revs the engine a few times and things are looking up. Then the clutch falls off. Just clean off the bike. It's just really great.

He says he can repair it in five minutes. He leaves on his bicycle to get the part and I stay behind with Dinesh, talking to him about his family and where he lives. From what I gather, Dinesh is Rajesh's uncle (the son of Rajesh's grandma) and though they don't live together, they eat together. I dont understand, but he thinks I did.

Rajesh returns and after another 15 minutes he's back. I pay him with all I have, but I need to get more rupees. I tell them that I will leave, alone, and then come back in ten minutes. I say alone because it seems as if they really wanted Rajesh to come with me, but I felt that I would be better if I traveled without someone on the back, seeing how inexperienced I am. In retrospect, I probably should have taken them up on their offer instead of deciding to go alone. However, this is the first time I have driven on Indian roads and I will say that I did a damn good job. I didn't hit anyone or thing, and I only stalled out once. When I got back to my apartment, however, it was a completely different story.

There is a little ramp (at a 45 degree angle and about 2 feet high) to get up to the apartment, and I thought I could ride up it. That, after try two, was apparently incorrect. After try one, I'll take a gander that only six men were around me. After try two where I almost fell off the edge of the ramp into a gully, I'll guess somewhere around thirty. After a few minutes of watching the white girl with the kickass bike, one Indian man handed someone his baby and walks it up the ramp. Was I ashamed? Less so than when I was hit by a motorcycle, and not much more than I am on a daily basis. So, I get my money from inside and then I have to bring the motorcycle back down the ramp. At first I walk really slow with it, and everything seems okay. Then the motorcycle starts going faster than I want and almost falls over. Five children run over to hold it up and straighten it out. I am absurdly grateful. The same men from before are still there. They are actually rolling on the ground laughing.

I get on the bike and one thing is clear. I don't have a clutch. Somewhere between getting to my house and leaving my house the part totally snapped. I instantly blame the mechanic until I see that the cement of the part snapped. The cement. When I almost fell into the gully, I must have hit the clutch on the gate and boken it. Anyway, I was pissed. Then I walked it back to the mechanics, incredibly angry. It took so long and I was sweating more than any analogy I can make. I get there, he replaces it, I meet an Israeli who's greatly impressed with my bike, I pretend as if I've had it for ages, I pay Rajesh, and I take off. I get back to the house and walk it up the ramp, revving it the whole way, without incident. It takes one try and I even do it with some limited agility. After all this, I'm feeling pretty good about my skills.

This morning I walk it down the ramp also without incident, and try to start it. The battery is dead again. I try a few more times, but give up rather quickly. An Indian man (they love helping white girls with their motorbikes) tries to start it, but can't. He shrugs and starts to walk off. Before he does I yell to him to ask him to help me walk it up, for without the bike on I don't have the engine to help me. He does it deftly and quickly, and the men who work across the street are still laughing, but I have an in tact clutch and somewhat in tact pride, so I feel like I won.

In short, I'm over the bike. It's too expensive and I can't deal with it. I think I'm going to give to Daya, who's the guy who helped me retrieve the bike from the rail station, sometime in the next week. It's too bad because the bike's totally badass, and I really do love driving it. But frankly, I'd prefer one that works. In any case, I think this might be the final chapter for me and the bike being together. I'll miss it, but I can make do with my bicycle.

Well, that's about it for now. For the next few days I think I'm going to spend a lot of time in my apartment watching movies and reading. I plan on avoiding all the Indian men whom I've met recently. They've all been friendly and therefore very disconcerting.

-allison

Hot Dogs in India: Yay or Nay?

I am getting on a train to return back to Varanasi in a few hours, and I will be back and settled in a few days. I am so excited for the train. Oh man, so excited.

This entry will not be an epic one, but I do promise return to my absurdly long, photo ridden entries soon. Therefore, I will not be writing a very long entry about Mussoorie quite yet. I will, however, include one very important note.

I have heard more Enrique Iglesias in the last two weeks in Mussorie than I have in my entire life combined. And I'm including 8th grade.

I'll write soon.

-allison

Mussoorie-tastic

I just want to preface this with two things. First of all, there have been a number of terrorist attacks in India recently, and I want everyone to know I'm okay. The bombs went off in Delhi, which is pretty far away from me, and right now I'm in an incredibly safe city. Second of all, and more importantly, there will be no pictures in this post. I know, I know. But I apologized, so now we should be able to move on.

We took a 20-hour train (it left at 10 AM and got in at 6 AM the next day) to Mussoorie on Saturday. I, obviously, spent the majority of my time sitting in the doorway, inches from death. Almost every Indian who walked by said "It's quite risky" or "That's incredibly dangerous" or "I'm going to come back in five minutes to make sure you're not doing that anymore". The latter man never did come back, so I remained undisturbed.

