More Pictures from Our Rural Playground

After buying a bicycle, it’s now clear how the invention of the wheel revolutionized all matters of human civilization. I don’t know why we didn’t do it sooner. We used to trudge into the villages like snails. Now, Alex gets onto our new bicycle, I hop on sidesaddle on the back, and it’s “See you suckas!” and a mean cloud of dust.

We’re able to go further afield to buy fruits and vegetables, and best of all, we can explore more of the villages with the wind in our hair. Alex is making a routine of joining cricket on Sundays. We've been taking Tamil language lessons, and can now actually conjugate verbs; this helps when we're doing the usual -- trespassing into people's homes, then being asked to sit around with them in a circle and eat their food.

First, we roll into a village where people suddenly emerge from their homes to just look. Then the children approach and practice their English greetings. They charm us, leading to the camera being pulled out, then it's over. The sight of the camera gets them into a loud, excited frenzy. As many bodies as possible try to smush into range of the camera, jumping sideways through the crowd if necessary. When they realize that yes, we're actually going to take the time to take photograph each of them, they become suddenly sober and stand ramrod straight and look sedately at the camera to make for a better portrait. Below are some shots from the past few weeks.

Carrying harvested rice.

Villager in the typical uniform, button-down collared shirt over a lungee, or rectangular cotton fabric wrapped around like a skirt. They ride mopeds and bicycles like this, but don't ride sidesaddle. Many men wear clashing plaid shirts and lungees.

We were invited into this family's home and served some kind of porridge and a very salty and sour substance to go with it. We weren't sure what we were eating! We are able to conjugate "to eat" in past, present, and future tense. The sight of us eating their food, and saying "We are eating" was intensely amusing to them.

These ladies called us over to put a bindi on my forehead and flowers in my hair.

Chicken feet.

Alex playing cricket.

Village boys around our bike. If we're not weird looking enough, try drinking from a Camelback. People think we're martians.

Yesterday, I stayed home to rest while Alex rode out to the villages. When he walked in the door, I asked "What did you do today?" He said, "I harvested peanuts!"

The peanut ladies. They won his affections for the afternoon.

The fresh peanuts in our (nasty) sink. A note to all of you design buffs renovating your kitchens, when you're choosing fixtures and finishes, we recommend that you forego the "Black Painted Concrete" option.