Tuesday

I started to work today. I was not the lead instructor but just the back up today. The students are really sweet and solicitous. In their culture it is very important to please others. They seemed to enjoy explaining what differnt things in the cafeteria were and making recommendations. Most of them usually eat food from home, but because they were on a different schedule for training many were eating from the cafeteria also. They serve everything on metal cafeteria trays with the little sections like we used to have in elementary school and give you a spoon as your only utensil. The biggest section is always with rice of some sort, with the side parts containing one or two other items. There are always vegetarian and non-vegetarian main dish choices. Then one section will have sliced cucumbers and red carrot or radish slices, these help with the heat. Of course if you are brave enough they will also give you peppers if you want to increase the heat. The food is good, it is filling and it costs between 30 and 40 rupees for the whole tray. In case you are wondering one US dollar is about 45 rupees. So, yes you can eat a filling lunch without beverage for less than 1 dollar and if you need a beverage they sell soda or a 1 liter bottle of water for 20 rupees or less than 50 cents. Yet for most of the people we are teaching eating in the cafeteria is still a bit of a luxury and the better choice is to brown bag. They have so little yet are happy and grateful for what they do have. They are glad to have jobs that allow them to help support their families, never mind that we get paid way more than they do for doing the same job.