Losing Pounds in Pune, India

I finally have it in me to blog again.  Working 10-11 hours a day here in India, staring at a computer makes me really not want to touch the thing when I get "home" to the Oakwood hotel.  This hotel is amazing...I was in tears when the staff showed me my room.  If you had to live in a hotel for 4.5 months, you would cry too.  It is  a full apartment, with a kitchen...all the tools required to make everything I want - which at this point has been Betty Crocker's Mac and Cheese recipe, Ramen Noodles, and PB&J's.  It is a precious oasis that keeps me grounded during my long stay here, yet I find it surreal and awkward to be waited on hand and foot here, when just outside the gates there are people literally living in hand-crafted tarp covered structures.

There is so much to talk about, so I figured I will give a glimpse of Pune, India through my eyes on my commute to work every morning.  It is a 15 minute commute, during which my driver miraculously maneuvers and weaves meticulously through unmanaged clusters of motorbikes, rickshaws, trucks, elephants, cows, you name it, unscathed and for arrival on time to work...  Here are some of the things I have born witness to *keep in mind this is a city of 8 million people:

- A rainbow of sari-wearing women with jewels all over contrasting with the thick layer of dirt coating everything surrounding them
- A small concrete temple in which people pray every day and my driver says a short silent prayer to on the way to work
- Hand-crafted "huts" made of items found from the litter that exists everywhere
- One nice stretch of road with hand-laid bricks followed and preceded by dirt roads, potholes, roads in construction
- Women balancing bags, baskets, boxes, water jugs, etc on their heads as they walk
- Men with rifles guarding the more upscale or "western" hangouts
- Bamboo scaffolding on the hundreds of buildings in construction
- Men in turbans
- Entire families of four riding on a motorbike or moped
- Beautifully hand-painted cargo trucks, that say in all caps on the back "Please Use Horn - OK"
- Hand painted road signs in English and in Hindi
- Hundreds of thousands of people
- Children, bare butted, pooping on the non-existent sidewalk while their mothers stand guard
- Cows and bulls creating traffic jams
- Road workers sleeping on the sidewalk in forts created by placing sheets of plastic between the oil barrels that they use to fix the bridge during the day
- Beautiful condos under construction
- An elephant with the Hindu "Om" symbol painted between its eyes carrying two boys while another boy (~8 years old) guides it down the street with a whip in hand
- A herd of goats of all different colors (so cute!)
- Stray packs of dogs eating garbage
- Hand painted corrugated metal homes with women sweeping the doorsteps out front with hand made straw brooms
- Teenage boys bathing in their underwear by dumping buckets of water on themselves
- Three wheeled rickshaws carrying 6 people
- Cargo trucks carrying dozens of people in suits to work
- Horns constantly beeping, whose tones vary depending on the size and authority of the vehicle
- Poor, skinny, dark, dismembered and dirty people (young, adult, and old) with hands cupped begging for money and food
- The only cat I've seen thus far in India; the chicken I ordered at the Chinese restaurant didn't taste like the chicken I'm used to
- People riding a camel
- Bulls in stables next to neat piles of their hand-pounded round dung cakes used for fire-starters
- Men hand- turning a mill that produces sugar cane juice next to a messy block-long line of people waiting for their sugar fix
- A focused boy around the age of 9, with screwdriver in hand, repairing a grown man's motorcycle while the man scrutinizes his impeccable work
- A fish and chicken market
- Oranges arranged perfectly in pyramids on carts lining the street
- Three grown men on a moped
- A green river stuffed with litter on whose banks bulls are grazing and huts stand in a chaotic order
- Dry sunny heat (I wake up every morning and wish for rain)
- Women with their heads wrapped driving motorcycles in kurtas to work
- Much more eye opening beauty

I am here for another three weeks and will never feel like I could sufficiently scratch the surface in describing what I experience every day.  I think that is also partly why I haven't blogged - it is an overwhelming task...There is so much to say that words cannot hold a candle to.

Up until last week I was thoroughly enjoying myself here.  I love it so much.  I find Pune, India to be a beautiful mess.  I was eating all the foods the locals were eating, partaking in all the local activities.  Then, of course, I got sick.  I knew it was coming, but I had no idea how rough it would hit.  I figured since I was going to be here for so long (~1.5 months all together) that I should be able to eat what I want to eat.  WRONG.  I fell terribly ill and have lost around 10 pounds as a result.  After one week of eating hardly anything, I am able to eat bananas and rice.  That's actually an exaggeration, because I went to McDonald's today for lunch and had a McChicken Sandwich (note: no beef on the menu - Holy Cow has a different meaning here).  I did not touch the Coke because it came out of a fountain, which was probably supplied by local water, which probably has amoeba, which is probably what infected my body, which made me feel like death, which made me currently very afraid to eat anything.  And it comes full circle. I do not think I can afford to lose another 10 pounds.

Enough about pain and suffering, because I felt great today! Going to bed now.  Have to rest what my doctor called a "delicate western body" because I was dancing to traditional Indian songs all night tonight on a rooftop overlooking this wonderful city.  Have I mentioned that I love my life yet?