Arriving Coimbatore

Tuesday Dec 13th
We arrived in Coimbatore today, praveens home town. His parents and several friends met us at the airport.

The town is a bit smaller than Chennai and a bit cleaner as well. We checked in to a local hotel that has no broadband internet and a lovely smell resonating through out the room resembling urine. Tomorrow will probably be a good time to go and check out something else. Praveen, his family and his friends have been very careful of seeing to it that we are as comfortable as possible. I have been a bit of a terror, as I don’t handle lack of sleep or not feeling well particularly well. I am hoping my moodiness subsides soon. I have been feeling like there is this evil demon waiting to get out of my body and I can’t seem to figure out how to let it go. I think it is just a matter of time and rest.

I finally had a chance to read my mothers blog and I am realizing I might as well save my breath. I don’t think she has left out any details of the trip. I have let her have my computer for the last few days as I know that she sleeps really weird hours and may need it to occupy her time. Now that I have it back, I get to read her blog to find out what we have been doing. I have been walking around in such a daze it was really nice to read a recap.

The jet lag is finally wearing off but days are still exhausting. I find it very difficult to be “ON” every minute of the day. I have realized that for me it is essential that I have some down time away from the crowds of people I have come all this way to see otherwise I just spaz out. So after lunch I took a trip back to the hotel for some decompression time, which included sitting in front of my computer sipping some fine Tequila and catching up.

So I went and got a massage in the hotel spa the other day. It was quite an interesting experience. I will say that any massage is a good one, even if it is not, particularly when you have been sitting on a plane for 23 hours. When I arrived the room was freezing. It think that AC is such a luxury that perhaps it was suppose to feel good but laying naked on a bed with a cool breeze chilling you to the bones wasn’t my idea of a relaxing experience so I requested it would be turned of and it promptly was. “Yes, ma'am. Anything else ma'am?” The hotel workers are super formal and polite and now I have a better understanding of why it is that Praveen always tells me to quit telling him thank you. To me it is the polite way in which I treat everyone, but to him it sounds to formal and should be reserved for people he is not close to (like the help, I suppose). I am not sure I will ever be able to accommodate him on that request. I like to say thank you and let people know when I really appreciate things they have done for me.

Anyway, where was I? Back to the bone chilling cold. So I layed there while my body was scrubbed down with some herbs. The only identifiable ones were lavender and mint. The untrained “masseuse” was rubbed me down completely. I was a bit uncomfortable at times when she came extremely close to my rather private parts. She really didn’t miss a thing. I have never had my breasts massaged, at least not during a massage and I found that a little strange. An hour later after showering off the body scrub and getting a rather puff and fluff massage (I like my massages deep not gentle) I was ushered off to a steam room, which was my favorite part of the experience. I have never been in a wet sauna before and I found it really nice to sweet a bit. It think I am missing my sweaty yoga rutine. I have however, been able to get to the gym quite frequently. The toughest thing to get use to is someone watching you ready to help you in case you drop your towel, but then again, a Duchess should be pampered, right?

After arriving in Coimbatore, We made a trip to Amma and Achen’s (Praveen’s parents) house and had some lunch. My mom and I are getting good at eating with the hands. It is not something that I am particularly fond of at this moment in time but I think that it probably just takes some getting use to. I do understand the arguments about how Stainless Steel in your mouth with food tends to taint the flavoring of the food. My problem is that I am just not use to stuff all over my hands while eating. It is a cultural thing where I feel some how dirty eating this way, but while I am here I’d like to try it out and see how it is.

The house is quite nice. It is a three bedroom, three bath home with an office upstairs. It was a traditional style at one time where you could see straight through three small rooms to the end of the house. They have since renovated and made the three small rooms one room that has a beautiful curtain, which can close, off the dinning room to the living room.

I was quite worried about my mom hating the food as she is not the most adventurous sprits when it comes to trying new food items, but she has been doing great. Her endless hours of research seem to have paid off and continuously impress myself and everyone we encounter. She was explaining to Praveen the other day what she read about how exactly to eat with three fingers and flick it into your mouth without letting your hands enter your mouth and he, being raised eating in this fashion, had never thought of it and found it amusing to realize that that is, in fact, how it works.

The other thing that I was worried about for myself and my mother was the busy streets. I had spoken to her shortly after a trip to Chicago and she told me how frightening she found the traffic. I immediately called my doctor to ask for a prescription of Zanex so that I could feed it to her should she start to wig out. Although the streets are crazy and noone seems to follow any sort of rules, people only drive about 30 miles per hour so, it is not to bad, even for my mom.

Dehli, I am still a bit worried about. We visited some ancient temples carved out of one rock, which were very impressive. They are about 1500 years old. We had a few people bothering us to buy this or that and she was a bit perturbed as anyone would be. I explained to her that this is only a small portion of what we will later encounter. I can only imagine the Taj where there is thousands of tourist a day with vultures waiting to capitalize on their visit. It is difficult but I guess you have to turn on a little switch inside your head that says, “I am ready to deal with this now.” It always takes me a minute as well. I have had a bit of practice on this in MEX when I studied there my senior year.

So much for saving my breath- I guess it runs in the family- gotta run. RM