european friends, shopping, and random things on fire

We are in Mamalapuram again. Have I mentioned how much I love it here? The awesome British couple that we met last time we were here are back here again, so we've been hanging out with them a ton. We also met another fabulous British woman who is the assistant producer for a documentary about India that the Discovery Channel is producing (note to Muffin: yes, I got her email address), and this cool Dutch lawyer guy who made piles of money and has been travelling around the world for the last two and a half years. It's amazing how many Europeans, in many cases rather young ones (the aforementioned awesome British couple are only 19, but seem quite mature and well-adjusted), seem to take long holidays in South Asia or Africa. We hardly ever meet other Americans, and if we do, they're usually volunteering or working or studying like we are.

So, I did some shopping. I bought a cute red, pink, and gold silk wrap-around skirt (Rs. 150/US$3.33), a silver anklet, a very interesting-looking pendant with three peridot stones (that's my birthstone), peridot earrings (total for all the jewelry was Rs. 1050/US$23.33), and a red and black enameled box to put my share of my dad's ashes in (Rs. 300/US$6.66, which I felt was kind of a rip-off, but I really liked the box, I felt guilty about haggling excessively for someone's final resting place, and when I get home I'm eager to take the ashes out of the spice jar, purchased by my brother at Linens 'n' Things for $1.99, in which they currently reside). I might buy a new lungi (like a sarong, basically) from the woman who keeps harassing us out on the street to look at her stuff. Oh, and I bought a stone pendant carved into the shape of the "om" symbol (Rs. 40/$0.89) from some guy on the beach who kept bugging us.

My section of the survey has been revised per my advisor's comments, and he seems basically happy with it, so after a few more minor changes and some comments from Jim and BJ at OI (which we will get Monday morning) it will be ready to translate. Translating it into Tamil and then typing it into Tamil will take a while, and then we have to pre-test it to make sure the questions make sense and ellicit the answers we want, and then we have to hire ennumerators (people who speak Tamil and English to actually administer the survey) and then all systems will be go. The process of finding ennumerators and a translator has been started, but it will take some time to get it all done and I don't think we will be able to begin surveying this week like we'd hoped. On one hand, we're basically getting done everything that we should be, and we're doing it in a fairly reasonable time frame, but on the other hand, this place deeply saps my motivation, and I know we could be working faster. I'm having a difficult time because I don't like Chennai much, so I feel sort of hot and gross and unmotivated a lot of the time that I'm there. Here in Mamalapuram, I feel great, but I'm having too much fun to get much work done (although I did get up at 9 a.m. when the internet place opens to email the survey revisions to our advisor, despite the fact that I was up until nearly 6 a.m. the night before, so I'm trying to be dilligent, at least).

Some Indian guy just came into the internet place with a green coconut that had a hole cut in the top and something stuck in the hole and lit on fire, creating what looked sort of like a coconut candle, but with a bigger flame. What this is, I have no idea.

I'll try to update more often; my access to internet is generally good; it's mostly laziness that keeps me from posting more frequently. Oh, and also this is probably going to cost me 40 WHOLE RUPEES. That's right, I'm paying nearly a dollar to keep you all informed. You're welcome. =)