Beauty Products

Ok,
as I was walking home from a little excursion with Maya, where we attempted to buy food, but quickly realized due to the general lack of transportation in Udaipur + the general lack of women after 9pm in Udaipur + the general lack of light from the sun + the escalating creepsterness of several men who tried to tempt us on to the back of their motorbikes with professions of their undying love for my white, white skin + the fact that we had walked up the wrong street to try to find the food place that we should just go home, i realized that i love buying new beauty products but i don't like to use them to their fruition. I know this is a strange realization to make as you feel a little bit sexually threatened and hungry, but let me explain. We kind of live in a food desert which in India does not mean being surrounded by liquor stores and places to buy pickles and chips, but instead, being surrounded by sweet shops and places to buy cement and bricks. We did finally find one shop that sold large cakes with your portrait on it AND little veg "hotdogs" which are strangely becoming a staple in my diet. So we bought some of these and also found a store which sold some bread. Inside, we also discovered they sold many many different types of soap. I am a sucker for soaps. Also, for lotions, "body scrubs", "body butters", oils, potions, tonics, astringents, etc etc etc etc etc.
This became apparent at a young age, when every birthday, xmas, halloween, thanksgiving, easter, etcccccccc, all I ever wanted was some body lotion or gel or chapstick. Lip Smackers were my Pokemons and I wanted to catch them all. I would sit in the aisle at CVS and pore over the "flavors" I didn't have yet, yearning for Dr. Pepper and Strawberry Kiwi Comet to be mine mine mine.
Bath and Body Works was also another downfall. I spent equal time walking carefully around the store, smelling all my favs and deciding which ones to buy with my $15 gift certificate. Sun-Ripened Raspberry? Juniper Breeze? Plumeria??!!!SDfslkdfjs I was overwhelmed.
This really personified itself when I had several shower caddies full of all my "lotions" and another couple of crayon boxes full of lip balms (as I now called them), including my first and totally amazing lipstick which was Wet N' Wild and the color of fish fins. Irridescent green. I think I put it on about 17 billion times in my room, but could never bring myself to wear it out of the house.
The thing is I think I liked to look at these things and smell them and organize them more than use them. I never got to really see how incredibly moisturizing the properties of Sunny-Sunflower Fields double moisture explosion (this lotion is made up) were because I didn't really use it.
So the moral of this longggggggg winddddeddddddddd story is to say:
NOTHING HAS CHANGED. I am now in India, beginning to horde Indian beauty supplies, that I am not really using very much. Last week, I bought some weird mint face mask thing, then 5 days later, I bought rose water, because then I could make my face mask with ROSE WATER. Then yesterday, at that bread store with all the soaps, I found this things called DEEP pore cleansing skin milk. and it was ayurvedic! all natural! and then i smelled this shampoo that had henna in it, and HONEY. it had honey. and its matching conditioner, had not just almonds, but GREEN almonds in it. it smelled like my future. how i could i say no? i couldn't find food to buy, so why not just buy beauty products??? so I did. and maya got some of the shampoo too cause it smelled so good. then we bought our new favorite paneer "hot dogs" for Rs. 20 and called it a night.
i can't promise i will use them. i currently have only used that facemask once, but it was great! i only have used the rose water twice, when I am feeling a little too grimy for work and feel like rose water will disguise my scent.
but i will try. maybe i think that if i buy new bath supplies, it will inspire me to take more baths, but as the temperature continues to drop here in the morning, i don't really see that happening. but it's nice to think i will! and if not, i can just open the bottles and smell them!
i will update soon on my progress! maybe i will finally break my destructive-childhood-beauty-product-hording-but-rarely-using cycle! wish me luck!

Hi Stinkies!

Just kidding! I'm the stinky one, or at least I was until about 5 hours ago, when I actually woke up, looked in the mirror, and thought ok thats a little embarrassing and decided to bucket bath myself.
I might have put it off one more day or at least until I had worked myself into a sweat, but yesterday I bought this little baby!

