Day 3, Sunday, Learning at the Market

I felt a little stalled this morning, but I recovered much quicker than yesterday morning.

Up at 7am, cooked breakfast, dumped last night's boiled water into my water bottles, and created this blog.

Went to the market to buy carrots. A dark, fat, sun-beaten man tried to cut in front of me, having only a few bottles of pop to buy (myself, I had just a bag of carrots). I stubbornly held my place in the queue, but the woman behind me with a cart full of vegetables let him cut in front, and without conversation. But, when it was my turn to purchase, the cashier gave me a funny look, denoting that I needed to go weigh my bag of carrots. I half-jokingly said "one-kay-gee" (1 kilogram). She smiled, shook her head no, and said "weight!". Then, the queue-cutter got vocal and pointed me in the direction of the...weighing procedure.

I learned that I need to have my raw food weighed and labelled before going to the checkout counter. The "weighers" are workers with lightning-quick dexterity; a girl snatched my bag of carrots, fluttered fingers over keys, and sealed the bag with a label. All without my eyes being able to follow.

Most people shop on the weekend, and they spend Rs. 1100 - Rs. 1400 ($22 - $24 USD), so I feel foolish when I ring a mere Rs 22 ($0.50 USD). The cashiers look mildly surprised, too. They ask if I have 1-3 rupees to simplify my change, which I usually don't.

On the way home, crossed the street against oncoming motorcycles; my best street-crossing yet. Oncoming motorcycles move at 20-30 mph. Like a school of fish magically avoiding an obstacle, four drivers swam around me with grace. In this way, I crossed sooner than the native Indian behind me, who preferred to wait for a complete break in traffic.

I explored a bit; saw some conventional developing country sights. A cow laying down in a heap of trash. A dog asleep on a small mountain of dirt. As in Mexico, there are stray dogs everywhere. They all look like descendants of the same mutt. Each dog seems to reign over a block or two of territory. This is part of why Rabies is such a huge problem in India. I saw one dog with a couple newborn puppies - future strays. The streets hold plenty of trash for them to live off of.

While exploring, I found a store selling ON Whey supplements, which sharply got my attention. It is just as expensive as in the United States, though. Perhaps in a month or two, I can get some.

Toward the end of the day, my throat felt dry. I originally diagnosed this as excess salt in my drinking water, and tried to solve this problem. But, I realized that I was just getting sick. My current explanation is that my immune system is dealing with three things at the same time: undernourishment, slightly different strains of conventional germs, and mild stress. All of these things will improve over a matter of days. I slept longer and drank more water, and this has helped. An important victory is that my GI tract seems to be just fine so far.