Countdown

Flying out in just a few days, almost certainly via two days in Singapore. And, as these things go, I suddenly have lots going on!

 

Yesterday Pauline took me shopping for my saree- I needed one, intended to get two, and walked out with three. You know how these things go. I found the perfect saree for my last day at school, but I found it in two perfect colors! I knew I'd regret whichever one I didn't get, so I got both. They even have coordinating trim, so I can wear the blouse intended for one with the other and vice versa, so it's like I got four for the price of two! Right? They're insanely beautiful, and while spending more than 1000 rupees on a single item boggles my mind after a few months here, it actually works out to be $20. The third and final one is one I've intended to buy for years and years- sometime in high school I got it into my head to own a black and gold saree. And now I do!

After saree shopping, we went to a swanky little ice cream parlor (cookies and cream tastes different here, but is still delicious!), bought glass bangles to match my saree, and then rushed off to Boys Home on a dual errand. Tuesday night is normally when we go to Boys Home, plus one of their neighbors is a lady who could stitch my saree blouse! Rosalee, the house mother (as well as my favorite teacher), insisted on accompanying us, which turned out to be very fun and useful. She was suitably impressed with my selections, and she LOVED the black one and wants it for her birthday. Putting my hair up so it wouldn't get in the way of the measurements led to a five minute demonstration of my awesome hair comb. And she explained to the seamstress how soon I needed the work done!

My favorite picture I have taken at Boys Home- Gopi looks like in this moment, his life is as perfect as he has ever imagined

Today my big item was finally picking up the last of my churidars from the tailor. Just in time to wear everything once and go home! But now I'm prepared for return trips.

Check out the fancy detail they added on this neckline (using fabric from the pants):

 

Tomorrow is going to be hopping! Directly from school, Pauline and I are going to the small local mall for mehendi- those gorgeous intricate henna tattoos all over my hands. So excited!! Will probably also pick up some sort of necklace, because apparently it will be a tragedy if I don't wear one with my saree.

The henna will take some time, and then it's straight off to Boys Home again for final fittings for my blouse, and to confirm plans for Friday morning with Rosalee. Once that is done, it's back to the flat for a girls night in with Dominos pizza. Pauline has never partaken, and specifically requested to join in.

Friday morning, it's up bright and early to hustle back to Boys Home one last time so Rosalee can help me tie my saree, do my hair up with jasmine flowers, and anything else I need to be properly fancy for my last day. Then it will be my last day at Little Lambs! A few weeks ago I couldn't wait for that, but now it all feels a little fast! I'm very excited about what I'm moving on to, but still.

 

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Girls' Home

Spent two hours at Girls' Home tonight. No crazed children stealing my camera, so no photos for you today, but I absolutely will be taking a few pictures when I visit next week, because the view from their roof is spectacular.

 

Actually, I will show you one picture:

 

Several children have asked me over the past few days to see a picture of my family. This picture is saved in my Favorites on my phone, so it is very easy to pull up. I point out my mother and my sister, and without fail they point to me and ask who it is. And without fail, they are shocked when I tell them it is me, and stare intently at me trying to see it. So apparently I'm looking a little dowdier than I thought lately. So now I'm on a mission to locate an optometrist so I can get contact solution and put an end to this nonsense!

Back to Girls' Home. They were eating while I was there, and they dished me up a bowl. I don't think it was the actual meal, but I haven't figured out how these things work yet. Regardless, it was excellent. It was cooked chickpeas. Just chickpeas. I even checked if they cooked them in anything, or added ghee, but nothing. Just pure, unadulterated chickpeas cooked from scratch. And they were so good. Eaten sitting on the floor, with the bowl on the floor, with your fingers. I noticed several, but not all, of the girls mashing each handful a little before they ate. I tried it, but it didn't affect the taste, and seemed like unnecessary effort to me. I also had a cup of tea at the end of the night, with a little sugar and lots of milk. Definitely not as much sugar as they put in my coffee each morning- I mainly drink that to be polite, but it's doable because it basically tastes like tiramisu.

