Q&A

I've received some questions from friends that I thought I would answer here on the blog, since they're the things that I didn't think to bring up on my own.


Where did we spend Diwali?
Diwali is the biggest yearly celebration in India. It's a Hindu custom and it's called the festival of lights. I was so excited to be in India while this was to happen this year. It passed mid-October, but in the end we were in Goa that night which is actually not very Hindu and very Christian so there wasn't much going on to see that night. We were on a super touristy beach, I felt mislead by my guidebook, so what we saw was on one hand touching and one hand ridiculous. The families of fishermen lighting candles by their beautiful handcarved boats was lovely, contrast that with westerner guys and girls and well off Indian men getting drunk in some bar on the beach and making an embarassing spectacle of themselves.


How was the food? combined with "How did you stay healthy?"
So before the trip began I was going around telling everyone how I couldn't wait to eat Indian food everyday for three months. Now this would be an amazing thing to do if we could have somewhat regularly found food as good as my local Indian restaurant in Boston, (Bukhara in JP!), but I should have heeded the word of my parents and not built my hopes so high. Let's just say the food quality is "variant." It's also impossible to find a kitchen to cook for yourself in-- I did once! I'll speak about that next-- so you are condemned to restaurants. Now of course we were on a budget so weren't eating at hotel restaurants everyday and that would have been lame if we did. Local restaurants and cheap tourist restaurants were our lot. When you sit down you are offered a never ending menu, but they only actually serve one or two dishes that day. Of those choices you have to deduce which is A. most likely to turn out ok and not as an unpleasant surprise and B. most importantly, which is less likely to send you running to the bathroom. Now I hate to be such a whiny spoiled tourist but this was a major issue. I've already spoken quite freely about my irregular bowels in past blogs-- it becomes such a banal topic of discussion that often 5 minutes into a conversation with another tourist we'd just met we're all exchanging poop stories. And three months of India left me about 18- 20 pounds thinner and Hernando 10. Though I must say Masala Dosas, the staple dish in the South, were always good. They're like a huge airy, crispy crepe folded over a yellow mush of seasoned potatoes and onions, so yum. And since only local places really serve them they were usually 40 cents for your meal.


Where are you now?
Though I need not complain about the losing weight since we are now in Colombia, the land of beautiful women who wake up looking ready to hit the clubs even though they are at the supermarket, or walking their dog through the park. I don't know if they'd believe me if I told them that celebrities in LA go food shopping in sweats or even pyjamas. So I have returned to adoloscence and become self conscious about my ugly, grey, but ever so comfortable tennis shoes.



Before we got here though we spent a week in England seeing the grandparents and doing a quick one night trip out to London. The weather was as miserable as English weather is in December but I didn't mind it for a week, though that's not to say I didn't enjoy seeing the sun again in Colombia. What we really enjoyed was Grandma's cooking. Especially since upon my departure from India it gave me a last goodbye, gonna miss you present: my last thourough bought of food poisoning. Now, almost three weeks out of the country and I still don't feel right and back to normal. I usually get sick once every 1-2 years, but I can't count how many times I've been ill in the past few months. Don't tell grandma though, she'll worry. Hey good news, as a British citizen (non-tax paying), I took advantage of their national health system, went to the doctor and I do not have a stomach parasite!


And the big question these days is where to next? And drumroll, we don't know. We'll be in Venezuela until mid january but we don't know how much money we'll have left for this lifestyle after that. So it's a big mystery for you and us alike. Hernando's pushing for a swift return to California to start life in San Francisco, which looks like our most sensible option as of yet, but maybe we don't have to be so sensible.... We'll keep you posted!