India Day 11 Monkey on a String

Today was very similar to yesterday, more painting. The room is getting close to being finished. It's looking quite fabulous if I do say so myself. I saw the funniest thing today. There is a small, dirty little street right outside the center where the community’s children come to play. They are very lovely children with big bright smiles. Every time that I walk by them they run up, say hi, and shake my hand. “Photo, photo, photo,” they all chant. They love having their picture taken. Anyhow, the game that they had come up with was quite simple and incredibly amusing. They tied a piece of food to the end of a string and threw it up in a tree. “What’s this,” the monkey thought to himself,” free food and all I need to do is grab it.” However, every time that the monkey went for the food the children would jerk the string putting the food just out of reach. Then they would laugh and laugh and laugh. It was just too funny.

After work, a few of us took a tuk tuk to the mall. The mall was quite interesting because it looked exactly like any American mall, very clean, very nice, overly expensive, full of all of the typical stores, and very very western right down to all of the white people on the advertisements. I guess the only major difference would be the armed guards who patted you down at the entrance. I am also still having a hard time getting the girls to stay up and play cards with me. We did play BS and Jessica played a few rounds of Speed with me. I had to travel to India but alas I have found new people to play speed with.

In travel news I almost got hit by another bus but in India, almost doesn’t count. Speaking of dangerous busses, the one this morning was so full that the ticket guy tried to kick two fellows off because the doors wouldn’t close. They somehow managed to push their way in though. Also, on that same ride, a lady who hadn’t bought a ticket got kicked off. There was a lot of arguing. I think the bus inspectors were being kind of mean kicking off an old lady. She had the 10 rupees in her hand and was willing to buy the ticket. In case you didn’t notice I stopped missing home a long long time ago. I think it was last Thursday. I guess I just know that when I get home I will have to go back to work. The European girls here were horrified last night to hear that I only get 2 weeks paid vacation. In Europe everyone gets an automatic 6 weeks after working for only one year. Even Australians get 4 weeks. This isn’t fair. I’ve been defending America up to this point but that is just inexcusable. Well its 11 so I guess I’ll go to bed in a minute, no one but me has been up for the last hour. I wish I had the internet here.

Here is my daily walk to the center part 2, its shaky and bad quality but it will give you the basic idea.