chicken soup and chicken curry

I have finally settled into a home here in Delhi. I'm staying with a woman named Nirmal Milek in Lajpat Nagar III in New Delhi. I call her Aunty, and it's just me, Aunty, and her Nepalese servant in the house. Yes, having a servant is weird. Very, very weird... but it's part of the social structure here so one can't really fight it, at least not as a foreign exchange student.

Aunty owns a whole building in Lajpat. The first floor is a preschool. I went there today and played with 30 1 1/2 - 4 year olds. Oh man. They are absurdly cute and just stare at me like I'm some sort of alien which, I guess, I am. We danced a lot and sang bursery rhymes. The whole school is in English. Aunty and I live on the second floor, in a really nice apartment. There are some ants, but other than that it's pretty chic. We have dinner every night (chicken soup the first night for my stomach, then chicken curry last night because I have been feeling much, much better) at 8 pm, then we watch really terrible television for an hour. Basically we watch "Planet Bollywood" (some Bollywood entertainment show) or really badly produced Hindi soap operas. Aunty is adorable and yells in Hindi at the television and then hits my arm, laughs, and yells "This very, very funny!"

I don't understand anything, but I have a pretty good time laughing at her exclamations. I am lucky to live in the house I live. This morning Aunty took me into the kitchen where her shrine is and we prayed together and lit incense.

We have the day off today so I am spending some time getting school supplies, art supplies, and going to shops around the house. I have been pretty overwhelmed with everything... tomorrow we start real classes and it promises to be very, very touch academically. It's great, but I'm nervous.

So much has been happening... I'm sorry to say that so far I haven't really been that thorough on this blog. I promise I will get some pictures up soon and report more on the happenings.

Oh, and just because I want to stick to the theme... I have been noticing the more unpleasant smells recently, they are rampant around my neighborhood. Many wafts of urine and human waste come creeping up from the baking sidewalk. Apparently in the next ten days the temperature will drop and I am looking forward to that. It's about 100 degrees all the time and I have no more sweat to sweat. Delicious.