Thats right! An IMMERSION COIL! it looks like it will electrocute me and it WILL, if I'm not careful. It seems a little bit counter-intuitive to hold a hot metal coil plugged into your loose socket and plunge it into a plastic tub of water, but with my greasy hair standing up on top of my head in sort of an Eiffel tower formation created by my own scalp oil, I knew I had no choice. I held it for about 2 minutes and achieved lukewarm water! which felt better as i took dippers of it and threw it over my dirty, dirty body. 

I am now much cleaner and still alive! so much success was had. 

Reflecting on this new technology in my life, I realized that I have surrounded myself with potentially life-threatening devices that are supposed to make my life a little easier.

Example A: that immersion coil....it is high voltage and you dunk it into water, enough said!

Example B: my gas burner - its a huge tank of propane with an attached burner on top. aka flame and gas tank are merged as one - this also seems counter-intuitive given my years of memories at gas stations warning smokers if they lit up, they would pretty much explode. 

Example C: my pressure-cooker I put onto of my gas tank. i have been recently warned that pressure cookers are essentially small bombs. YIKES. 

but as i use these in a symphony of 'hope-this-works-out', i have achieved RICE, HOT FOOD, and LUKEWARM WATER! 

and thats totally worth it. plus my wonderful friends from work Shivani and Devashish are convinced I will kill myself so they are helping me learn! so good friends + learn by experience = new skills, semi-clean body (every now and then), and food that i don't exclusively peel or drink!

Functional adult!

As I tried to decide how to start my "INDIA BLOG" which seemed so spiritual and important and needed an amazing first post to describe to all of you out there in cyber space how enlightened and intelligent this international experience is making me, I instead decided to enlighten all of YOU as to how I am realizing quickly that I am not a functional adult and that I have considered about 3 times now making one of those charts where you cross off the list the things you need to do before you go to sleep.
X-brush teeth! gold star!!
X-eat vegetables!
X-wash face
X-take shower! (but only every other day)
and then when i accomplish those things, maybe awarding myself an allowance or something.
because to be perfectly honest, cyberspace, i cannot do these things! i just watched 3 episodes of top chef while sitting atop my classy pink-camo sleeping bag (because I cannot find sheets in Udaipur for less than 500 rups and i can't bring myself to pay that, i just can't. all i really need is a pillowcase, but i don't think they sell those as singles and man, oh man, i think i'm going to have to get a tailor to sew me a pillowcase, i really think i'm going to). and i really need to take a shower. its been a longgggg timeeeee. but its cold! and the water is cold and its 1:10 in the morning and what i really want to do is watch another episode of top chef.
but i jogged today, yes i jogged. first time for everything right? and in india, its extra fun because you get to feel a little bit like james bond on the hunt or something as you dodge cow patties, cows, calves, bulls, and motorcycles. but i made the mistake of not wearing glasses. i counted on my contact lenses but they were dry as a doornail ( is that a phrase?) and i can't jog with my monster glasses, i just can't. (for those of you who know me - haha if you are reading this at all! - you know which ones i'm talking about) in udaipur, if you jog for exercise, people look behind you with a worried look in their eye to see what you are running from. and combining my goggles ( what a small indian boy called my spectacles), my topknot (nicknamed Sukadia Circle - which is a gigantic fountain - by my landlords), and my general umistakeable, western-european, thoroughly whitebread foreignness, all just seemed like too much.
so what i smartly decided to do is to go WITHOUT. my first time jogging in my life (at least it felt like it) , in India, and i decide to do it blind - almost literally. and it was fun! it was like a mystery game where you don't really know where you're going but you just follow lights and sounds. plus you can't see the looks people give you as you huff past them all red and sweaty and gross. i'm sure my jogging is not an attractive sight to behold.
so adding this mishap ( or FUN ADVENTURE?!) to my list of things i cannot do as a functional adult, i felt good when i had a victory today of actually making my first meal at my new apt and breaking away from my norm of the following food groups:

candy corns!

bananas!

CHAI

devashish and shivani finally helped me cook things with my pressure cooker and my sort of black market gas tank and we succeeded! food was cooked and eaten and it was good! 

but now i'm trying to get off my ass and least floss my teeth because thats basically like brushing them right? 

dear god.