newsy news

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right first things first. ...pass the pigs score is tanuja 64 david 54. Tanuja continues to cheat.

A few things about the hindi language. After one week Tanuja and I are in no doubt that 'there is a black pen on the big book' or indeed that 'my small bag is red'. The word for food is the same as the word for 'man with one eye' and 'she has gone' is similar to 'those are cows'. it's such fun!

i've realised that constant updates about what we have learnt at language school will be pretty tedious, so i'll stop. suffice to say we're having almost 4 hours of lessons a day, with another 4 hours of work at home. When you add this up with eating, washing, a bit of reading and 11 hours a night of sleep (how great is that?) these are our days.

so..what else. I've been here two weeks and still find it amusing that cows wander the street freely, that monkeys are as common as cats and that everything costs nothing. There's also a whole trade here of people that carry stuff, which on the side of the himlayas is a pretty tough job. we see people carrying enormous wardrobes up streets that we find tricky with just our school books.

i bought an indian international sports magazine to while a way a few minutes. this turned out to contain 9 articles on the state of the indian cricket team and a bonus Frank Lampard poster.

Hello from the pass the pigs champion. First things first I don't cheat, David is just bitter because he is being thrashed by his wife.

Can't add much more about hindi school really - other than the fact that one of our teachers is also a tailor (very useful for my plans to have him copy my one and only designer top for about 2 pounds) and another teacher has provided us with a culinary tour of the town - we now know where the bengali sweet shop is and where to buy the best and freshest (honest mum) chicken.

We had planned to go to shimla - another adopted English colonial hill station whilst we were in mussoorie but the seven hour taxi ride put us off - so we'll be going there from dehli instead later in the trip.

We have however managed a minor trek to Happy Valley yesterday refusing all rickshaw wallahs (even one who we think said he would take us somewhere for one rupee). It's an amazing place that has been set up by the government for Tibetan refugees - we saw them having tons of rice/vegetables delivered by lorry - they have better buildings and schools than the native indians and seem pretty happy about being here. We sampled our first momo (that's a tibetan dumpling) watched some cricket and twirled some buddhist wheels for luck. All in all a good touristy outing.

That's enough from me other than to say we're trying to immerse ourselves in Indian culture - so much so that we have started to smell of curry and David's indian head wobble is coming along a treat.


David and Tanuja

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Comments

[jill bocquet]

love the photo(s) you've added!!