Chillin'

So, the last few days in Mumbai have been pretty relaxed. Most of us decided that since it's the last week, we needn't spend our time sitting around in clinic. Therefore, we've basically just been hanging out and relaxing (as much as you can realistically do that in this city). Umm, let's see...the other day, I don't remember which, we went to the Crossroads bookstore in South Mumbai and hung out there for a while. Nothing all that exciting.

On Wednesday, we went to see a Bollywood movie called Krrish. Basically this was the weirdest movie I've ever seen, but it was actually really fun. I couldn't figure out what was going on, and Jesse kept elbowing us and telling us to look at the main character's freakish accessory thumb. I think he was some sort of superhero who got his powers from aliens or something, and the whole time he was sort of courting this REALLY hot girl. Apart from that I have no idea what the movie was about. Every once in a while they'd speak little bursts of English, but definitely not enough to clue me in to what was going on. Oh well, it was a great experience, I can now say I've seen a Bollywood movie!

Yesterday was another chill day. We hung around Bandra for a while, and at 3:00 we went over to the home of Dr. Mahendra Chinai, who is the father of a friend of Mom's. He couldn't have been nicer, and his house was very nice. It was built in the 1930's by a British architect. Incredibly, Dr. Chinai has lived in that house his whole life. He was very hospitable, and we hung out there for a while drinking chai and discussing India and America. I've put up a pic of Dr. Chinai and me relaxing on his swing.

Afterwards, we went down to a restaurant called Khyber in south Mumbai, which is known as the best restaurant in India. The food was actually pretty phenomenal, especially the chicken Tikka Masala. The decor was really cool, too, and we all really enjoyed it. It was kind of crazy since we had 25 people, and they were probably really tired of us by the time dinner ended, but whatever, I guess we're just perpetuating the image of loud, obnoxious Americans. The craziest part was that Jesse was feeling sick, so he took a cab back to our guesthouse, and we basically all thought that he was done for the night. As it turned out, he's a trooper, and he pulled the classic "boot 'n rally". Right after getting back to the guesthouse, he booted, and then he turned right back around in a cab to South Mumbai to finish the night of partying with us! Very commendable.

After dinner we went to Insomnia, which is the dance club inside the Taj hotel. It was really fun, and we were basically the only ones there. We danced quite a bit, and the DJ was playing a lot of 90's rap and hip hop, which made for a fun dancing environment. Everyone was well served as far as alcohol is concerned, and we finally made it back to the dorm at around 2:30.

Today we're basically chillin, getting ready for our trip to Delhi tomorrow. We're taking our local coordinator, Sampada (who we call Sampadizzle) out for dinner tonight, and then we're off in the morning. Namaste!