Making the Most of Little Opportunities

Since we are currently on a forced holiday otherwise known as a city strike where everything shuts down completely and no vehicles are allowed on the road, I decided it was a good day to catch up on blogging.

Sometimes because everything just takes so much longer and requires a lot of effort and it’s always blazing hot, you have to really will yourself to do something. I’ve been saying for weeks, I want to check out this “park” that’s in the middle of the city because I’ve seen people out walking there in the evenings and I feel as though I never get to have much exercise here. That’s been a hard pill to swallow. I can’t just go for a walk wearing athletic clothes and there are hardly any sidewalks and crazy traffic so it’s just not very feasible. I could probably go walk at the beach but going alone is never fun cause I usually get mobbed with people. So I decided that yesterday was going to be the day that I finally went out to this biopark place. I arranged with my auto driver to drop me off and come get me 45 minutes later. Although the park is not much to brag about and smells like rotting eggs, I was glad I forced myself to go. I probably looked like a crazy person.

 Let me describe my outfit. I had on a bright pink Indian churidar (a long shirt that covers my butt) tight athletic Capri pants (no one wears anything but full pants here and certainly not spandex! Therefore I was scandalously showing off my calves and ankles), tennis shoes (have never seen one woman wear these) and was hauling my camelbak which I’m not sure even exists here. So I was a glorious sight to behold and turned every head.  I was speed walking in this park that went about a half mile. Took about 10 minutes and I thought, now what?

 I rounded a corner to a small lake and out of nowhere I saw a redheaded girl. Shocked to see another foreigner, I walked over to her and just started chatting. Her husband quickly joined and I found out that she’s from Estonia and married an Indian guy from Kerala. They were visiting some of his family as part of their honeymoon. We had such a nice chat and they were about to eat some ice cream. Before I could even refuse, her husband went and bought me another one and while I thought this was somewhat counter-productive to my attempt at exercising, I was sweating bullets and decided sure why not? So sometimes forcing yourself to get out and do something has great rewards. They are staying for 2 weeks and we plan to get together for dinner next week. In addition, I was able to refer them to my friend’s guesthouse and may be able to get them a bit of business during the slow peaks. So win, win! This girl’s face lit up when I said the guesthouse had A/C as she also is discovering the climate shock and they are apparently staying at a cousin’s house with just a fan. Not ok! 

Also attaching some videos of my students playing Do you like your neighbor!