I don't know why train travel affects me the way it does, but oh my god it is amazing. Never once while on a train have I just wanted it to be over. Even when I was "sleeping" during the night, not being able to extend my legs, abet my sweating, or ignore the cockroaches, did I want the trip to be over. And I'm not lying about the cockroaches; one scurried over my pillow while I was reading. I pretended it didn't happen until the train ride was over, when everyone finally broke down and told their own cockroach-in-their-bed stories. Denial, I swear to god, has been an invaluable tool for my continual survival in India.

The first thing everyone remarked on when we got off the train in Derhadoon (an hour-long taxi ride from Mussoorie) was the temperature. It wasn't cold enough for a long-sleeve shirt, but it was significantly below "I don't care if wearing underwear and nothing else is culturally inappropriate; I'm DYING." As the taxi climbed the mountain, it got even cooler, and everyone was happier for it.

After a quick nap and a walk around the city, everyone had decided that Mussoorie was incredible, nay, Paradise. Firstly, it has a fair amount of Western places, of which Varanasi is surprisingly bereft. Secondly, the fact that my forearms aren't sweating makes me be over the moon for Mussoorie and, consequently, India. I can't stress that latter point enough.

Guess what's not on my forearms? Sweat.

And I realize it wasn't a tricky question considering the previous sentences.

So far in Mussoorie, I have bought a few presents, a pair of pants to sleep in (because shorts are TOO COLD), a shawl, and a sweater. All day I have been wearing a sweater, and, my dear friends, what a glorious, glorious day it's been.

Yesterday I was sitting in an internet cafe (the internet never started working, but I tried for a good half hour), reading a book, and I glanced down at the street. In one of the stores, I saw a Sikh man collecting a dozen or so scarves someone had looked at, but had left in piles throughout the store. The man slowly walked through his abandoned store, picking up the discarded scarves and piling them near the register. He would pick up one scarf, fold it in half, put one edge of the center fold in his mouth, and fold it twice more. After each scarf was folded, he would meander throughout the store to put them, one by one, back in place. Now, I don't know why on earth i had this reaction, but it was most comfortingly American thing I have experienced since being in India. It doesn't make much sense, because I don't have a strong memory from the US involving folding scarves, but everything about India that I can't stand, the burning trash, the honking, the mangy dogs, all went away while I was watching him. It was as if I saw this man, who had in fact tried selling me a scarf previously that day, as exactly the same as everything I know. Maybe I had to see an action that simple, that closely linked to muscle-memory, to feel that way. I'm not sure. India's been overwhelming to me, and it was my first taste of real comfort.

So, that's it of Mussoorie so far. I have taken a lot pictures, so hopefully I will be able to post them soon. I will be in Mussoorie until October 2nd.

-allison

Accident Report GH-726

It's been almost a week since I moved in to my apartment, and I have just gotten the time/internet availability to post pictures. Why did I not have internet? Cheifly because I'm in India, but also because monkeys tore down our internet lines. Because I'm in India.

I have a few gripes, but overall it's a pretty good apartment. Here's a picture of my room and the almost Brooklyn-esque style kitchen.





My room is okay, I like my view of the kitchen. My shelves, on the other hand, are totally boss. I'm also the only one with a bed frame not completely made out of wood, but don't tell my roommates. They might steal it from me.

These are two views from my apartment. One: Watter buffalo. The other: Pretty sunset.







The temperature's cooled off a bit since my last entry, but is still hovering a degree or two above sweltering, and a few degrees shy of Hell. I have been sleeping outside due to the planned power cuts (10am-2pm and 1am to 4am) wherein I cannot enjoy the minorly helpful breeze of my ceiling fan. I use the word "enjoy" extremely tentatively. Due to my porch-camping I have gotten, as of the most recent count, 49 bug bites (the 49th happened during the actual count). Now, these bug bites don't really look like mosquito bites, but I'm deciding they all are due to the terrifying reality of what kind of bites they could potentially be. That being said, my 49 mosquito bites are treating me really well.

Okay, I know that everyone knows India's dirty, but I don't think I ever really knew exactly to what extent that was true. I have had a few Sex-and-the-City-Opening-Sequence-esque moments where a motorcycle has driven by and splashed me with the most horrifyingly opaque water I have ever seen. Quick question: what's worse than seeing the opaque waters of India? Smelling the opaque waters of India. Oh Lord. River banks of trash + rivers of dead bodies + untold fecal count = a smell I have only experienced here and in the hall of my freshman dorm. Seriously. Whoever spilled that vinegar and DIDN'T CLEAN IT UP is a huge jerk.

Okay. Here is a picture of my feet after a day in India.

Needless to say I shower every night.

Now that I have an apartment I almost have a daily routine, which is making India a little easier to get used to. Though, there is a Hindi intensive retreat that starts this weekend, and is two weeks long. I think when I come back from the retreat, which is in Musoorie, I will be able to really settle in.

Yesterday was one of the better days I've had in India. I biked around Benaras, went to a cafe called "Bread of Life" and had surprisingly good pancakes. They were like...really good. Yeah. After pancakes, I biked around more, got lost, and finally found my way to Lanka market, which is near the program house. I used my Hindi to buy some flashcards and a pencil case that has several soldiers on it with huge lettering that says "EASTER". I then walked across the street and bought a soda. When I was walking away with the recycled bottle, he yelled to me about the bottle I was holding. I yelled back, "Me bottel vaapas karoongi!" which means "I will return the bottle!" He wobbled his head and went back inside, which I figured meant he understood me. After coming through on my promise, a little girl came up to me and asked me for money. I bought her a piece of candy, had a brief conversation with her in Hindi, and biked off. After all of this, I was feeling totally self-reliant and in control.

Then I was T-boned by a motorcycle.

It was totally my fault, and right after it happened I just looked at him, my bike, muttered "maf keejiye" (excuse me) and hobbled to the side of the road. He slowly drove off, and one by one, about a dozen Indian men came over to help me. All of them were speaking super fast, super colloquial Hindi. The front wheel of my bike was bent, and the spokes were poking out everywhere. One man took my bike from me and starting kicking it. Another started yelling "FIX! FIX!" During this time I lost every single Hindi word I had ever learned and stood, clutching my bike, shaking my head at everyone who tried to speak to me. Finally someone spoke to me in English and told me to go to a mechanic. I nodded, because my bike couldn't roll anymore due to the front wheel fracture, and a rikshaw took me to a mechanic. As I was leaving I waved to everyone and used the only Hindi word I could scrounge from my memory, "Danyevad" (Thank you). They all seemed very happy to watch the white girl fumble with a broken bike, and I was happy to oblige them.

We arrived at a mechanic's shop (two tool boxes and eight men on the side of the road) and I got off the rikshaw. The rikshawalla said I owed him 30 rupees. I shook my head and, with my handicapped bike in hand, argued with this man, saying that the drive was only 5 minutes and it should be 20 rupees. During this exchange, all 8 men came up and to watch me sputter, all jumping in to agree with one side or the other. Eventually I handed the man 20 rupees and walked away. And just to clarify, "walking away" really means lifting the front of my bike up and dragging it 10 feet away. The rikshawalla rode off, and I turned my attention to the mechanics. (By the way, for the rest of my time there, I would understand snipits of conversations about how I wouldn't pay 30 rupees to the stubborn rikshawalla.)

First off, they were all absurdly nice to me. One man walked across the street solely for the purpose of procuring a stool for me. He also ended up getting me a soda (not the brand he said he would, but beggars can't be choosers, I suppose). The man knows even less english than I know Hindi, so our conversation was incredibly incongruous and even now I don't know most of what was said. Here's a good example of what our conversations were like.

Him: Your country from?
Me: USA
Him: Me? Bengal.
Me: (raises eyebrows and nods slowly) Neat!
Him: Me- Bengal. Jogging.
Me: (Squints)
Him: Jogging.
Me: (Squints)
Him: Jogging (makes running motion with arms)
Me: Wow! (I still have no clue as to what he's talking about)
Him: (Smiles) Ahh! Bengal! (Hands me his driver's license).
Me: Jogging!
Him: Yes! Jogging!

I still don't know if he just enjoys jogging, is a professional jogger in Bengal, or is even the national joggER of Bengal. Either way, he loves to talk about it.

So after 2 hours of, more or less, that exact exchange, my bike was fixed up with all new spokes. (In retrospect, I think when he kept saying "New! New!" over and over again, he may have been asking me if I wanted all new spokes, and not telling me I needed them. But I'm over it.)
At first the second mechanic said it was going to be 250 rupees, I took out my wallet and (sort of) lied by saying I only had 200 rupees. He wobbled his head saying "it's okay, it's okay" and took my money. Jogging man then came over and yelled to the second mechanic to give me ten rupees. Without contest, he gave me 10 rupees. So, somewhow the price went from 250 to 200, to 190 rupees. I'm still confused as to why this happened, but I didn't argue. Looking back, it was probably because I said that I would come back when my motorcycle broke down, which is going to invariably happen. Anyways, In the end it only cost me about 5 dollars, and I rode off into the sunset.

Here are a few pictures of bike post-fixing. I'm sorry I didn't get any photos of the broken bike, because my camera wasn't on me. But, look how shiny it is now!

Well, I'm going to go pick up the Royal Enfield today and hopefully I will actually be able to come home with it. I have no idea how lofty that dream is. We'll see.

-allison