technology is a pain in my ass

I might have to stick to simple lists for a while.  The internet is pretty unpredictable and I lost my last two blogs before I was able to post them.  In the past few days I have:

*mastered the turkish/squat toilet, and learned why you never come in contact with anyone's left hand.  I have to admit that I till kick it USA style and carry napkins in my pocket at all time for such a purpose.  I'm not going down like that.

*Taken many bucket baths.  Hotels like to tell you they have hot water.  eh.  not so much.  It is a lot less painful to pour small amounts of freezing water on you little bits at a time.  I've had one actual shower since I've been in India.

*Spent an entire day trying to obtain a cell phone.  It's kind of an involved process to get a cell phone in India.  Several government forms, passport size photos ( you would not believe how hard that was to track down and then their power went out etc.) and a passport.  The thing doesn't even work.  I'll have to figure that out.

*broke my camera.  that's right folks.  that's it for the photos.  I dropped it in the first week.  c'est la vie.

but that all sounds like negative stuff.  It's been a lot of good too.  I walked through the most beautiful bamboo garden today at the Forest research institute.  Huge bamboo with cobras.  I didn't see any unfortunately.  But I did see the largest fruit bats in the world.  I looked up and said, "oh, there's some monkeys up above us."  The guy laughed and said, "oh no, those are bats."  I'm not easily blown away.  I was totally blown away.  They were monkey size!  Bats!  And then they started flying around and they looked like teridaktals.  we were all freaking out.  It was the coolest thing.   I'm not going to bother looking up how to spell teridaktals.  Oh, and the forest smelled like eucalyptus.  too bad I won't have any pics for you.  

Last night we had a fancy dinner for all the officials involved in the program and institutes.  My professor bought ridiculous amounts of alcohol and told us that he expected us to wasted.  I resigned myself to one drink, but they put about three and a half shots of vodka in the one.  It tasted like pure rubbing alcohol.  People got wicked silly.  One of the girls in our group knows traditional and bollywood dance and had her music with her, so she taught us some moves.  then it just turned into dance party.  I missed my 7:30 a.m hindi class, but so did most everyone else.

 

 I feel completely safe here.  I go out by myself a lot and have had no problems.  I'm wondering what all the fuss is about.  Everyone is extremely friendly and helpful.  I haven't even had any one try and rip me off too much.  Even in Delhi.  Except for a rich shaw driver or two, but not by too much.  I still plan on finding a travel buddy afterwards because it is still pretty intense and I still don't speak Hindi.  I'm not sure of my plans yet but I have several free weeks.  

Oh my God!  I can't believe I forgot to tell you this!  I found a coffee shop.  "Cafe Caffeine Day."

41 rupees for a latte.  that's about $1 USD.  For real.  And it's good.  But I've about had it with the milk here.  We've all decided it's not cows milk, and not sure what animal it comes from.  I don't think this is gonna post.  I better cut it off here