Our First Day on our own in India

I woke up it’s about 5:30 in the morning. I just found out what it is like to run out of energy in a foreign country. I think Roland calls this hitting the wall. Seems now that everything has moved to this point I am crashing. They had a nice basket of snacks in the room when we arrived. I was so tired I thought I would skip dinner and just eat a few of these treats. Big mistake. A bag of what looked like potato chips called “wafers” set my mouth on fire. I personally know I will never be the same after that experience. It turned a perfectly normal woman into a fire breathing dragon in 5.2 seconds. So I gathered my self together after drinking a full bottle of water and thought I will try the Jim Jam cookies. Not bad after your taste buds have been burned away by the deceptive looking potato chips. These fire chips are called Balaji Wafers. Magic Masala is the flavor. Haldiram’s Bhujia Sev another snack food that will make your eyes roll back in your head. Balaji Namkeen Shing Bhujia will set your face on fire and make your tongue bleed. Debra says to me : Are the protein shakes all she’ll have? I said… no have some of those chips. Not really just joking but that was my evil mind working again. The protein drinks are the only thing we have in the room for her right now so we will begin the task for finding some foods she can eat. No nice guy from the hospital to bring us a tray every meal, morning, noon, tea time, and night. No more coconut water or rice water on demand. Here at the hotel we will become scavengers. Looking for small bits of food to sustain us for the next seven days. We do have a breakfast coupon for the restaurant here in the hotel. Trouble with that you have to go to the restaurant to get the food. They do have room service but that would not work with the coupons. Another reason not to do that is you have no idea what they would be bringing. Yikes it means facing the world outside of our inlayed marble floors and beautiful sweeping drapes that hide that world outside our window. Speaking of windows ours open and there in a ledge where you could actually crawl out on and sit. We are on the sixth floor. Is this their form of a balcony? The view from the room is amazing, you have these tall buildings, a gym across the way with a jogging track on top of the building. There are trees and grass up there it looks like a park on top of a building. Also, a few blocks away there is a city park. It might be a good place for Debra and I to take walks during the day. With the adjustments to her medications she is well-structured during the day and sleeping at night. If this works for her long term I foresee a good thing already happening for us. They gave her a 6 month supply of the medication so she could see if she liked the affects of it on her system. If she does then she can contact a doctor in the states and get it here or they will try to send it to her if it’s not possible or affordable in the U.S. Very helpful. It’s a very low does and I am very pleased with the results we are seeing already.
Roland is trying to call me on Skype and the funniest thing is his Internet connection keeps dropping out and cutting off our call. Mine here in India is perfect and never drops. Isn’t that odd. Don’t worry Rollie Bear I know your out there somewhere. Call tech support and see if you can get them to help you out. They have in the past been able to fix it short term. Upon putting on the Skype headset I have realized it will block out a great deal of the road noise. I can put on some music, work on typing up my post and not have constant horns blowing all day and night. I have enjoyed the singing of Wyatt Rushing and David Ellis on this long journey. If I remember right wasn’t the group called “The Master Brothers” ? I am pretty sure that was it. Those Christian songs have comforted me on this long trip. Wyatt has the best bass voice there is ever. We all know that David’s gift come in the form of music. Thank you guys for the recorded music that I could bring with me to this place. What a blessing you both are to the Lord’s church. There will be some relief from that music playing in the background while Debra and I take these steps. I gave Debra the eye covers and ear plugs from the plane. They seemed to do the trick for her. Plus, her medications on top of that she’s getting plenty of stress free rest. She could care less that we have been reduced to rodents in India, scavengers for tiny bits of food.

We are freezing at night burning up by day. The weather here is very tropical. It’s raining today so we are in the room we can watch the action on the street from our vantage point here on the sixth floor. When it breaks off we are going to try to make it to the market. After our breakfast we knew we were in trouble. Debra got yogurt but it taste like sour cream so we got some jelly to go in it. That made it better but if you try sour cream with jelly in it you will see it doesn’t have much appeal for long. One thing they do have is corn flakes and milk. I can make it on that. You can get cold milk or hot milk which ever you like. Debra did like the warmed milk with sugar in it. Really that was pretty good. They have this really course sugar that is great. The guys running the buffet at the restaurant kept bringing us over things to try. I had to be careful I didn’t end up with a plate full of goodies I couldn’t even touch. One of the guys speaks good English so he helps us to order. We could get toast they thought we would love that but we said no and they thought we were crazy. Bandit’s don’t eat bread. Yes that’s what we are called now “bandit’s”. After breakfast we came back to the room as it was windy and rainy. Gives me time to up date this as we go through the day. Just outside the reception area here at the Tip Top they sell Italian ice cream scoops in waffle cones. Debra tried a mango and I had butter scotch. Down side to that was all of them have nuts of some kind in them. They are topped with nuts, fruits, and sauces. Debra cannot have nuts! I have to be very careful eating nuts. They can ruin a perfectly good day quickly. It is best to order some thing you know as they have stuff like kesar pista, shahi badam, angeer badam. Also something called Golden Marry. I am not going there but I think it’s vanilla. We had our taste but no more. It is so tempting to buy a bite here and there but really that’s not a good idea so we don’t. If I drawled attention to myself you should see the looks I get now with Debra in tow. We are a sight to see.
I have arranged for a car to pick us up for the dental work that will start tomorrow. We will get a lot of it done that day and impressions made for the crowns. They don’t give you shot to deaden your mouth here. They gas you! Even for a cleaning so you are calm and comfortable they give you this gas. I am not worried as no drilling is involved for me but Debra will have fillings done. They said it is totally pain free. We are a trusting lot are we not? God be with us as we face the dentist. He is a funny guy that likes to tease and cut up with you. Makes it a bit more pleasant.
Well we are back in the room. They bring tea and put it in a basket in the room that is labeled Taj Mahal by Brooke Bond. It’s great tea I am going to get some at the store if I can find it. It’s lovely with creamer and a little of that chunky sugar. I will write more later Debra wants to use the computer for a while and we only got one lap top that has Internet access.
Love you guys and came wait to see you all again.