Sat. 1:45 pm We made our last trip to the bazaar this morning to buy sneakers for both of us! There are addidas and nike stores in the bazaar. We first went to Adidas
and found shoes for over Rps 4000 (about $90). Off to Nike where we both found shoes
for less than one pair at Adidas... very strange. We packed up and checked out of the hotel and now are back at school waiting for a taxi to take us to the orphanage to give them the clothes.
A couple things this week that I forgot to write about. The electricity goes off at random times, all the time. Wed. night we were in the hotel and it went off three times. They brought us candles and matches...fortunately, we had our headlights.
Monkeys are all around the school and town. There are two kinds: brown or tan ones and they are mean, attack and chase, gray or silver ones who chase away brown ones and are nice. The school has a couple men who have 2-3 silver ones and they come to the school to chase away the mean ones. I can hear the brown ones on the school roof everytime I'm here. The other day Catherine was going to get her laundry out, have to go outside to get to the laundry place. Two brown ones were in her way, so I thought I could chase them off by picking up a large piece of wood from a wood pile. One was on the wood pile and as I approached, he turned, established himself on all fours and growled and hissed at me... I beat it out of there quickly!!
Yesterday all students had to get their check-through luggage ready to be take to Delhi by truck. I found it fascinating that coolies (Indian men) had to hike the luggage from the upper school dorms up a very steep and long hill to the awaiting trucks. They use a form of a tumpline (for those of you unfamiliar, a tumpline is used at Keewaydin for transporting canoe trip supplies across portages. It's a 17' leather strap and carries everything from duffles to canoes.) And in this case the coolies carry amazing amounts of weight up these hills. Most had at least 3 huge suitcases wrapped in their "tump" which is a rope with a headstrap made out of a heavy piece of canvas. The coolies carry things all over the town also, it has supposedly cut down on the car traffic in the town. I saw objects on their backs as high as 8 ' or so above their heads!! The trucks are open, with just high sides and probably were carrying at least a 100 pieces of luggage each. Don't ask me how they make it down the winding road from Mussoorie to Dehradun!!! Travel days, today and tomorrow. Probably next writing from Goa!