Crickets

Ahoy! How are you? Yesterday was still and humid here in Trivandrum, but today the breeze is back and it feels good here where I am sitting. Leena and Jacob loaned us a folding table and a few plastic outdoor chairs. We are just going to leave them in their house when we go, because they will be back in Abu Dhabi until next summer after they leave in a week. Mark has a study here, but he hadn't been able to use it, because there was no place to work. He's been doing his work at the dining room table or the kitchen counter, which is fine, except there are distractions from me and our visitors and other things that are going on around him. He'd much rather shut himself in a room and have 8 hours of uninterrupted work time instead of 12 hours with interruptions. So yesterday we got the table and set up the study, which is turning out to be a perfect work room. Actually, let me go take a picture of mark in there working so you can see. O.K. first of all here are close ups of the funny faces Mark was making in the first two pictures I took. Ridiculous. That second one had us rolling. And here is a less goofy picture of Mark working in his study. The other good thing is that now that Mark is in there, I can get my computer up off the floor where I have been sitting to work. Now I'm at the kitchen counter by the back door and it is a very nice place to hang out. While I'm on the subject of Mark, let me say that I know many of his fans out there would love to hear from him on this blog. The truth is, this takes a lot of time, especially formatting and uploading the pictures. With the way he is working, I honestly can't see where he will have much time to spend on the computer doing other things. But hopefully, you can pick up bits and pieces of his voice in what I write. Alot of what I write comes out of conversations that he and I have had. He loves all of you and is glad that at least one of us has the time to dedicate to keeping in touch for both of us. He reads all the blogs and comments, and one of these days, when he has some time off, he will bless us all with his humor and perspectives, too. Here is a picture of Mark and our friend JoJo in his office when it was still empty. You can see how in India Mark is even taller! By the way, that is a lungi (loon-gee) that Mark is wearing. It is just a piece of fabric that wraps around like a sarong and then folds up in half and gets tucked in. Men wear them here commonly, and they are so much cooler than even shorts. It is my personal opinion that Mark looks super good in his lungi. He wears it because it is comfortable, but I don't think he minds his wife's admirations either.

Here are some pictures of one of my special friends, the woman who brings us vegetables every couple of days. This is a life saver, because going to the market is a huge production that takes half a day. Keeping us eating well is already difficult at home, because we're having to stock the kitchen from scratch, so we don't have little things at hand when we need them. And there are few of the same foods available here. I can't just go to the grocery store. I have to go to different stores to get different things, and it isn't easy to figure out which store has what and how to get there. Once I do, mostly what I see is unfamiliar to me and I have no idea what do do with it. No olive oil, no olives, no basil, chives, oregano, no pasta on and on; most of the things in my fridge and cabinets back home are simply not here. So I end up with a pile of vegetables and spices that I have never seen before thinking OK, what do I do now? But there are carrots and eggplant and tomatoes and okra and peppers and garlic(I finally found) and onions. Also, no oven. So this woman, though she speaks no English, is very good at communicating with me. We talk to each other, her speaking Malayalam, me speaking English, and we make exaggerated gestures to show what me mean. No doubt 90% of the time we are talking about completely different things, but she does not seem to be bothered by this. She likes me alot, and being a grandmother herself, acts motherly toward me. She is always pinching my cheeks and laughing or scolding me. She does this thing where she grabs my chin and then pats her chest hard one time with her open palm. Like she is taking me into her heart. She understands what I want from the market, and so she brings me plenty of the tomatoes and other things I mentioned earlier that I know how to cook and eat. The deal is, this is what she does for a living. She goes to the market in the morning and loads up a couple of baskets of food and then comes out to this neighborhood and walks around to the houses and sells what she has. Today she came in for a glass of water and saw my stash of veggies I've bought from her but don't know what to do with wilting on the counter. She scolded me hard for this to which I answered in Malayalam "I dont' understand this vegetable". We are laughing and having fun with our little argument, but she is totally appalled at my ignorance and waste. I had been being nice, buying these vegetables from her in hopes I would figure out something to do with them, but knowing they would likely go to the birds, but today I got busted. She put the leafy veggies in cold water and fluffed them up to revive them and then rummaged through my cabinets to get what she needed to cook up this veggie. She made us a delicious lunch in about 5 minutes. So now I know how to make crickets. That is what Mark calls this dish, because when it is done it looks to him like crickets in a bowl. We had no idea that dish was made from this leavy veggie. Here is a picture of the crickets she made us. She also cut into this strange, unused vegetable and showed me that it can be eaten raw. It tastes like a cucumber, but sweeter. So there you have it. We may not starve afterall. I'm getting caught up in writing about our lives now, so I think today I will start messing around with making some movies to put up. Tomorrow we will go to Kovalam for a few days so I may not post until we get back. I want to post about the Ayruvedic doctor I am going to for a full body cleansing, but I think I'll wait until I get some pictures to go along. I hope you are all doing well! I'm having fun with the blog, and it makes me happy to know people are reading it! Love, A