INDIA PREPARATION

As the group of us get ready for our trip to India at the end of July, we had some pretty important tasks to complete this week.

On Monday, we went to the Star of India restaurant in Mishawaka. The food was really quite good and not nearly as spicy and hot as I expected (although some other members of the group would say the food was quite hot as evidence of the sweat coming off their foreheads).

There were some "tricks" to eating the Indian food. There was no silverware and you had to scoop it up with your right hand (because using your left hand is offensive), you couldn't drink water during your meal because water may not be provided during our trip and you couldn't use your napkin. Basically by the end of dinner my right hand spelled of some funk that consisted of chicken, curry, rice and an whole other assortment of spices and flavorings.

The downside of the evening was our "dessert" that was suppose to be a sweet coconut tasting drink type thing. It ended up being something that tasted like a ranch or cucumber salad dressing and my first taste (and only taste!) of this stuff was bad since I was expecting one thing and got another. Oh well, just part of the fun of this adventure!

On Thursday evening the first round of shots happened and it went rather quickly and pretty much pain free during the injection. When all was said and done I got my four shots in less than three minutes. I'm not one to watch the neddle actually get injected into my arm.

The real downside to these shots is my left arm got fairly sore and I woke up each time I tried to roll over on it during the night. Once again, just part of the adventure. I have to get my final two shots in about a month.