indian spice

a lot of people have been asking me what i do all day... so i thought i'd fill you in on a day in my indian life... first, i have to actually think about what i do all day.

because the pace is so much slower here than it is in the west, there is so much more time to absorb each moment to just be. it's a foreign idea to most of us, but i'm allowing myself to sit still long enough to listen and absorb the things around me... i've actually found that i'm learning so much... about myself and the world...

i wake up super early to absorb the silence before going to practice. my practice starts at 6 now... so i'm moving around by 4:30-ish... which means i'm usually in bed by 9...

after practice, i take a two hour breakfast... come to think of it, i pretty much eat all day. i might take a nap or read a bit here and there, but if i were to sum up my day, it would be pretty much... eating.

before i left for india, i got a lot of sarcastic jokes like "well, i hope you like indian food."... to which i always replied, "duh, of course i do." it didn't really occur to me until after i landed here that i realized that i've never actually had indian food. this really isn't such a good position to be in when you have a very sensitive "that's an unfamiliar texture gag reflex"... especially since i am now immersed in a foreign country that has no cocoa puffs or 5 guys burgers.

to put it mildly, my first indian meal was a bust. when i finally found a place to eat, i perused the menu and realized with great shock that i had no idea what i was looking at. for some reason i didn't even think about this predicament before i left the states. being a planner... as you all well know me to be... i would of expected to have thought this through... maybe i would of done some research so my first meal wouldn't involve me randomly ordering something off the menu by pointing to it and grunting to the waiter... unfortunately, this is exactly what happened.

i ended up pointing to the special of the day... which i soon found out that i should never do. what i got was a bowl of mushed up corn bits mixed up with some mash or porridge of some sort... i don't actually know what it was... i just know that my gag reflex was definitely kicking in. most of you know that i don't do well with chunky or slimy or mushy... or raw or lumpy or... well you get the point.

i knew that i needed to activate my jedi-mind trick if i was ever going to get through this. praying that my probiotic system would kick in at the appropriate moment, i started with baby bites. this only worked for a short period of time. i gave up after choking down a few spoonfuls and accepted the fact that i'd probably starve to death within a couple of days.

the day after this dreadful experience, i was of course hungry again. i realized i couldn't avoid food for the next 5 months, so i decided i would look to see what everybody else was eating and then just point to that... this worked fine for a while, but it got pretty boring. i knew there had to be a better way.

then i met alice (not shown here). alice is my new british friend who has shown me how to eat in india... and now i can't stop eating. i think i am the only girl in the world that goes to india and actually gains weight. my mother is thrilled. i've actually put myself on a diet... in india... it's really the funniest thing ever. who does that?














besides for stuffing my face, my day also consists of meditation and chanting classes and a lot of wandering around. i've met a lot of cool people from all over the world... so i've been doing a lot of talking and laughing. india is good and i'm starting to blend... well, as much as a white girl from florida can.