Going native

There are so many things that are done differently here and the nice thing is you can choose which things you are willing to try and which you are not. Last night I decided to try eating with my hands. They offer us foreigners a spoon, but there is also chapati, kind of like pita bread, so you rip pieces of this off and use it to pick up your food. I figured I was halfway there. I found that eating with your hand is not as easy as using a utensil. Supposedly in the ayurvedic tradition it is better to eat with your hand because your body can better tell what you're eating and thus how to digest it. I'm not sure about this theory, but there it is. Ayurveda is an ancient system of holistic medicine that uses natural herbs. There is also a component about food and how we can use it to balance our body's needs. I don't know a lot about it, but I'm sure I'll learn more while I'm here. I still tend to have a lot of faith in western medicine, but then that is what I grew up with. One really different thing is that you can just walk into a pharmacy here and tell them what you need and they will sell it to you.

The other new thing that I did today was burn my trash. I know our trash is burned in the U.S. as well, but it's different doing it yourself. So today I did my part to add to the cloud of smoke in this city. Mostly it was toilet paper, another thing that isn't used here. They sell it for tourists, however, and I am grateful. That is one thing I'm just not willing to give up. You have two hands, of course, and one is used for eating while the other one is used for... well, you get the picture. Nevertheless, these two activities seem mutually exclusive to me. To be fair, there is also a spigot next to the toilet, bidet-style. I never got into that in France either.


Andrew, the American here with Princeton's Bridge Year program, eating Indian-style. The food is good, but is getting monotonous. Lunch every day is rice, dahl, mixed vegetables, and chapati. Andrew was also kind enough to share his butter cookies with me today, purchased at a bakery in town. He left a couple in a plastic bag in his backpack and when we returned from lunch they were gone. Apparently the monkeys came in and took them! I am probably the only one here who wants to see these monkeys because I guess they can be pretty destructive. They are around, but they keep eluding me!


This is the "school bus". Every morning one of the men goes out into Varanasi to pick up 10-15 of the small children and take them to the school. At the end of the morning he drives them back home. If not for this they would likely spend their days on the streets.