With Pictures!

I am still fascinated as ever by the traffic. It is so fun to look outside the window when we're driving around and see all the beautiful colors and the people and the busyness yet slower pace of life. That contradiction seems weird to me, but that's how it appears to me. There are so many people on every street. Because there are very few traffic signals, they wait for the right opportunity to walk across the street. Now, in the US, that walk would be rather quick, but here, it takes forever. There are times when there are people crossing the street in front of us and I wonder if they will make it to the other side before the cars go crashing into them. I'm so surprised I have not seen anyone get hurt yet. I am also very thankful for that.

One thing that really made me laugh when we were driving yesterday was the gas truck. The back of it displayed the "petroleum" warning but also made mention that it is "highly inflammable". Unless my definition is wrong, the petroleum here in India will not catch fire! I asked Cindy about that and she said that "inflammable" here means the same as "flammable". I still thought it was really funny. I took a picture. It was from inside the car, so there is a bit of a glare.. and the windows are tinted so that makes everything seem a bit more hazy.

Saturday we went into the city. That was exciting. Actually, I've been in the city quite a bit. We have to go through there, or around there, to get to the orphanages. Everything seems like a city. But, I'm used to that so it's not a huge shock. The downtown area reminded me a lot of Vancouver, BC in look, the not so nice parts, except that it is more dense and perhaps a bit more run down. Cindy and I were walking down on of the main commercial roads and there were, of course, stray dogs wandering around - though I've noticed that they usually lie around until they think someone will give them something. Well, one of them when we passed it got up and started following us. We walked a bit quicker to try to lose it, but it went right past Cindy and tried to get my attention. Apparently it thought that I had food I wanted to give it. If I had food scraps, I probably would have obliged. But I had nothing on me that even resembled food. Maybe I shouldn't look at them as I pass by anymore. But they are so cute and ignored that I just want to say hi. Oh well.

Today I am going to see Lakshmi again. We will have our first official tutoring session. She has had a couple of tests since I last saw her, so I don't know if she'll have much homework, so I'm going to bring wiht me the best 3/4 math book that I've ever seen in my life, and a couple of short novels and we'll see what she wants to work on. I'm looking forward to that part of my day.

Here are a few extra pictures for you to enjoy.

A lot of the buses, vans and tractors are painted amazing colors and designs.

Look closely at the woman in the background.. see the bundle of sticks?

And... this is a billboard for the construction company doing a lot of the work around the city.