Back to reality..

I can't believe that I'm at the end of my first week back in Delhi and this is my first real blog. I'm ashamed, I'm regretful.. I'm tired! I thought the jetlag (with the nine million time changes) might have reset my clock enough by now.. But apparently not. Instead with every breakfast of scrambled eggs I eat... I'm distinctly craving steak and potatoes. Apparently my stomach clock hasn't reset itself either. *laugh*

So, the day after I got here we were already off to the races. My mother has been organizing Mrs. Martin's portion of the visit here, so we got to meet the Prime Minister and his wife at a reception on Tuesday. It was.. dry (in terms of content.. not in terms of the copious ammounts of alcohol served to copious ammounts of desperate looking people), but informative. (Doesn't that kind of read... "Dry.. but dry." ?) Mr. Martin was well spoken, very everyman-ish. It was somewhat humourous that all the members of parliament that he brought just 'happened" to be Indian members of parliament. Given, the token older white woman and young white male were there.. but they were, funny enough, from the opposition. Coincidence? I think not.

The only remotely entertaining part of the evening was when my brother (my bodyguard.. *laugh*) and I stepped out onto the balcony as they opened the huge french doors, and a platoon of pigeons flew in to this high security ballroom. It was pandemonium, that my brother and I could just stand and stare at. Mostly they were just running to cover all the food. *chuckle*

My father recieved an award (presented in absentia to my mother) for his work in helping head up the DART team in Sri Lanka, so it was worthwhile to see her go and accept that. She's worked so hard on this program to entertain Mrs. Martin while she was here, it was nice she got to meet the PM.

Other than that.. Not too many exciting things happening! My mother and I went to INA market yesterday to get produce and shrimp. Anybody who has read previous tales about India will know that INA is a wet market.. They have these lovely little slopeing sidewalks that meet in the middle with a drain.. To drain all the blood and guts that come from the halaal butchers. It smells so strongly of blood and fish and meet, you'd want to faint.. but you wouldn't want to land on the sidewalk. On the up side, we bought just about every vegetable imaginable (brocolli, 10 pounds potatoes, cauliflower, green pepper, red pepper, green onions, red onions, cucumber, tomatoes, garlic.. and a lot of everything!) and it only came to 200 rupees. (about 6 dollars.) So there's the upside, the veggie market is nice... But you're only ever a few steps away from the meat. We were standing looking at spices, and there was a goose being killed.. and all I could think was that he sounded like he was quacking "Not me, not me!". *shudder*

So far.. those have been my adventures! I've made potatoe soup this morning.. (Much to my cook's surprise.. I'm pretty sure she thought I'd never seen a precut veggie in my life..) and I've got to get ready to start my day. Love to you all, I'll try and make this more or a habit! Talk to you soon.