Excitement

We had a couple of events that caused quite a bit of excitement around here that I thought I'd share:

    First, Brandon and I were out walking around some shops, but we realized we didn't have any cash on us. Most of these places don't take credit cards. We flagged down a bicycle rickshaw and asked if he could take us to an ATM. "Yes, yes. ATM," he said, gesturing for us to get in the rickshaw. We agreed to a price of rs. 20 and climbed in. Or so we thought. Now, this was my first time on bicycle rickshaw. It was kind of fun. Until we started going uphill, and I started feeling bad for the poor guy. He didn't really sit on the seat at all, just kind of threw his weight from one pedal to the other, swaying back and forth…until we were essentially not moving anymore, and he finally got off and walked the bike, pushing from the handlebars. Once we started to gain momentum again, he hopped back on, and began swaying again. Driving a bicycle rickshaw all day long would be hard work. And for very little pay. You couldn't exactly charge like an auto rickshaw – you are much slower – but you're definitely working way harder than an auto rickshaw driver. Anyway, we had been riding for quite a while, and we began to realize that he was not taking us to an ATM. He probably didn't understand what we were asking, but where he was taking us...I'm not really sure (I'm not sure he even had a destination). Things started to look familiar, and we realized we were back by the office where Brandon has been working. We told him to stop, we hopped down, and Brandon attempted to pay him rs. 20. The driver seemed dissatisfied, and started to say something else to us (in Hindi). Some guy on a motorcycle (who spoke English) pulled up and asked the driver what was going on. We were soon surrounded by about 20 men, all curious about what was going on. We were able to figure out that the driver was asking for more money. Apparently he thought he had earned more than rs. 20. The motorcycle guy told us we should not pay him anymore, and then he had Brandon hop on his motorcycle, and he took him to an ATM. It was a strange experience, to say the least.

    Second, we were hanging out in our room the other night, when I saw something move. Out from under a pile of dirty laundry crawled a cockroach that was a good two inches long. I believe my exact words were: "Eww, Eww, Eww. Freaking huge bug. Gross. Eww." By that time, it had crawled behind the dresser. After Brandon stopped laughing at me, he pulled on his tennis shoes and handed me a shoe. We moved the dresser, but he (she?) wasn't back there anymore. So we grabbed a flashlight and slowly opened the bathroom door. There he was, scurrying across the bathroom floor. Brandon hesitated (it was his first look at the thing), then threw a shoe at him and missed. There was much shrieking. Brandon finally cornered him and squished him with his shoe. And then we ran out of the bathroom. At this point, Didi became curious as to what all the fuss was about. We told her there was a bug in our bathroom, and she said, "Cock-a-roach?" and marched right in there. She picked it up by one of its hairy little legs, and swung it around saying, "Cock-a-roach, cock-a-roach," laughing as we all shrieked and jumped out of the way. She teased the dog with it a bit, and then took it outside to dispose of it. Gross.

Our lives are so glamorous and exciting.


*Edit*  Brandon objected after reading this post, because he says it makes it sound like he was shrieking at the sight of the cockroach.  ...I'm going to leave it the way it is written, and let you draw your own conclusions about how things went down.