And now for something completely different..

I'm back from Mumbai now. I had an absolutely fabulous time. I didn't really get to explore the city much on my own (and by "not much" I mean "hardly at all") but I'm fine with that. I loved all of the lectures that we went to and things like that. I wasn't feeling particularly at the top of my game- I was so tired that it was really hard to not nod off during these lectures (which had nothing to do with their quality, as they were both fascinating). I also experienced a couple of focal seizures. Again, I must stress that these are more of an annoyance than anything else to me and have never escalated into something more dangerous. This is also the first time I've had them since I came to India, which is pretty damn good.

But I'm not going to put my pictures up just yet. Instead, I want to write something that's almost ~educational.~ Obviously, there are lots of preconceived notions about life in India. I know because I had them too. There are good and bad parts of this, of course. But I just want to address some of the parts of life here that no one ever tells you about.

1. Everywhere you go there are people on the side of the road selling socks. Absolutely everywhere. I have no idea why. There just are. There are also a ton of booksellers on the road, but that makes much more sense than selling socks.
2. It is actually fairly easy to get American products/food in India. They’re just presented differently. For example, there is a KFC on
   JM Road
   that is a couple stories tall. Even the Papa John’s is a classy two-story restaurant (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Papa John’s that had a place to sit down, let alone one that had a terrace). And if you go to the supermarket (particularly one called Dorabjee’s) there are an absurd amount of American foods there. When I went yesterday, I saw a huge rack of Pringles (which I’ve also encountered at Big Bazaar), Oreos, tortilla chips and (my personal favorite) Goldfish! Unsurprisingly, there were a LOT of white people shopping there.
3. Also, the pizza in India in general is surprisingly good. It’s actually better than a lot of the pizza I’ve discovered in Washington D.C. (With the obvious exception of 2Amy’s. I still love you, 2Amy’s.) There’s also a lot more variety on what you can get on your pizzas. There are a whole slew of Tandoori pizzas, for example. The only thing that weirds me out about Indian pizza that they don’t use tomato sauce on their pizzas- it’s actually ketchup-based. I would be freaked out if I found that in American pizza, but somehow it works here.
4. When cars back up here, they play music. Weird music, too- nursery rhymes and stuff like that. There’s one by the hostel that plays “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home” at least once a day. I’ll never get it un-stuck from my head. Even the horns on cars are musical.
5. I cannot stress enough the number of stray dogs here. You think you’re prepared, but you’re not. They’re EVERYWHERE.