January 10, 2006

Imagine if you were walking down a busy, dusty, hot but interesting and full of people of all ages, street in a foreign country and you saw a cow in  the street that was big, brown and beautiful. Imagine the cow was actually a bull...........a big bull with big horns that were really pointed. Dangerously pointed. Imagine the bull had a look of “nobody messes with me, because I am big and I am revered here, and you are not” in his eyes. Then, the huge brown bull nonchalantly walks through some black iron gates, to be suddenly shooed away by a guard. So suddenly that you, just outside the iron gates wondering about the commotion, almost did not have time to get out of the ways of the hundreds of pounds of bull running quickly back out of the gates while you were trying out your newly learned Hindi buying veggies!!!!!

This happened to Beth and me last night, and Beth was the one in the way of the bull. The guards that chased the enormous brown eyed creature had a good laugh at our shock and surprise to be almost run down!

We continue to work about 8 hours a day. I am learning how to properly lay out a new design and set all the centimeters for the tailors. I love to create, but had never had to be so accountable for all the centimeters and drawings. It stretches me in a good way. Wish Leslie was here to help :)

It is always a chore and pleasure to walk the streets of our home away from home neighborhood. We learn something new everyday, about where to buy eggs for example. No big grocery stores, just hundreds of dusty and colorful shops, selling eggs, shampoo, water, milk and bread, dresses, shoes, stationery,gold and silver, veggies and fruits, fish, every kind of colored and sparkled bangle imaginable!!! Bangles are so cheap and one of my weaknesses!!! Here at the cyber shop I sit to write to all of you, my loved ones :) Next door, men are drinking strong spirits, looks kind of shady and shacky. Across the street, more bangles, toys in another shop, steel containers of every size from teeny tiny to very large and lockable in another shop, all very narrow and squeezed together.

We depart for Gujarat tomorrow on the train, in a sleeper compartment, with a tailor and designer from Creative Handicrafts. We will go to Kutch and Amadabhad. It will be amazing, and I will certainly tell you all about it when we get back. We will see how our Gujari fabrics are hand block printed, dyed, and will learn much about cotton fabrics from that northern region of India. Don’t think of thin Indian cottons as cheap, they are thin for hot weather. There are so many grades and colors of Indian cotton.
Love to all of you.

Patti