Hapless (but not hopeless) in Delhi

I had to move out of the guest house where I was (my time limit was reached and the place was getting full and it was slightly expensive), so now I'm staying in the girl's hostel on campus with Gazala (my Indian friend), at least until I find yet another place. The campus is an interesting environment. Five times a day we hear the Muslim call to prayer, whereupon the campus fills with Muslims wearing little caps and kneeling in formation around the mosques. And for some reason there are monkeys being walked around on leashes. I really just can't explain this one.

I'm continuing to fast in the traditional Muslim fashion for Ramadan and finally it's getting much easier. We wait until nightfall, specifically until the moment when one cannot distinguish between a white thread and a black thread (approximately 6:45pm), whereupon we take "iftar," breaking the fast with mountains of delicious food! Nothing makes food taste better than a fast..

Now for the good news and bad news...good news is my passport finally came through (YAYAYAYAYAYA!!!!). It's in a new style I call "All-American"; gaudy, garish, and overstated with huge pictures of eagles, the statue of liberty, battle scenes of manifest destiny...God gave us this land, right? I'll need to find some cover for it as soon as possible.

Bad news is replacing my Indian visa will take minimum two weeks more, and a well-placed attorney friend of mine believes it will look more like two months! Apparently, the problem is that I failed to dress in a suit and I neglected to bribe anyone when I applied for the replacement...

So now I'm looking for a slightly longer-term accomodation, and there are not so many options. Ideally I would rent a room for a month, but everyone agrees that Delhi is a dangerous place for women, and at the moment I'm feeling sad and misplaced and homeless. I'm not alone and I'm not in any danger and I'm healthy, but you know how it is when you're couch-surfing and feeling like you really just want a space of your own where you can wash your underwear?

Yesterday I finally caved and bought a mobile phone (about 2,000 rupees)...the good thing about the mobiles here is that they're pay-as-you-go, so no contracts for me to cry about :) I'm not sure how to dial the mobile from abroad, or even what the cost is to recieve calls from abroad, or even how to operate the mobile here, but it's impossible to overstate how much fun it is to change the music settings.

I was hoping to spend my birthday (The big 3-0!!!!!!) in the Andaman Islands, but now it looks like I'll be stuck here instead. But as they say, plans were made to be broken, right?

until next time,

I love you every one...

LMA

PS: A comment from a loved one about The Chicken Incident;

"It is difficult for me to believe your masterminding of creature death."

Yes yes, this is precisely what Maria and Eduardo were saying, and I understand the sentiment. But the idea was this: chicken is one of the most commonly eaten things on the planet, but how many of us have actually seen how they are killed? We all "know" about slaughterhouses, we all "know" about the shaving off of chicken beaks, we all "know' about the horrible conditions of their short lives, but......
The chicken I helped to kill had a high-quality life. It roamed freely in the village streets and munched fresh corn. I pushed for the experience to highlight the irony between the cruelty we all condone and the "cruelty" we can't accept ( i.e. killing a chicken ourselves). Of course, I have never killed anything before and I never want to again. But one tenet of my philosophy is to try new things at least once. And like many of the things I've tried, I can now check "chicken assassination" off the list.