MCE (more cultural experiences)

1. We found the post office and mailed some letters! I was so surprised that the post office here and the post office at home are really quite similar. There's a little window where you can buy stamps. There's also a little work area where you can address envelopes, put gum (aka glue) on your stamps and seal your envelopes. The post office was even came complete with one nasty postal worker and the one nice postal worker. I wonder if they have ever heard the expression 'going postal'?
2. Purchasing meat is a great cultural experience I haven't told you about yet. We've done it several times, although we eat about 1/3 of the meat that we did in the states. I prefer to look at that in a positive, I'm saving my cardiovascular system sort of way. But the chicken purchasing is probably the most interesting. You can get it really fresh, as in killed, scalded, plucked and gutted before your very eyes. My children thought it was AWESOME. But it made the chicken a little too fresh for me. Since my first chicken experience, we've made meat buying an all boy experience!
3. After the end of the bhunda, we needed to plan a trip to the capital rather quickly. We went out and spent the morning in the office of the travel agent we recently met on a rickshaw ride. There we purchased our airline tickets. The entire process made me chuckle. He called the airline to see if they had seats on the flight we want, and then he HAND WROTE our tickets. As in, they are written in his own handwriting. He has a computer in his office that was never turned on, so I was kind of wondering if it was just for show or if it really works.
4. I went to the parlor (aka beauty parlor). I went to the nicest parlor in town, or at least the one girls I know told me they liked best. It was absolutely surreal inside that place. There were at least 10 girls working/training there, and they were all sitting around talking. There were 5 stations, very similar to a small town beauty shop. AND they even had a sitting area complete with TV showing Hindi soap opera. It always strikes me as extra funny when things are similar to what I would find in the U.S. But the looks of the place were about all they had in common with a U.S. beauty shop. I decided to play it safe and have a hair conditioning treatment. They put this thick conditioner all over my head, gave me a little scalp massage and then put me under this thing that looks like a hair dryer but it really shoots out steam. When they put me under, they put a nice little cap over my hair, but I obviously wasn't the first user - it smelled heavily of perm solution. I said a little prayer that my hair wouldn't fall out, and stuck with it. I think the girls and I bonded, because they all want me to come back again. Next time I think I'll get a facial. For the $5.00 I spent on the conditioning treatment, I think I could probably go every week. It's soothing, well except the perm smell.
5. Lastly, I couldn't leave you without the latest insane thing that I've done. I think a couple of posts ago, I bragged about my scratch cooking accomplishments. Boasting has always been, for me, a clear indication that in the very near future, I'm going to mess up royally in that area. I have no idea why I posted how proud I am of the stupid cooking. At any rate, I was trying to get a meal on the table tonight, and I was making mashed potatoes. I had the potatoes all ready to be mashed. I began to add the salt and a liberal amount of pepper when an unusual sweet smell came to my nostrils. Instead of adding pepper to the potatoes, I had added chiyaa masala. This is how they flavor their tea here in this foreign land, and it includes flavors like cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg. No really it does. Even after I rinsed the potatoes and re-added all the ingredients. They still tasted like a dessert. It wasn't very good. I'm so sorry for my family who has to endure these types of fiascoes. Back home, we'd have just left the mess and run to Sonic or Wendy's. Sadly, here we must endure, press on, hold our noses and consume it.