Awesome night

Just when I think I won't have anything to blog about for the day, something super cool happens. The boys were invited to dinner at a neighbor's house tonight (they all piled into that same vehicle from the other day!), so it was just the staff and volunteers to feed tonight. A new volunteer arrived today. His name is Stefano and he's from Italy, from the same city as Kamla and Loknath in fact. It was interesting to see how quickly some of the boys gravitated to him. The role of women in this society is very different from the U.S. and some of the boys tend to connect more easily with male volunteers.

As we were standing around chatting, waiting for the dinner gong to sound, we were invited into the kitchen to help cook! I have a whole new appreciation for our cook after participating in the process. We have chapati every day, pretty much at every meal. He rolls out and cooks each one by hand. I can't even calculate how many hours a day he must spend on chapati alone. The rest of tonight's meal was vegetables with some very yummy dill mixed in, another vegetable dish, and rice seasoned with tomatoes and some seriously hot spices. It was such a fun experience helping to prepare the meal. Cecilia helped with translation when body language wasn't enough. The cook, Pieremohan, is super nice. The first day I was here I thought he was going to hate me forever because I ended up composting some of the dahl he had given me. As it turns out, I may be misinterpreting the harsh stares that I encounter here. As the Swedish couple I met my first day in Delhi said, "What is considered normal here would be considered very rude at home." So needless to say, everyone looks much nicer when they smile. :) And Mohan makes a mean chapati, not to mention killer chai, which I look forward to every afternoon. Yum.


Cutting pieces of the dough to roll out.


The chapati puffs up over the gas flame. Note the hardcore cook - he mostly uses his fingers to flip them.