Where I’m staying is called the Pink City. It was painted pink as a color of welcome for visitors a long time ago. And yes, it really is pink! We got to drive around a bit a couples days ago, and I saw my first monkeys. They were casually walking around on the rooftops. I saw at least ten.
It’s as though I’ve transported into another month. It’s at least 60 degrees warmer here. It’s also wedding season, so fireworks commonly go off. Pretty neat to have fireworks for your wedding! I also got to see a wedding dress when we visited another family. One of the girls will be married in February. The dress is unbelievable. It probably weighs 25 pounds. The marriages here are different because they’re arranged. The boy and the girl meet each other through connections the parents have with each other. The first meeting is called an interview. If they like each other, they go forward with engagement. Saves a lot of drama. I once met a man in Winnipeg who was Indian, and he said he had eight interviews before he chose his wife. So there you go. So many things are just the opposite here. Even nose piercings. In the States, nose piercings are (or at least were not long ago) considered kind of rebellious. Here, they’re considered almost old-fashioned.
The highways allow all kinds of vehicles. From biggest to smallest: buses, vans, cars, motorcycles, camels, horses, auto rickshaws, regular rickshaws, bicycles, donkeys, pedestrians. On the highways. Oh, and cows, I forgot cows. Yep. All kinds.
There’s a reason birds are called fowl. That reason is because fowl and foul are homonyms. I don’t understand what Bert (from Sesame Street) saw in pigeons. They’re terrible, wretched, vile, disgusting, LOUD, annoying creatures and I hate them. It’s more or less because they’re dirty, there are millions of them, and they wake me up every single morning. They also sit on the windowsill that’s 2 inches above where my head rests when I’m sleeping, so it’s an up close and personal concert of pigeon vexation. Can’t they save their cacophony for even 7:30? The entire world would benefit from one extra hour of sleep. Honestly. I haven’t hated many creatures in my life, but these little suckers have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
