I'm in India!

I love love love this place!

I arrived in Udaipur, Rajasthan yesterday to work for an NGO called Seva Mandir. On the drive there, I passed by cows and goats roaming the streets, women in colorful saris with baskets of produce on their heads, and dilapidated but charming shacks and houses. The taxi driver honked all 20 minutes of the drive, and car honking was the first thing I noticed here in India. It's everywhere! Apparently you can't drive without a horn here. Trucks have handpainted signs on their bumpers saying "Please Horn." I even saw one that said "Horn is our Motto" (hehe!). I think they find it safer to honk, so other drivers/cyclists/pedestrians/moped riders know you're there.

I'm staying in a dorm at Seva Mandir with other foreign volunteers.  The first thing one of the volunteers asked me was "How are you finding the dorm?" with a wry face.  I take it he finds it lacking, and maybe I would too if I had already been here five months. The lodgings are basic, but I think it is whimsical and romantic. Here is a picture of the staircase leading up to the room, as well as the girls' room.

One half of the girls room

When I walked up these stairs the first time, a pigeon flew right by my head with a red thread in its mouth. It landed on a cabinet in the hall across from this staircase. So there are pigeons nesting here, which is incredibly amusing!

Another example of why the other volunteer probably doesn't like the lodgings is the bathroom. Fortunately for me I don't mind squatty toilets or bathing from a bucket.

On the right is the squatty toilet. The little blue pitcher is how you flush. And the left side is the shower, where you can see the bucket which you fill with water and then douse yourself with a dipper.

The other volunteers took me to this ridiculously authentic dinner last night where I was too shy to take pictures but in my head I kept thinking "This is awesome!!" over and over again. We walked behind some stores where there was a little straw shack with no door. The roof was held up by blue-painted wooden sticks the owner probably found somewhere, and the shack was leading against a blue outer wall of a building. We were served piping hot curries with chapatis (kind of like a tortilla) on a steel plate, and the server kept refilling our plates until we couldn't eat anymore. And it only cost 50 rupees (US$1)! We ate only with our right hand, and there is an outdoor sink to wash up. I definitely need to learn to eat properly, no one else's hand was dirty afterwards except for me.

I'm super excited to start work though! I want to work with a traditional birth attendant program here, more on that to come later.