http://davidsgallivanting.blogspot.in/2008/06/road-to-sahrdc.html
What is SAHRDC you may ask? It is the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre, and that is where I work. This last week has felt very long, and yet as if it flew by. We got a bunch of new interns. We now have about a dozen. Adam (from Oxford), Dan (my flatmate from Australia), Jolee, Monique (also from Australia), Jessi, Mariyam, Adrianna, Nadia, Curry, and Lilly. Adam, Monique, Jolee, and Jessi arrived before me, and the rest around the same time or after. We have done so much!
We went to an awesome meat place (not lots of meat here) called Karim’s. Awesome chicken, lamb, and lamb kofta (sausage, sort of). The food here is spicy just about everywhere, but really good. The meat is often spiced, which is fine, but the heavily spiced general Indian food (which we have every day for lunch) is a bit tough on my stomach at times. I have to be careful. It all tastes good. Even I, who generally hates veggies, love them here (though my stomach doesn’t always love the spices in them).
Dan and I smoked some of the cigars I bought in Cairo and had some whiskey we bought at one of the few liquor stores here. We also cleaned out our flat. The floors are solid marble (at least I think it is). We have a drain in our bathroom, kitchen, and balcony. So we simply poured water on the floor and used our squeegie mop to sweep it out the door, and behold! the floor was so clean! I have to say, it is really cool to dump water on the flood and do that. The bathroom is like that everyday because there is no traditional shower part, just an extra large bathroom with a toilet, floor drain, sink and shower head sticking out of the wall.
And boy do I shower! I’ve never showered to much in my life. I average twice a day. One in the morning to clean myself, and one in the afternoon or evening to both cool off and wash the dirt off me before bed. And, I have not taken a warm shower once! I also haven’t missed it at all. The warmless water isn’t that cold, and it feels really good because I usually wake up hot or come home hot. I obviously come home hot because it can get quite hot here (it hasn’t been too bad though). At night, I kind of have a routine. I leave the A/C on. I don’t have a blanket, so around 3 – 4 am I get too cold (I have actually dreamed about being freezing cold a few times), so I wake up and shut the thing off. Then, around 6 or 7 am, it is too hot, so I wake up and switch the A/C back on. Then sleep till 8. It is sad, but that is actually a bit of a night routine. Thankfully, it has been mild the last few days and so I haven’t need the air con as much as night.