We made our first dinner in our new apartment last night. Bhindi (sautee onions and chilis, add ginger/garlic paste, salt, garam masala, and tumeric, cook for awhile, add tomatoes) and tomato chutney (sautee onions and chilis, add tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, and cook for awhile) with rice. The freshness of the vegetables, especially the chutney was delicious, and even though the bhindi was cooked, it wasn't cooked into mush like the okra at the canteen often is.
In the jeep in the way home, we heard a story about a patient who had been in the hospital for two weeks with an abdominal infection. The night before he was scheduled for surgery, he ran off, taking his IV drip and nose tube with him. He buried them along the road somewhere and ran off to his village, where he died the next day. The surgeon at JSS is the one I would go to if I needed to be operated on in Chattisgargh, but the thought of surgery must be scary for someone not used to technology.
We had weighed ourselves shortly before we moved to Ganiyari. I weighed just over 60kg (132 lbs) and Dolly weighed just over 50 kg (110 lbs). We weighed ourselves again yesterday, and I was down to 55kg (121 lbs) and Dolly was down to 47kg (104 lbs). The take home lesson is the all you can eat rice and potato curry diet (with occasional diarrhea) in an effective weight loss regimen. BTW, this puts both our BMIs right around 18.5, the cutoff for being underweight.
This morning while shuttling things between our place and the guest house, Dolly heard a guitar and cam running to find me. It was a school boy playing guitar, and his father is an evangelical Christian and as part of their thing they have a rock band. Next door is a drum set, and he says they have bass guitar and amps. So I may have a chance to play some plugged in electric guitar, or at least find a place to buy new strings. And a chance to bang on some drums. (There is also a tabla teacher across the street where I will soon be taking lessons, and Dolly will learn singing).
Before we left Ganiyari on Saturday morning, Sharta, the girl who has a crush on me came by our room to say goodbye. This was the first time she had come to where we were staying. She was talking about how nice American weddings look in the movies, so we showed her some pictures from the weddings we've been to. She started out surprised by the tightness of our friend Germain's wedding dress, and the picture of John way up under her dress to get the garter. We then showed her pictures of my sisters wedding, where many of the pics were me giving Dolly a kiss or holding her close. Sharta flinched visibly each time she saw one of those. (This may have been more due to her crush than to cultural standards) She also asked if (said that) that Dolly wore short dresses, even though by American standards they were entirely appropriate. Her last comment was "I guess you live a different kind of life".
Yesterday there was some confusion as to where the key to the computer room was, so Dolly and I went and hung out in the lab, where we know most of the people (and its air conditioned). Surrinder was showing us the instrument that tests for blood sugar, and someone came over from surgery with a bag with a giant translucent bubble the size of my fist. We looked in the records (India is not as strict as the US in terms of medical privacy) and found that it was an ovarian cyst. Ewww. It was probably still warm.
In the jeep in the way home, we heard a story about a patient who had been in the hospital for two weeks with an abdominal infection. The night before he was scheduled for surgery, he ran off, taking his IV drip and nose tube with him. He buried them along the road somewhere and ran off to his village, where he died the next day. The surgeon at JSS is the one I would go to if I needed to be operated on in Chattisgargh, but the thought of surgery must be scary for someone not used to technology.
We had weighed ourselves shortly before we moved to Ganiyari. I weighed just over 60kg (132 lbs) and Dolly weighed just over 50 kg (110 lbs). We weighed ourselves again yesterday, and I was down to 55kg (121 lbs) and Dolly was down to 47kg (104 lbs). The take home lesson is the all you can eat rice and potato curry diet (with occasional diarrhea) in an effective weight loss regimen. BTW, this puts both our BMIs right around 18.5, the cutoff for being underweight.
This morning while shuttling things between our place and the guest house, Dolly heard a guitar and cam running to find me. It was a school boy playing guitar, and his father is an evangelical Christian and as part of their thing they have a rock band. Next door is a drum set, and he says they have bass guitar and amps. So I may have a chance to play some plugged in electric guitar, or at least find a place to buy new strings. And a chance to bang on some drums. (There is also a tabla teacher across the street where I will soon be taking lessons, and Dolly will learn singing).
Before we left Ganiyari on Saturday morning, Sharta, the girl who has a crush on me came by our room to say goodbye. This was the first time she had come to where we were staying. She was talking about how nice American weddings look in the movies, so we showed her some pictures from the weddings we've been to. She started out surprised by the tightness of our friend Germain's wedding dress, and the picture of John way up under her dress to get the garter. We then showed her pictures of my sisters wedding, where many of the pics were me giving Dolly a kiss or holding her close. Sharta flinched visibly each time she saw one of those. (This may have been more due to her crush than to cultural standards) She also asked if (said that) that Dolly wore short dresses, even though by American standards they were entirely appropriate. Her last comment was "I guess you live a different kind of life".
Yesterday there was some confusion as to where the key to the computer room was, so Dolly and I went and hung out in the lab, where we know most of the people (and its air conditioned). Surrinder was showing us the instrument that tests for blood sugar, and someone came over from surgery with a bag with a giant translucent bubble the size of my fist. We looked in the records (India is not as strict as the US in terms of medical privacy) and found that it was an ovarian cyst. Ewww. It was probably still warm.
