When it rains, it pours

It's been a while since I posted a photo - I'll have to take some more soon.

I've suddenly gone from sitting around the house all day like a good wife to working a lot. On Saturday I visited the Technical Training Centre for the Deaf, a wonderful vocational school for deaf high school graduates in Frazer Town (described to us as the Christian part of town). I was invited there by the head of the Karnataka Deaf Athletic Association, a very successful deaf man. I toured the school and saw the various divisions: fitting, turning, and electronics. I was shown lathes and micrometers and understood not a thing. The secretary is a very nice and devoted woman who came to the school by chance 25 years ago and has since become an interpreter and general advocate for deaf adults in Bangalore. I am looking forward to spending more time there. They were excited to have me and suggested that I could teach English and help out with social studies courses three days a week.

Gilles came to pick me up from the school in an autorickshaw, and we were driven to the shopping district by a rather drunk (or perhaps high, or just crazy) driver who was very eager to wait for us and take us to our next destination. At first he refused to be paid, then accepted the money and tried to give us his ring so that we would go back to find him when we were done shopping for curtains. We didn't take the ring, and we didn't find him again. We visited the Alliance Française, which seems to be a popular place. A surprising number of Bangaloreans are learning French. I have made no headway at all into Kannada, but the people at the technical school suggested I learn Hindi instead. They told me I look more North Indian than American anyway, so if I learned Hindi I could assimilate as someone from a different part of India. I am having some salwar kameezes made, so who knows? I just have to learn to move my head in that very difficult way - I still think people are shaking their heads no when they're really nodding yes. Thankfully the sign language is fairly close to American Sign Language - I find myself wishing that every Indian knew how to sign so that I could stop using random gestures!

We walked to our neighborhood Pizza Hut (Bangalore is full of them) for dinner tonight and on the way we saw a beautiful light parade. I wish I had brought my camera. The parade was led by several people dancing in giant masks, followed by a giant motorized float. A generator was towed behind the float, and a man walked alongside with a giant wooden pole to make way for the float through low branches and electric wires!

Pizza Hut is really fun here, because it is staffed by eager young men and women who speak a mile a minute and tell you things like "your pizza will take 17 minutes, the appetizers will take 4, and the Pepsis will come right away." There are ketchup bottles on all the tables and the Indian people can be seen actually using them (they dip their pizza in it, it seems). Today the menu had a little addendum announcing that pepperoni is back on the menu, after some customs problems. There is a big choice between Indian and "international" pizzas - I order the classical veggie supreme but Gilles had a spicy mutton korma pizza!