I'll have the rice with a side of rice...and rice pudding for dessert.

The India team has been in Mumbai for about 17 days now, and we just can't handle anymore rice. The Indians eat rice at every meal; typically with some kind of super spicy curry to mix in with it. I really enjoyed this the first week. We live with an amazing cook. Seriously, Auntie is the lady in town that everyone knows makes the best food and loves to come over to eat; it's just our poor stomachs cannot stomach anymore spice. or rice. the past week i have been eating rice and soy sauce....rice and soy sauce..rice and soy sauce. after that got old, we decided it would be best for us to venture out to a great american establishment right here in mumbai:

ruby tuesday's.

seriously, i don't think anyone can understand just how wonderful this was for us. we walked in and sat at our booth with wide eyes and smiles as we awaited our salads. of course, i had to document this monumental event, as it was probably the best thing the india team has done for ourselves while here. it was a real morale booster.
come to find out, it was tuesday night and that meant prayer meeting night. in india, when one has people over, it is custom to feed them a full meal. even though we had already eaten, we were no exception to this custom. while we're usually pretty good about eating most of our food, we were all just too full and too burnt out on the indian food. we all found creative ways of hiding it on our plate: i hid some rice under my poodhi and when others werent looking i scooped some curry onto their plates. allie and mara would hide some of theirs under and inbetween the little bowls we had. when it came down to it, we just couldn't eat it all. we felt bad, but i think they understood...at least i hope so.

here's phil being "so over the rice and curry" :

in other news, we are teaching an english class in the slums everyday for all this week and all of next week. reverand wankhede took us to this slum last week to show us around. the living conditions were like nothing i have ever seen before. when we first drove through the enterance, we could hardly breathe because of the smell. trash is all over at the front because most of the people living there collect and recycle trash as their main source of income. the smell gets less prominant as we keep driving. we parked sort of near the front and we got out to walk to the school. reverand wankhede told us to watch our feet because urine and feces flows through the streets (i wouldn't call them that- they are about one to two yards wide and are dirt) because there is no plumbing or running water. there are naked kids playing in filth and trash everywhere, along with very large rats and dogs that look like they haven't eaten in months. it was definetely hard to see, but we kept straight faces as we walked to the school. we met a family of eight people living in a room about half the size of my dorm room.
i took one picture discreetly out the window of the sewing classroom the church also runs. this is a little bit of a "nicer" part of this particular slum.

we had our first day yesterday (monday) teaching the ESL class. the first day was rough, because the kids were only ages 2-5, and they hardly know marathi-let alone english. we also had some trouble with the teacher because of the language barrier and expectations she had and the ones that we had. allie and i went to the store and bought some supplies and games in order to make it more fun for the kids. it definetely worked! they had so much fun and we taught them colors and shapes with play-doh. so i was a little disgruntled the first day, but now i am really excited for the next two weeks.

after we are done with this class, we are going to be living and working at the orphanage for two weeks. i am really really anticipating this because the kids there are the sweetest children on the face of the earth. i can't wait.

more pictures:

this is from a coffee shop we found and LOVE. they have delicious mango smoothies (everything here is mango).

auntie and jyoti.

the lizard i went to the bathroom with.

i have no idea why anyone would ever want to own a parrot.