Sari Shopping

A friend took me sari shopping today!  It was overwhelming, but so much fun!  I'm so glad Jaya went with me.  Not only is she Indian, but she always looks so cute!  



The shop she took me to was small, but they had sari fabric from floor to ceiling.  There is no way to look through them all, so I told them the colors that I liked and they started pulling.  

One of the things that I love about India is that everything is so 
colorful.

This is the sewing room where they make the saris and the choli, which is the short bodice that is worn under the sari. The choli is made to your measurements after the sari is purchased.

Next they wrapped the sari for me, thank goodness. I kind of felt like
I was dressing up for a college
fraternity party.

This poor girl had no idea what she was getting herself into when she came to work today!

This is just loosely wrapped. It looks much prettier
than this when it's done right.

Th

I may have to hire someone to come to my house to wrap it.  I would hate for it to come untucked.  I can just see me with my sari flapping in the wind! Fortunately there is a skirt that is worn underneath, but still...

So, there were several that
I really liked.  How to pick
just one?  

Don't drink the water

I struggle sometimes with exactly what to post about.  I mean, my day-to-day activities here aren't that exciting.  Someone told me to post about them anyway.  What happens here is still going to be different than how it's done in America.

So, today I'm going to tell you about the water.  We do get our water from the city, but it is held in a cistern (in our case under the carport) and then pumped to a tank on the roof.  From there, it is gravity fed down to the sinks, showers, toilets, etc.  This is "grey water".  It's not for drinking.  We drink bottled water; Aquafina actually.  We also have a water filter on our kitchen sink.  We can drink that water also, but usually we only use for water that we will be cooking with.

A few days ago, we ran out of water.   We didn't know that because of it being summer here, there was a low supply/high demand for water.  Therefore, the the city was rationing the water from its supply.  We did have some in the tank on the roof, but the cistern was basically empty.  So, one of our guards (we have them mainly to keep people from wandering onto the property) took the opportunity to clean it out.  Now I understand why we don't drink it.

In case you're wondering, we had water delivered by a water truck.  We had to pay a "service charge" for speedy delivery (i.e. next day, not next week or maybe even never at all), but we didn't completely run dry.

Don't you love the bamboo ladder?  I do!

Tirupati, one of our awesome guards.

That brown stuff on the floor is dirt.  It was all over
the walls, too.  At least there was no mold or critters. :)

Village Church

We visited a small village church Sunday.  It was great, even though I didn't understand much of it!
Everyone was very friendly and interested in the "white" people.  I'm sure some of them had never seen one before.