I spent about an hour on the roof with some first graders, doing maths (writing out the words for numbers from the digits), and despite my repeated attempts to explain that I don't speak the language, correcting their Tamil homework as well. The last half hour was back inside (with tea!), helping one of the older girls with her maths. She needs to brush up on the basics, but picked it up astonishingly fast once I started walking her through it. She is going to come find me during lunch tomorrow to keep working on it. I am rapidly getting frustrated with all of the Reading work I do with the kids, but who ever would have thought I would become the Math Maven?

 

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Remember back when I was in Iceland?

So here's a thoroughly random, out-of-sync post. I just came across a video I made for the blog on my first day in Iceland last year, but somehow never actually posted. It's actually in two parts, because the first one I made randomly stopped recording after about a minute and a half.

Part One

                      Part Two                      

Paris Revisited: More Fun

One of the girls we met for dinner earlier in the week was turning 22, so we met her at a sushi place for a couple of hours. Very fun times. Fun note: they have cheese sushi in Paris. It's some sort of cream cheese surrounded by rice and seaweed. Pretty good, actually.

There are many boat rides that one can take along the Seine. My program took us on the Bateaux Mouches, and then I took the girls on the same ride when Katie and her friends came to visit last spring. I'm pretty fond of it. It has a nice sequence, and it's a good price. But I'd never taken the cruise during the day. What details was I missing out on? Time to find out...

Getting started

Centre Georges Pompidou

The amazing houseboats along the Seine

A corner of the Louvre

Musee d'Orsay

Love-Lock Bridge- you and your true love bring a padlock, write your initials and the date, lock it onto the bridge, then kiss as you throw the key into the Seine

The little garden where I wrote the other day

People hanging out, enjoying the gorgeous weather

That one building

Notre Dame from the side/back

A ridiculously gorgeous day. Lots of picnickers.

I finished the day by hanging out along the Seine for a few hours, writing and pondering. I think I am arranging my life in such a way that it won't ever be too long before I visit Paris again. That realization took away whatever stress I was feeling to revisit every spot I had even remotely fond memories of. Instead, I hit whatever moved me that day. Made for an excellent vacation.

Stateside once more, but a few more updates to come!

Bubbling Over

I took a lot of video during my European travels, not that you have seen any of it. I always intended to make lots of amusing videos set to music, conveniently forgetting my fear of video editing software (stemming from an unfortunate incident in high school, as do so many fears).

Today, however, I was stuck without internet or other entertainment for a 3-hour layover coming home for Christmas, and I put together a little something. Behold:


A bitty video of my time in Scotland! I'm pretty pleased with it.

London: Day Two

London Day Two was a pretty excellent day all around. Yes, my foot still hurt, but beyond that, yesterday was pretty much put well behind me.

The night before, I had checked on the first tours of the morning, and so set my alarm to have me up, breakfasted, and in central London at that time. It went swimmingly. I was tired enough the night before that I had gone to sleep plenty early, and sleep quite deeply, so I was up and bouncing with my alarm. Wasn't thrilled with the breakfast offerings (I'm finding breakfast to be quite an anemic affair in Europe thus far), but remembered the hunger of yesterday and scarfed down a quick bowl of cereal. I checked out and was on my way! Knew the right bus to take this time, and where to get off, and was on my tour bus easy as pie. As it turns out, I could have saved myself some of the stress of the previous night by just reading my ticket- the ticket was valid for over a year- the 48 hour countdown wouldn't start until I exchanged it on the bus! So I was good through Sunday, should I care to go cavorting after my friends returned to their respective countries.

Now comes the picture heavy part. Are you ready?

The Marble Arch

I got on at the Marble Arch. Apparently this area is where all of the public executions (hangings) were carried out for hundreds of years. A few interesting phrases came about from this:

1. The hangings were a hugely popular form of entertainment for the masses. Thousands would turn out (hangings were only held every few months, and multiple prisoners would be executed at a time), and the over-consumption of alcohol was commonplace. Thus, the effects of such an indulgence were dubbed a "hang-over." Not only was it the effect of alcohol hanging over from the night before, but it was the lingering effect of the hanging.
2. The prison were the condemned were kept was almost a mile away from the hanging grounds, and the men would naturally not feel overly cooperative during the transportation. To counter this, it was standard policy to get the men insensible with drink so that they would be compliant as they were walked down the road to their deaths. Thus begins the phrase "One for the road," the road in question being the one that leads from what is now the Old Bailey to the modern home of the Marble Arch- or from the medieval prison to the gallows in London. 
3. Finally, the guards that drove the wagon that watched over the prisoners had to be stone sober- thus, they were literally "on the wagon."

