Some more ramblings...

Mmmm Masala
I love spicy foods and, even though they often tone it down for foreigners, I've had my fair share of spicy dishes since I've been here. What's so cool though is that all the American foods they import are kicked up a notch and you can find virtually anything "masala flavored." Masala, it turns out, just a generic term for a mix of spices--nothing specific, as I previously thought. So far, I've had masala flavored chips (very, very spicy), masala topped pizza (amazing!) and, when I peaked in a McDonald's out of curiosity, I saw that they have masala spiced fries. But my favorite masala-flavored anything is:

Masala cup o' noodles!
Delicious!!! Firstly, as a college student who generally misses out on the cup o noodles in the states due to hidden animal ingredients, I appreciate that the Indian ones are always vegetarian (and clearly marked). Secondly, these are truly yummy and cost next to nothing.

Elance
This week has been all about the finishing touches on my interviews (to start next week and continue basically until I leave). As I prepare, I have been trying to find a transcriber, because I have grant money from Human Development to hire someone to take over this pesky and tedious task. Well, let me just say: Elance.com has answered my dreams! It is a site that networks potential employers with a whole bunch of freelancers for everything from translation/transcription to graphic design. They have this awesome (and free) system where you post a project and either invite specific people to bid on the work or open up the project to the whole network, so anyone can bid. At a certain point, you pick the person you want to do the work and hire them, and using paypal.com, they facilitate the transaction. It's been fantastic so far and because you review individual freelancers, it also seems to have some reliable measurement of quality, which is great. Anyways, there's my plug. Hopefully some of you can use this wonder...

Henna
Work was long and tiring today, so I was looking for something relaxing, but interesting, to do this afternoon. And because I clearly want to stand out here even more than I already did, I went to the local salon and got my hair henna-ed. I'd done it twice before (once, in Thailand, where Daniel and I washed it off in the Pacific Ocean) and was excited about doing it again, without the messiness of bright red hands and stained towels. It's totally fine, but I am now very much a redhead. Luckily, it will wash out before I get home, because it is a bit shocking.

The salon was really interesting though. The girl who got a haircut next to me left and then her hair was promptly swept up and gathered up into a ponytail. I'm not sure what they're going to do with it (I hear that the human hair extensions people buy in the U.S. often come from India, so perhaps it's being sold).