Every breath you take... Every move you make...

Shopping in India is not an easy thing for several reasons. First, there is not the selection of items that we have in the UK or US. Fine, I can totally deal with that. I can also deal with the haggling that is necessary at times to get a decent price on things. What I can not stand is the staring and being followed around. I was at the grocery store today and a man that works there would stand two feet away from me and stare at me as I was trying to figure out what juice I wanted to buy. Nathan and I went to a handicraft emporium this afternoon that sold incredibly beautiful things, but I wanted to run out of there screaming within ten minutes. Picture the worst car dealership you have ever been to and you will start to understand. We walk into the shop and a man runs up to me and shouts,"Madam, (I am always Madam here) what do you want to buy?". Then we had at least three people trailing us everywhere we went. We told them at least twenty times that we were just wandering around and that if we needed help we would ask. This was no deterrent to them and anything I looked at or commented to Nathan about was pulled down and pushed on me. Finally I said to Nathan,"I need to get out of here" and we were gone. Turns out that this wasn't the store that we had asked our driver to take us to, but it was the one that his buddies work at. He pulled this with Nathan the other night on his way home from work. He took him to a rug store where Nathan was told by the five men surrounding him that he should buy the $800 rug to surprise his wife. I do not want a $800 surprise. Today when we dropped Nathan off at the train station Muktar suggested another store to take me to. I was too tired to put up with that baloney and told him to take me home. If he is going to keep doing this we may have a problem.

This is one thing that we have learned being here. It sounds incredibly glamorous to have a driver and a maid. It is not. What it means is that for an hour a day I have to watch Chinu and make sure she does what we are paying her for. Not that she doesn't do a great job, it's just that I am trapped in the house when I have other things to do. I just like having my house to myself, but I also like not mopping my floors and cleaning toilets so I put up with it. People don't understand why we don't have a cook, I just want to have my evenings alone with Nathan.

Not that his company makes this easy (Wow, I am whining in this one!). Nathan was contracted to work five days a week and to have US holidays off. This has not proven to be true. He has worked every Saturday since we have been here except for the one where we had Delhi Belly. It was lovely. Last weekend he worked Sunday as well and he did not get Memorial Day off. I've decided that India's low divorce rate is due to the fact that married couples never see each other here.He usually gets home at around 7:30, eats dinner, and works until midnight. When we are together, he is helping me with my math homework (even though I did it almost all by myself last night!). He is on a train right now to Punjab where he will be until Friday. They wanted him to go to another fair on Saturday and Sunday but we decided that he would set this weekend aside so that we could do some sightseeing. It doesn't matter, he has been scheduled for a meeting Saturday at 2:00. I am really trying to be supportive of him but it is hard to be alone so much and to not be angry at people who are clearly oblivious to the fact that Nathan has a family. We had originally planned on me going with him, but with his schedule there we wouldn't have been able to do anything anyways so it seemed kind of pointless to spend the money.

This sounds so moany but the fact of the matter is that one day I will be enchanted by this place and the next I am kicking and screaming against it. Today is the latter. So that must mean that tomorrow will be a great day, right?