Good Thing My Running Buddy Arrived

...because according to my camera, eating is all I do here. Our Tibetan India group is complete now; Britany arrived early this morning in India and made it to the Karuna Home this afternoon. All of us are getting more into our projects and the community now, also. My English classes are going well and this week in town we met a man who teaches English at one of the local monasteries. We got permission for me to go help there and I hope to go for the first time next week. We're enjoying finding opportunities to get more involved in the community now that all our legal papers are finished. One thing we've definitely been enjoying since arriving in India is the food, so I decided to finally share some pictures and talk about a few of the food experiences we've been having.

This is a green mango, cut up in slices with salt and chile powder sprinkled on top. They are hard and sour and ridiculously delicious. When I saw the man selling them outside the Golden Temple where we were going to eat momos I couldn't resist buying one, after knocking his high price down by half, that is. I ate these same kind of mangos all the time in the Philippines, but we ate them dipped in soy sauce with pepper seeds, similar idea I guess.

 

 This is the first Tibetan restaurant we went to. We had meat momos there. I don't prefer the meat momos but the cooks at the Karuna Home made meat momos that I really enjoyed. They included vegetables and in general the cooks where we are staying make very good food. If I learned their dishes I would never get bored with vegetables again. They think of more ways than I ever would have to prepare more vegetables than I usually ever remember exist.

  

 This was the first Indian restaurant I went to. Southern Indian food is VERY spicy. I got paneer masala and Indian rice with vegetables. It was all delicious but my nose wouldn't stop running. Of all the food we ordered I somehow ordered the two dishes with the most kick. Beau kindly helped me finish my food that day, boys are good for things like that.

 

 We had the special privileged of attending a Tibetan wedding. I didn't get the best pictures of the food, but there were LOTS of options. This was one of the coolest things I've ever seen, all made out of vegetables including the flower carvings, and designed like a beautiful cake. That's the healthiest cake I think I'll ever eat.

 

We stopped for small ice cream cones in town one day. Usually Lori and Beau like to buy these small ice treats at this place but I was craving ice cream so we tried it out and enjoyed a rest. 

 

 This is one of our favorite restaurants so far. It's inside the gates of the Golden Temple, meaning it's also all vegetarian which I'm plenty okay with. We tried our first fried momos there but have all agreed we prefer them steamed. I also ordered chow mein with cheese, mostly to see what they were going to do with the cheese, it was interesting but deliciously flavored. I got it without cheese the next time we went.

 

 Here Lori is displaying the pepsi we bought for our meal that day. We usually go for coke but there wasn't any to be found. Apparently me and foreign countries means the only time I drink soda regularly. They say it's good for your stomach and killing off the bad stuff you might be getting or not used to in foreign lands so I'll go with it.

 

 Here is me with my mini coke at the wedding. We don't drink tea so we got a lot of coke with small fried sweet treats and little chocolates that day. The great thing about coke in foreign countries is the real sugar. I just finished a book for my sociology of development class that talks all about America hurting other countries with big crops like sugar and coffee by choosing to produce and use the cheaper and less delicious - less healthy - corn syrup. I found my reading particularly interesting while sitting and drinking my coke with real sugar in one of those foreign lands it was talking of...and speaking of sugar cane...

 

 ...here's a stand of it!

 

 This is the best lemonade stand I've ever stopped at. He runs shoots of this sugar cane through his machine over and over again and a few times with a lemon and a lime attached, letting all the juices run out and then you drink the pure sugar. Delicious experience to say the least.

We've eaten a lot of new food, and a lot of good food. Every day at the Karuna Home we have rice and Dahl as a part of the meal. Dahl is a soupy mixture of crushed beans often with some tomato involved and they eat it with everything - I've gotten to the point that I don't much like my meal without it, either. 

To finish off the post I'll share the picture of this adorable Tibetan baby. This picture doesn't do her justice at all, in fact it's kind of a squished looking photo but the Tibetan children are all beautiful and this baby was so squishy and sweet I could have eaten her too! To say the least, our stomachs are very happy and so are the rest of us.