Getting to Know You: First Day in India 7/4

Getting to Know You: First Day in India

Due to our late arrival and my subsequent inability to fall asleep until 4am Indian Standard Time (IST), I didn’t wake up until around 10am.
Breakfast, as all our meals are, was brought in by a caterer that I can only assume is on retainer for the vet school here.
Breakfast thus far has been about the same every day:
Idli
Some sort of potato breakfast curry
A rice/grits kind of dish
(I know I’m forgetting something)
And of course: Chai

Oh Chai, how I love you! It’s delicious and I could drink it every day. Why is American Chai so substandard?

Um… sorry, it’s almost breakfast time and I think that’s making me food crazy.

Anywho, we hung around the apartment for a while waiting for Dr. Subbiah to come by and let us know what was going on, and around 1 he stopped by with his wife, Ruby, and two professors from the vet school here. Next, Ruby took us around the corner to go to the grocery store and look around. They had a good amount of fruit, spices, grains, as well as other grocery store things: soap, detergent, toiletries, paper goods, and a variety of candies, chocolates, and random impulse buys.

Here's the gate to our living area, owned by the vet school. There's the vet school emblem on top:

This is me, outside the gate:

Here's our apartment area:

Some flowers outside our apartment:

Heading to Dr. Subbiah's appartment:

After that, we came back, had lunch, and then went shopping! And by shopping, I mean trying to navigate Pothys, a 6 story department store that specializes is textiles. We learned that apparently when they say to get one’s size in Indian clothing, add one size, they mean add 2 or 3, which I have to say it’s a huge blow to one’s self esteem. Anywho, I was looking for a salwar that would hit mid-hip, but of course, the only ones I liked were in the sizes that were too small. Ruby said that in the future we can go and pick out fabric and have them tailor made, and that it would be cheaper (fabric and tailoring total would be around $20) – so I have hope for the future. I ended up buying a sheet for my bed (since it’s a little on the sketchy side), an alarm clock since my watch is not waking me up, and some shower shoes (for our sketchy bathroom).

Traffic (typical):

Pothy's:

Next we went to Marina Beach, a huge beach in Chennai. Actually, the length of the beach stretches down pretty much the eastern coast of India, it's the second longest beach in the world. But when I say beach, I mean big sandy stretch of land. from the road, it may be about 1/2 km to the water, but you can't even swim because the rip tide will pull you out and you'll die. Also, no bathing suit attire is appropriate - you need to be fully dressed. Even for dipping your feet in the water (which i did not do) you need to just take off your shoes and hold up your pants a little.
While we were there, it started to rain, so it cooled off a little.

The beach:

Finally we headed back to the hostel and had a nice Indian dinner waiting for us. We had paneer masala and chapatti among other delicious dishes. And of course, chai. Mmmm…

So I put on my new sheet: