Winter in India

Recent Happenings:

1. Winter in India – I’m not sure one can really call a high of 80 and a low of 50 degrees “winter”, but to Indians, it is. November through January are the winter months, when all of a sudden you start seeing women put sweaters over their saris and walk around shivering at night. It really is funny because the westerners here are still walking around in tee-shirts. Their bodies really are acclimatized in a different way. My body is somewhat used to the heat now (although when it hits 115 in February, I might be thinking different).

2. Cooking – It is a challenge to cook without measuring cups and in an oven that has no real temperature setting. It is more of a challenge to cook something you never have before in such a setting. As I attempted on Thanksgiving with a pecan pie (as pictured here). While everyone seemed to like it, it was nowhere near as good as my Aunt Gail’s. Plus I think it should have cooked a lot longer but I had no way of knowing having never cooked one before. Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be really good, pretty close to an American dinner as I would think we could get, given there are no turkeys to eat here. We did have stuffed chicken, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and corn.




















3. I have become a pool shark – Just kidding. But my skills have improved as its one of our only forms of entertainment. There is a “party room” that we use occasionally for people’s birthdays, “going away” parties, etc. While I don’t think of myself as good at pool, I’m certainly better than a lot of the people coming through here. I look forward to showing off my new skills at Buff in the near future.

4. The Metric System – I think it is annoying that the U.S. is on a totally different system than the rest of the world. Why must we always be different? People walk around talking in kgs, kilometers, Celsius and I have no idea what to think. I was in Pune last weekend and using the treadmill at the healthclub in my hotel, running who knows how fast and who knows how far, at one point I decided to just run a 5k because I do know that distance!

5. Coffee Mugs – It is interesting that a coffee mug made in China costs what I would estimate about $6 from Target, and yet, .75 cents in India…quite a bargain.

6. Hole in the Wall – This morning I noticed a big pile of dirt behind my mini refrigerator. They are doing construction outside my building so I figured out quickly where it was coming from. The most disturbing thoughts I had were: 1) how long has this been here? 2) where has the family of critters/snakes set up camp in my room? and 3) how could these workers not realize they had knocked a hole into my wall?