Time flies when plans get cancelled by farmers throwing rocks.

Only a couple weeks left in India- it’s a pretty bizarre thing.  I constantly find myself in this battle to be as present as possible for these last couple of weeks but it’s hard when I constantly feel like I have one foot in India and one in a suitcase.   On the one hand I’m feeling really involved with my internship and am establishing real relationships with my Indian friends.  On the other hand, I can’t buy something without thinking how it’s going to fit in a carry on and the memory of guacamole is constantly tormenting my Mexican-food-deprived state.  In honor of these battling thoughts, here’s a to-do list of what I still need to do while in India and what I need to do as soon as I return to the States.

India:

-Take a trip to a beach.  Seriously any beach will do.

-Learn how to make a proper cup of chai

-Decrease my uses of the head bob or at least get a better hold on the appropriate times to use it

-Get henna done

-Learn how to wrap a sari

-Finally embark on the daunting task of buying the coolest yet most easily pack-able souvenirs for family and friends 

-Spend the weekends at High Spirits (one of the best music venues in Pune)

-Complete my goal of trying everything on the menu at Le Plaisser, ie: most incredible French cafe one can ever hope to find in India or France

America:

-Consume an illegal amount of guacamole while watching an illegal amount of Netflix (I left America in the middle of Mad Men)

-Wear a lot of black.  Not because I’m depressed but I just need to recover from the amount of colors and patterns worn here

-Buy a cup of black coffee at 9 am and have it served under 20 minutes

-Cuddle with my dog for 10 straight hours.  Then take a guacamole break and then resume cuddling. 

-Go to Whole Foods and buy something really bouchie like ‘pure whole grain grass fed vegan chia flax soy based organic all natural antioxidant ancient Mayan tea’

-Stay out past 10:30 pm.

-Go on the Internet just to marvel at the speed of point and click action

I'll wrap up this post with an event this weekend that shows how much I've adapted to the organized chaos that is India.  A couple of friends and I were planning to travel to the white sand beaches of the Konkan coast- let me also reiterate that this is the last weekend to easily travel as I have a lot of work coming up and I want to spend my last few weekends in Pune.  We arrive at the bus station to find out that the bus has been canceled due to the fact that farmers are protesting to rising costs of sugar cane by throwing rocks at all government vehicles along the highway and the highway has basically been shut down.  Kate from September would be having a mental break down that I was missing my last chance to travel due to farmers throwing rocks at buses as a form of protest and getting a refund for the bus ticket would be next to impossible.  Kate in December, taken aback but not surprised by the absurdity of the situation, proceeds to chuckle and find if alternate routes are possible.  As they weren't, further plans were made to make the most out of a three day weekend in Pune which consisted of seeing an amazing artist from Mali, Fatoumata Diwara, in concert, eating the most amazing strawberry eclair ever created, finding guacamole!!!, discovering the most Philly bike shop in all of India, getting lost on the back of a motor bike in the middle of the night to go to a birthday party where I convinced everyone that naturopathy is the most effective form of medicine, saw another concert which can only be described as the hindi male version of lady gaga, winding up at a late night wine festival, and then coming home to where our host mom made us POTATOES for dinner.  So no, it wasn't the relaxing weekend on a beach I was hoping for but India isn't the place to hope or expect certain things to happen, it's the place to roll with the punches and realize ultimately it's not where you go or what you do but who you're with.  If you don't like who you're with then I suppose you're just in trouble...