No Lefties Allowed!

Yesterday was a great day! As a volunteer at Rising Star, I have a strict schedule every day that I follow. Every day we all wake up at about 7 a.m. and work all day until we go to bed at 10:30. Our jobs rotate daily between tutoring,construction, and the medical team for the first half of the day. However, yesterday, all of the volunteers were given a much needed day off! We woke up at the usual time, but instead of the usual routine, we all boarded a rickety bus and drove two hours to a town called Mamalapura. The town resembled a giant flee market with tiny little shops lining both sides of the streets. Each shop was filled with Indian trinkets and rugs that made me feel like I had just stepped into "Aladdin". We spent the first four hours of our day going in and out of stores shopping, or more specifically, bartering. There are no price tags. The price is made up on a whim the second you walk in the door. In the beginning I took it as a challenge, but the novelty wore off after a few stores.

There are a few things I learned throughout the day:

1.Spending time in India has made me very cheap! I won;t pay more than 200 rupees for anything! (200 rupees= about 2 bucks haha)

2. All the villagers make the same face when you barter with them.( If it looks like they are disgusted it's because they are)

3. I miss shopping at Nordstrom. (No offense to Disney Land, but Nordstrom is the happiest place on earth. ;)

4. Be very careful what kind of "authentic Indian souvenir" you buy to take back to the states. (see picture below....haha)


In the end, I realized that there was no use for little trinkets that would soon end up at the bottom of boxes or junk drawers. There is nothing I could buy that could describe the things that i've seen here. I just have to hope that the pictures I take will be able to do this experience justice!

After we shopped we saw a lot of really cool stone temples that were throughout the village. The carvings were so intricate!



On the way back to the volunteer hostel, we stopped at a traditional Indian restaurant, everybody ordered "prata" which ended up being all of our favorite dish so far! Prata reminded me of very thick tortillas with a spicy sauce on the side. It was definitely the most filling meal I've had in India. I don't get hungry much here which is probably due to the extreme heat.


Since we were in a public, traditional restaurant, we had to respect "Indian manners". This meant that we ate with our hands; our right hands. The left hand can at no point touch your food. It's very difficult to tear prata using one hand but we all managed. :)