WEDNESDAY JUNE 7, 2006
Last night, I made a serious and grave error at dinner - I ate a chilil pepper. By accident. A. Green. Hot. Chilli. Pepper. I do NOT like spicy food, so this was a real drastic downturn for me.
Aside from my own folly - the dinner was great. The meals being prepared for us by the hotel have been very delicious and really healthy - plenty of chicken and fish.
Dinner was held at 7pm instead of 8pm so we finished earlier than usual. Didn't matter. I was so tired, I still crashed right after dinner.
The drawback to gonig to sleep so early is that I tend to wake up early. Real. Early. Which is fine if I'm back at home and want to get into the office early or go to the gym, but not so fine when I really have nothing to do in a hotel room in India except really sleep.
Today was probably the hardest day on the work site. One of the tasks I had to do was carry jugs of water that was used to make mortar and pour over the bricks. This is water from a well or faucet which means it is not fit for animal consumption, let alone human consumption. The Indian men tried to show me to carry the jugs on my shoulder - but I was having none of that. The water is disgusting and filthy (even though it looks clear) and I was trying to keep as much of it off of me as possible.
Thankfully, after lunch, and after I made it crystal clear that I didn't want to carry any more jugs of water, I was part of the brick chain - moving bricks from the pile to pile in the house so the masons could accesst hem. Handing bricks along the cian or tossing them from volunteer to volunteer really does a number on your back and arms. Needless to say, I'm sure I'm getting quite a workout here without having to set foot in a gym.
We were taking pictures of some of the young men as they worked on a house. They were such jokers - hamming it up for the camera, including obliging us with the gratuitous bicep shot. As we were leaving, the kids in the day care that we pass by every day were waving goodbye to us. It was absolutely adorable.
One thing I'm lokoing forward to when I get back home is sitting on a normal-sized toilet. The latrine on the worksite is one of the toilets of a house in the community, but it really is just a hole in the ground. I don't think I'll ever go #2 there. But even the toilet in my hotel room has its own shortcomings. It is really, really short. My knees are hitting my nostrils when I sit down. It's also not as comfortable as the one back at home. To paraphrase Dorothy "There's no place to shit like home."
Tonight, I did something that I hadn't done in a long, long time - played Uno. Except it was "Killer Uno" which has its own set of extra rules, including skipping turns, reversing direction, trading and even playing out of turn. Ross kept trying to convince everyone to put down the Uno cards and play poker, stating that "Poker is a lot more fun and doesn't suck as much" but there weren't enough takers. The guys, who did want to play poker, had the last laugh - we, including myself, won all the games of Uno.
Last night, I made a serious and grave error at dinner - I ate a chilil pepper. By accident. A. Green. Hot. Chilli. Pepper. I do NOT like spicy food, so this was a real drastic downturn for me.
Aside from my own folly - the dinner was great. The meals being prepared for us by the hotel have been very delicious and really healthy - plenty of chicken and fish.
Dinner was held at 7pm instead of 8pm so we finished earlier than usual. Didn't matter. I was so tired, I still crashed right after dinner.
The drawback to gonig to sleep so early is that I tend to wake up early. Real. Early. Which is fine if I'm back at home and want to get into the office early or go to the gym, but not so fine when I really have nothing to do in a hotel room in India except really sleep.
Today was probably the hardest day on the work site. One of the tasks I had to do was carry jugs of water that was used to make mortar and pour over the bricks. This is water from a well or faucet which means it is not fit for animal consumption, let alone human consumption. The Indian men tried to show me to carry the jugs on my shoulder - but I was having none of that. The water is disgusting and filthy (even though it looks clear) and I was trying to keep as much of it off of me as possible.
Thankfully, after lunch, and after I made it crystal clear that I didn't want to carry any more jugs of water, I was part of the brick chain - moving bricks from the pile to pile in the house so the masons could accesst hem. Handing bricks along the cian or tossing them from volunteer to volunteer really does a number on your back and arms. Needless to say, I'm sure I'm getting quite a workout here without having to set foot in a gym.
We were taking pictures of some of the young men as they worked on a house. They were such jokers - hamming it up for the camera, including obliging us with the gratuitous bicep shot. As we were leaving, the kids in the day care that we pass by every day were waving goodbye to us. It was absolutely adorable.
One thing I'm lokoing forward to when I get back home is sitting on a normal-sized toilet. The latrine on the worksite is one of the toilets of a house in the community, but it really is just a hole in the ground. I don't think I'll ever go #2 there. But even the toilet in my hotel room has its own shortcomings. It is really, really short. My knees are hitting my nostrils when I sit down. It's also not as comfortable as the one back at home. To paraphrase Dorothy "There's no place to shit like home."
Tonight, I did something that I hadn't done in a long, long time - played Uno. Except it was "Killer Uno" which has its own set of extra rules, including skipping turns, reversing direction, trading and even playing out of turn. Ross kept trying to convince everyone to put down the Uno cards and play poker, stating that "Poker is a lot more fun and doesn't suck as much" but there weren't enough takers. The guys, who did want to play poker, had the last laugh - we, including myself, won all the games of Uno.
posted by kacob at 5:38 PM
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