waste/waist, corrupt post office, and other things

we're in chennai and we've been here 3 or 4 days. we're leaving on a night train tonight. it's been really nice here- a real change from the north. south india really does feel like a different country. it's quieter and mellower. less honking. sometimes we go from a busy bustling street to a very quiet and suburban-feeling street just by turning the corner. we're staying with leela, hemashree's mom, which is very very nice, and seeing priya and raghu and their family, which is also very nice. it's great to be able to call up priya every time we have a question about something, or need her to talk to someone whose english isn't understandable for us.

we took a block printing and batik class yesterday and learned a lot and got to make some things. they're drying now and then we'll iron them to melt off extra wax and finish "fixing" the color. that's fun and exciting. we didn't do it, but i learned how the tie-and-dye method works, which is something we saw a lot of in jodhpur. i might add pictures of these.

we did a walking tour today that was really interesting and i learned a lot, including about how the right side of our bodies is more holy or sacred than the left. which is nice to here, considering that this morning i realized that my belly button is no longer in the middle of my belly, but a little to the right! isn't that funny! also, i'm getting to the point where i don't have a waist. i feel my hip bones and my ribs, but there's no longer an indentation or curve where my waist should be. in fact it kind of bulges out a little from my hips. no more waist.

regarding waste, there are trash piles on the street that are definite trash piles. i can now accept adding my trash to those piles, without feeling like i'm littering. i feel like it WOULD be littering if i put my trash far from one of those piles.

the other day we left agra and came here. here is what transportation methods we used: auto rickshaw to bus station, bus to delhi, metro to the delhi airport (which was partly a very very crowded car where i can't remember being so packed in, and then the airport express trains which were quiet and empty), plane to chennai, prepaid taxi to leela's house. this was all in one day. there was a big storm in chennai that we arrived at the end of, which was lots of rain and wind. it was a cyclone and delayed our plane but not too much.

good foods i've really liked so far: warm kheer (like rice pudding), jalabe from the street, sweet laasi's, paneer pasanda in agra, fresh watermelon juice at dakshina chitra, kesar dhoodh (warm safron almond milk with pieces of almond in it), fresh grilled fish in mammalapuram, ... lots more but those are the ones i remember especially loving.

in the airport in delhi we saw a little post office desk and we wanted to mail our postcards we've written. we were told that our mail would cost something like 270 rupees (five dollars) and they put stamps on them and showed us. josh counted the stamps and saw it only added up to 150 rupees, and he asked why we were asked to pay 270 rupees. the men wiggled their heads in the indian way and gave an answer we didn't understand. josh asked for a receipt and they wobbled their heads again. we weren't going to give the money without understanding what was happening, so we insisted, and they agreed to add more stamps. so they put on another stamp or two on each piece of mail, until it really did add up to 270 rupees. great. so that mail may never arrive anywhere. it was very suspicious.

last thing to write about for now: the back of trucks often say HORN PLEASE. sometimes they also say USE DIPPER AT NIGHT. now i know what it means. if you think you have an answer, write it as a comment. if you really do know the answer, don't say it yet because i'm curious what people guess.