Kolkata

Kolkata was good. We took the train there on Monday. It was a long ride, but had good scenery. When we got there, we checked into the hotel, then went shopping for some household things. After we shopped, we went to Ed's goodbye party. It was fun. We met some new people. It turned out Ed had an extra phone SIM card though, so, since he's leaving, he gave it to us. We said our goodbyes, and went to the hotel. It wasn't the best hotel, but not the worst either. It had running water, a western toilet, and a television. It was pretty dirty though. Oh well. On Tuesday, we went to the American Center (of course we got lost, very lost) and met with Sohini. Mom is working on getting the class she is doing on April 23rd ready. Then, Sohini was supposed to help us shop, but she had lost of work to do. Instead, a man who works at her office (we can't remember his name, how embarrassing?) showed us different good places to shop. We bought some books. I got Sense and Sensibility and Tale of Two Cities. We also bought spoons, knifes, sheets, bed covers (for dust) night-gowns, doupatas, and I got salwar/kamise/doupata fabric, that I have to get made at the tailors. When we were all done shopping (and sick of getting harassed at the market) we went back to the hotel to rest. We didn't know what to do for dinner, so we went out to find a place a man at the hotel suggested, but we ended up going to a different restaurant. It was very good, and fancy. I got prawn fried rice and mom got prawn curry. They even had little fingerbowls to wash our hands in. After dinner, mom bought me a phone to put the SIM card Ed gave us in. It's really cool. It doesn't have color or a camera, but it does know where I am at all times and has a flashlight! Wednesday, we got up and made sure everything was packed. Then we went to check out and ended up playing with one guys pet monkey. He was so cute! Very small though, he was just a baby. The train back was cold, and nice people we met that live just outside of Santiniketan told us when the stop at Boulpur was because we weren't paying attention. We had to take two rickshaws home with all our bags.

-Celia Echt