Whelp back to Cochin we are and boy am I feelin it but I realized I still am enjoying it. While I’ve been writing about the many adventures of Rice Land as Shachi likes to call it I haven’t said much about my everyday activities. Let me start with the beginning:
We wake up everyday to get to lunch at 8:00am and YES that is all 7 days of the week. Except now a days Shachi and I have been eating breakfast at around 8:45 and we’re usually the last one’s running in before they take away the food. Did you ever think that you would have to be on such a tight schedule to be fed? If I miss breakfast it means that I get to eat chaiya (or chai) and biscuits for breakfast- while it may be great it just won’t hold me over and the reason for this comes later. We then go to the computer lab and check our email for about a half hour and finally get to work at 9:30 where EVERYDAY we sing the Rajagiri National Anthem- which I have to say is the coolest song in the world. Once all that commotion is over we finally get to work and take a break at 1- we know its lunch time because there is this xylophone sounding music that comes on. It’s almost like going to school again!! I’m not sure if I mentioned this but the NGO that we work for is based out of a school –Rajagiri. They have ever grade from kindergarten all the way up to Masters! We then have lunch at 1 so in between we’re hounding people around campus to get us our documents or our data or just simply translate something from Malayalam to English or vice versa. If only I knew the language. When it’s finally lunch time we know what we’re in for- a BIG pot of rice, some yellow curry looking stuff and usually green beans. As you can see things get real old after a while so most of the time I don’t eat much. Many times we’re surprised with fruit (which we are very fair about and ration 2-3 pieces a person) or ladu’s or some kind of yummy sweet treat. We continue to work until our unofficial 4 o’clock Chai break.
Anyhow we then continue working and at around 5:30 or 6:00pm yoga starts and we lather on the odomos (our mosquito repellant) and Shachi sprays herself and the rest of us around her while she’s doing so with the Lemon Eucalyptus Mosquito Repellant. I gladly take the extra repellant but the others I’m not sure they love it so much. Well on with Yoga we go for about an hour and next we have a break before dinner which is at 8. Well there are so many options for this break- most of the times we’re returning emails or some of the girls go running (which I won’t do because I feel like the mosquitoes will attack me) or recently we played badminton. Actually we asked our friend Praveen to get us rackets just the other day and he had two guys let Jessica and I borrow them and we had at it. We weren’t so bad except for the two incidences that I slipped and fell. You would think I would learn the first time not to play in flip flops or go in the area that’s slippery but NOPE! Well after the second I definitely stopped entering that area but I didn’t stop playing until the lights went out :(. That now was the end to our badminton days. Two bruises and a scrape later we arrive at dinner where we wait in anticipation of what it could be- could it be NOODLES!!, Parotas!! Chapati! As you can see we’re pleased as long as its not rice. Today it was Parotas with this Tomato curry stuff that was EXCELLENT and we got 3 parotas each!! And we got Pineapple too… You’re probably wondering why the heck are you telling us how many you eat- well… lets just say our meals are well proportioned- I actually think they give us enough for what we’re supposed to be eating but with our American appetites and lack of eating during lunch we come to dinner EXTREMELY hungry. Well not to worry if we’re not full enough on our walk home we stop for more COOKIES!! Yes I eat a lot of cookies here :). We also sing songs on the way home- people probably think we’re very strange. Today we sang Beyonce’s Bootylicious, Barney’s I love you song, The song that never ends and a plethora of other songs that I don’t know. As you can see we definitely enjoy one anothers company and I LOVE getting songs stuck in Ericka’s head :).
Funny fact for today: A couple weeks back Shachi and I did a interview – which I may have told you guys about but don’t have time to look back for. Basically there was a reporter from the Times of India that called that asked us information about how we were assimilating and what it was like being here form another country. We unfortunately missed some things but that’s quite alright. Well today was the good ol’ photo shoot. Here’s a picture of the 7 out of 9 of us. Unfortunately one of the group members was sick (Katlin) and the other had to go out to the field (Jessica). So this is part of our happy little family. Maybe we’ll get the article so I can send you guys the link- I’m a bit fearful to see what they’ve taken from our interview. Well until later- Samara dude!!
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