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Day 20


Today I am just wasting some time before we meet a friend to go down to town, so this is a text only post, sorry! I took a picture of the sunset for you Roger, but I haven't been up yet to see the sunrise! Other than that it has been a pretty uneventful week. We are now officially half way through the language course, which is nice. Next week will also be one month in India, how fast time flies! We've been just going to school lately, but some funny things have happened. First, one of my teachers love to learn American slang, so he says it all of the time randomly. The other day we were learning the word for "only" as in "only drink bottled water when you are sick". Then he said "or only drink water, not whiskey or two buck chuck." The whole class burst out laughing. How did 2 buck chuck, a nickname for a wine sold at Trader Joes get all the way to a hillside town in India? We asked him if he had ever been to the states and he said "no I'm just a hillbilly I've only been to Mussoorie and Delhi my whole life." It was so funny, he said he had just picked it up somewhere. Also the guys at the hostel are really starting to treat Andrew like a god. The other day Androo was only wearing a T-shirt and they thought it was going to rain that day: "Androo, you have umbrella?" "No, but I have a raincoat I'm going to wear to school" "okay, you want my umbrella? It's going to rain today" "No, really it's okay I don't need it" "Androo, don't go to school without coat, it rain today." We came up with a theory that the guys at Dev Dar were hired by Vicki to look after Andrew, because they act so much like a mother to him it's funny. I got my first WARM SHOWER in two weeks yesterday! It felt fantastic. For some reason we had water and it had enough pressure to come out of the shower head so I took advantage of it. It made me so happy. There was even enough water to wash my hair with shampoo! Then I put on lotion and make up and perfume, I went around singing that song "I feel pretty, oh so pretty." It was pretty comic. By the way mom, I told people the story of how you bought me the perfume, and I thought that was a weird gift for somebody going to India, but how much I appreciate it now. They all think it's really cute. So whenever I feel really gross, or if I want to celebrate, I put on some of that perfume! This weekend the group had a scheduled hike to a temple up a hill. It takes three days, that's why we have Friday off from school. Andrew and I decided not to go because we weren't feeling well, and we figured the last thing we need is a three day hike in the rain, probably with no shower when we return. It's supposed to be like two nights in hostels and you go visit temples and things. Frankly, I haven't been that interested in the temples. I feel like going inside of temples all the time is somewhat mocking of the religion. Andrew feels the same way. Plus, hiking with 40+ other Americans in the rain for 10 miles or whatever doesn't sound like fun. So we decided to stay at the hotel this weekend and take it easy. There are about 6 other people who stayed as well. It's actually kind of nice. We have water, and there aren't people everywhere. Plus they have some hikes and water falls here in Mussoorie that we can go to in just a day trip that are only a mile or two off of the road. We're going to check those out. I'll update with pictures maybe Monday or Tuesday. Until then we are resting and eating out!

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