Live and Learn

Now that my time in India is over I realize that I learned so much about life and myself than could ever be possible at home. Here’s a random assortment of what I have discovered and learned:

• To always appreciate silence and clean air
• To enjoy eating with my hands
• That I may like ginger
• To eat quite spicy food
• To get used to being stared at
• That traffic on the left is easy to get used to when you stop thinking about it
• To bargain really well
• That sometimes it’s ok to sit next to a stranger
• To appreciate some loopholes simply for the fact of giving another person a job.
• The BRATTY diet (Bananas, Rice, Apples, Tea, Toast, Yogurt) of course without the B for me
• To carry toilet paper with you everywhere
• The versatility of TK (ok, great) and a side head nod (yes, no, or maybe)
• That Thanksgiving dinner is possible even without a turkey or an oven
• To always ask for directions, and to ask multiple times
• That no matter how desperate, Nescafe is still not an adequate substitute for coffee
• To chew fennel seeds
• To love to dance again
• To like pop music – at least in Hindi
• To pack light
• To take short showers
• That threading is far superior to waxing
• To do my laundry in a bucket
• To create a very balanced meal from street food
• You can never have too many scarves