2/23

I got up on the wrong side of the bed today. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I am not in a good mood, and I do not have a positive outlook today. When I woke up my foot was still swollen, I hadn’t slept well and I had a headache. Breakfast was good, but for class only two of my students showed up. Apparently it was some sort of puja, single women fast and worship the god that will bring you a good husband. Since there were only two students my lessons didn’t work out so well, but class went well anyway. We ended early and then I went to the office to putz around on the computer. I got very bored, very quickly, and when Puthumai walked in I attacked him and demanded he give me work. He gave me a small project that I finished before lunch.
Puthumai and I went to the Dr. so that he could look at my foot. The doctor was a private doctor. We took a rickshaw, and took our shoes off at the front door. Once up the stairs we sat in a waiting room because the doctor wasn’t in. Puthumai knows the doctor and the doctor’s wife. He called the doctors wife and the doctor showed up soon. The doctor ended up laughing at me, because of my weak American immune system and my need to go to the doctor for such a ‘mundane’ problem. The doctor wrote me a prescription and when I asked Puthumai what the pills were for he said, my ‘mental satisfaction.’ This encounter only made my bad day worse.
Lunch was miserable because, well because I was still in an awful mood. After lunch I did some work scanning. It was interesting to learn about what I was scanning, but it was a lot of scanning for a funding/oversight agency that would probably never actually open any of the documents that I scanned. Hannah and I left to run a few errands in the afternoon. Then we went to Chonditola, which was probably the best thing for my bad attitude. The kids were really energetic, we chased after them, spun and tossed them around. Sleepy, the little cuddly guy, starting crying when I picked him up for 5 seconds and put him down. Hannah and I decided that we didn’t want to affirm his cry until someone picks me up behavior, so we let him cry for a few minutes. We tried to comfort him in everyway besides picking him up, but he wouldn’t have it. He was more persistent than we expected, and cried for about 20 minutes before he finally calmed down. It was really sad to see him cry, but I think it is better that he doesn’t get too attached.
Then we went to St. Xavier, and since Regina and Johannes were gone, the kids were really happy to see us. I played with the KGers for playing time. We played a game of matching cards with animal pictures. The rules included screaming as loud as you could, cheating by turning over the cards when it was not your turn, and constantly accusing other kids of cheating. It was slightly chaotic, especially with one little guy sitting in my lap, one sitting on my shoulders, and one pulling on my arm. But it was a lot of fun. I was finally smiling, laughing and distracted from my bad day.
Then Hannah and I went back to SWI, waited for Puthumai for a while before our dinner out. We went to a hotel that we had eaten at before. Hannah and I both really enjoyed the food their. We had fish sticks, fried potatoes, really juicy chicken tikka, nan and dal. Nan is like thick chapatti and the dal wasn’t liquid it was more pulse like. We all really enjoyed our dinner. I slept at DDC with Hannah and we both were very excited to end the day, get a good’s night sleep and hope for a better day tomorrow.

Sending love