The regular double-deckers, as seen from the top deck of my sight-seeing bus

All of the fancy car dealerships line Hyde Park- including Aston Martin!

We drove past Buckingham Palace (though not in front- buses are deemed commercial vehicles and thus not allowed to drive across the... East Front? It's actually the back of the house- the front faces the gardens. But they don't want to call it the back, so it is I believe called the East Front. Or whatever other direction it faces.), and then over to Parliament, with Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. 

Crossed the Thames for the first of many times that morning, and had our classic view of Old Facing New- Big Ben and Parliament directly opposite the London Eye. 

We wound our way past Downing Street (not on Downing Street- it appears to be cordoned off. Security, one presumes) and through Trafalgar Square for the first of many times. I cannot tell you how many pictures I took of Trafalgar Square, and how hard it is to actually get a good picture. I blame the extreme height of Nelson's Column. Also, it had started to pour at this point, so I moved under the little bit of cover at the front of the top deck, and was unable to get as many good pictures from that point. 

Nelson's Column, as I believe it is called. Many people think it is Napoleon standing a top the column, because of his stance, but it is actually Admiral Nelson himself- he lost an arm in battle, and kept his sleeve pinned over his chest. Moreover, Nelson and Napoleon were archenemies, so a statue of Napoleon would never have the place of honor in a place dedicated to Nelson. 

Fountains in Trafalgar Square

Rainy London!

From that point, we wound our way through the City of London. This is actually distinct from London the city- the City of London is a little 1-square mile chunk that is the original Roman settlement. The boundaries are marked by dragons! Central London is made up of the City of Westminster and the City of London, and London itself of 30-something boroughs. 32? It's the number of pods on the Eye of London, at any rate. 

This is what most of London would have looked like pre-Great Fire. All wood. Can you see why the fire spread quickly?

Dragon! Also, London Bridge!

We went past the Tower of London (which I explored on foot a little the next day) and crossed the iconic Tower Bridge- twice!

Fun note about the Tower- when it was originally built, it was in the middle of the Thames. But when the Thames was wider and shallower, it build up a horrible stench. One year during Victoria's reign, it got particularly bad, and she had a genius architect figure out how to build inwards. So now the Tower of London sits on the edge of the Thames. Which explains why I honestly thought that the prisoners were kept in the Tower Bridge up until last weekend. Because I knew it was in the middle of the water...

I got off briefly at Leicester Square (apparently pronounced Lester), which is where they have held all of the Harry Potter premiers, and dabbled with the idea of getting lunch, but it was freezing and no place appealed to me, so I hopped the bus for another half go-round and then took the Metro to meet these lovely ladies...

The ladies

The Katie

The Clarissa. And the New Hair. 

We found an Italian restaurant straight away for lunch. Very yummy food, pretty snotty waiters- at least one of which was actually Italian. I myself had my first every gnocchi- in a wonderful gorgonzola cream sauce. Oh yes. I think I'm a gnocchi convert, and now I'm absolutely dying to make the pumpkin gnocchi in gorgonzola cream sauce recipe I have saved on my computer.... But that's for another season, on another continent. Must concentrate on Europe right now...

We checked into our hostel, after wandering around in a complete circle to get to the right street. We literally chose the street about 10 feet to the left of our intended street, and walked counter-clockwise (read, further to the left) in a huge circle for about 20 minutes until we reached the proper street. We are silly that way. We had our own room at the hostel, one actually meant for 3! It had a twin bed and a queen bed. Katie had a very early flight, so we let her have the single bed, to minimize early morning disturbances.

We had a show that night- Our Private Lives, starring Colin Morgan. A-ma-zing. Totally twisted, but then, it is billed as a black comedy.

Must end now so I can post before my internet runs out!