10 days

1. Niranjana mummy took me to two villages to see where the girls come from. Surprisingly, the government has built roads in even the most interior of places to make travel feasible, so we managed to get to one house. As for the other one, we got to the village but monsoon + dirt road = no cars, so I couldn't see the house. Both houses were absolutely beautiful and clean with rice paddy fields everywhere on the outside. The house I did see even had a refrigerator inside...definitely was not expecting that, considering Niranjana mummy told me the girls was one of the poorer ones. I couldn't have guessed so unless she had said something.

2. The absolute worst place to be bitten by..hmm..let's see here..five fricking mosquitos is on your feet. I can think of a few worse places but I'm talking only from personal experience here. Your feet will itch and itch and itch until you're sick of scratching your feet (as you try to walk) and after a certain point, you will be jumping around like a maniac because itching doesn't solve anything. But neither does jumping.

3. Oh yeah, project is done, minus the morning shoot. It's just so hard to wake up at 4:30 am and get to the ashram. I did manage to crank out a 30 page report which has no significant findings in it. If you don't count the appendices, it's more of a 15 page report but I felt compelled to stick to a true researcher's ways and have more appendices/footnotes than material.

4. It seems that people in India believe in buying guests presents before they leave. For me, that means every uncle/aunt/cousin I have here (and there are a lot of them) will buy me insane amounts of clothes, jewelry, shoes, etc. until I say, "If you buy me anything more, I'll throw it away." I said no a billion times when the gifts first started coming in, but at this point, I know they will buy things anyway so I just go with it. All the clothes I brought from the U.S. are staying here so there's actually room in the bags.

5. People don't want to talk when I put a camera on them so the documentary will be boring. Thus, do not ask me if you can watch it.

6. I have ten days to eat everything remotely Indian I can possibly eat. Ideas? Let me know.