Christmas time in Pune
Namaste!
Mom has come and gone and we had an amazing trip together. The north was amazing with its wild colors, dry landscape and rich and proud culture. The south was just gorgeous and was much more relaxed. Mom has since returned home, stopping by the Netherlands on her world tour 2003 to visit Jamie boy.
It's nearly Christmas time, my studies are over, and I am filling my time doing things like:
- working on a Rotary database for future Ambassadorial Scholars in India
- hanging out with friends (this takes a lot of time ;)
- getting a permanent drivers license - took the test where i had to drive in a figure 8 and stay inside the lines. I did it just fine and passed even though the instructor couldn't be bothered to watch. The license is valid for 20 years so next time I am back here, I'll be a legal driver. And who knows, maybe I'll end up marrying and Indian girl and settling down over here... someday.
- exercising - going on runs around the campus, and I'll be starting to swim again tomorrow. It is not that cold even though it's Winter. Nights dip to 8C (48F) and days go up to around 28C (84F).
- trekking - the last two weekends I have gone with a group of friends to trek up to a local fort and then to a National forest reserve -both beautiful places. Going outside Pune is always nice because you get back in touch with rural india with its bullox, buffalo, hay stacks, large open water wells, and multitude of people who live a pretty hard and materially poor life. Still though, in many ways the small small villages I have seen here are cleaner than the city slums, they have no beggers, and I bet they have less crime. I bet that is a universal phenomenon as the community values and justice you see in small towns breaks down in the filthy, overcrowded slums.
- I have been speaking at different Rotary clubs - 5 in the past 2 months or so, and I am trying to line up just a few more. I have exceeded the requirments of my scholarship and I am just about out of gifts from home to give, but I have more banners from my sponsor club - North Merced - so I'll work on lining up a few more club visits. It's always a positive experience.
- I've been spending a lot of time with my friend Sonal and she has been teaching me to cook some Indian food. I haven't practiced enough with her, but I hope to in the weeks to come.
My flight home now should be around the first week of March. I postponed it a month to give me more to explore while I am here. Who know's when I will have time to do this kind of thing again. And right now, it looks like I will be going to Thailand for 3 weeks in January to visit my good buddy Tim who will also be there at that time.
For Christmas, I'm planning on having dinner with some friends - most of whom are westerners and appreciate the value of a nicely prepared dinner of mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, rolls, some type of meat and some pumpkin and apple pie. It remains to be seen how much of this we can manage over here - the mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes will be easy. Green beans ok. stuffing... well, that might be tough but it's been too long with no stuffing so I'll really search hard for it.
For new years, we might just rent a house near the beach and go over there as a group... v shall see.
