No no no...not pickles, FLOUR!

This week we began our Hindi and cooking lessons with Mrs. Lal (Dr. Mrs. Chatterjee's mother), and so far it has been going pretty well; however, after the first day, we tried to use our new-found knowledge to go to the market and buy various food items. Raina found out that the word for pickles (ada) and the word for flour (atta) are very similar, and apparently the pronunciation of the "t" is quite important. After asking for flour, she was promptly presented with pickles. Not a great first attempt.

Our very first meal with a stove-before the paratha

The cooking lessons went well, and we learned how to make chapati (tortilla-type bread) from scratch. There are 3 different types of chapati that we learned how to make: roti (unfried), paratha (lightly fried in oil) and puri (deep fried...mmmmm). Since both of us were counting on losing weight in India, we decided to stick to just roti and paratha. Our attempt at making chapati went much better than our attempt to buy flour. We had breakfast for dinner last night with paratha, eggs, and jam, and it turned out really well. Also, tonight Raina got a lesson on how to wrap a saree, which is terribly complicated and I'm glad I can just throw on a t-shirt.

Raina in a Sari

On Tuesday neither of us were busy, so we decided to take an adventurous trip to Raipur (the capital of Chhattisgarh about 1.5 hours away). We had no idea how to get a bus ticket, but apparently you just walk into the "bus station" (a parking lot) and walk up to a random person and say "Raipur" and they will usher you onto a bus that is currently driving away. We crossed our fingers that it was the right one, and sure enough, 2 hours later we arrived at the Raipur bus station (after nearly getting off at the wrong stop twice). Since it was Raina's idea to take the trip to Raipur, I figured she knew which bus stop to get off at (she didn't), where we should go once we got there (she didn't), and that she would bring enough money (she didn't). All she knew is that our main goal was to go to a market, and change some of our money. So by some lucky freak accident (Raina repeating "market" louder and louder to an auto-rickshaw driver-and to her credit attempting to use the word 'Bazaar'') we ended up at the Raipur City Center mall, which we were told later is one of 3 malls in Raipur, and has the best supermarket. Unfortunately, we ended up at the mall before we changed our money, and we realized, as we were filling a cart full of foodstuffs, that we could not afford to buy even half of what we wanted. Naturally, yelling and casting blame ensued. So we ended up just buying the essentials (rice, sugar, and processed -basically American-cheese), and decided to go try to change our money. We were told by a welcome desk attendant that we could go to the State Bank of India to change our money, which we did (by auto-rickshaw). We arrived at the bank at 5:00pm, and the money-changing counter closed at 4:30pm. Good thing I decided to set aside enough money for our bus ticket back, or else we would still be at the State Bank of India in Raipur (at least someone in this marriage plans). So we hopped on a bus back to Dhamtari, got our pictures taken about 300 times (they really like white people), and 2 hours later were back at DCH. It was ultimately a waste of a trip, but at least we now know how to do it again.

Namaste

Wednesday was Republic Day in India (a national holiday similar to Independence Day), so no one worked. They had a flag raising ceremony in the morning, and sports activities in the afternoon (which Raina and I were reluctantly involved in). We both ran a race similar to suicides; Raina placed 2nd, while I fell down and got laughed at. Thursday Raina helped Dr. Jefferin (the orthopedic surgeon) in surgery all day (3 surgeries back to back to back), and I was put in charge of fixing the hospital internet, which involved scaling the side of a building and climbing 2 trees. Friday Raina was sick (the same cold I had) and could not help in surgery, and I was supposed to go to Sankra again but it was postponed, so we had a nice day off. Today (Saturday) we met with Mrs. Masih, the principal of the nursing school, to see if they would like us to teach. They asked Raina to teach Trauma nursing to 2nd year B.S. students, and I offered to teach English, so they asked me to teach 1st year B.S. students. We will each be teaching one class per day Monday-Saturday, starting next week. They gave me an English textbook to teach from, and Raina will be teaching from her TNCC Trauma book she brought from home. We are both looking forward to teaching, since it will be something that we can do every day to keep us busy (especially me).

Me discussing the various 'race' options...they were suicides- plain and simple

Raina with nursing students @ Republic Day

So it looks like things are going to get a little busier for us now, which is definitely an answer to our/your prayers. I'm sure it will be an interesting week for both of us next week as we settle in to our new teaching jobs, so please pray for us in that regard. We have heard the snow has been pretty bad in Columbus, but don't worry, it hasn't dropped below 55 here and we still haven't seen a cloud (although I thought I saw one today but it just turned out to be contrails <---look that one up, there's your nugget of knowledge for the day). Keep praying for us!

KC (and Raina)