Weekend of Shopping...

This weekend was a shopping weekend! (although that sounds more fun than it really was) Friday most of the new staff went down to the Carleton for lunch. This hotel (more like a bed and breakfast) used to be some old French estate and now people can stay there if they are vacationing in Mussoorie. We had some really sweet food there, including mutton kabobs, some appetizer made out of a huge leaf from the forest, spring rolls, plum juice, rice and dahl of course, sesame green beans, honey chicken, fish, cinnamon mutton and curry, sour potatoes with spinach chapatti and mango puree. It was amazing! And because the estate was over a hundred years old they had one room in the place that was being preserved from its original state. This room had two stuffed tigers and a bunch more tiger pelts. Apparently one of the stuffed tigers had killed 65 people during its life, so the government gave permission for someone to kill it. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have any cool tiger pics…
After eating a massive lunch, the school bus took us to the very end of what’s called Library Bazaar in Mussoorie. I guess the bazaar is divided up into different sections and I had never been as far as Library Bazaar. I walked through entire length of shops and all the way back up to school with some other people. I ended up buying a good knife and cutting board and a rug. And then I also stopped by the tailor and picked up my 5 kurtas (my pants and pillow cases were not ready yet).
Saturday the bus and some taxis took a bunch of the new staff down to Derha dun to shop. It takes about an hour and a half to get to Derha dun from the school if you are riding on a bus. We started out a “department store”, which I was ignorantly hoping would be air conditioned because it was so blasted hot and humid. However even though the store had 4 stories, it was open to the street and did not have air conditioning… Collectively, Megan and I bought a big non-stick frying pan, a large pot, a pressure cooker, some big spoons, a dish drying rack and then we each got a clothes drying rack. We actually spent the majority of our “settling in money” that the school gave us at this store. We then proceeded to walk to a south Indian restaurant; I think it was called Kumars. Here I had marsala dosa and it was really good. A dosa is like a huge flat pancake and rolled up inside of it was the potatoes and vegetables with marsala spices. It came with some kind of soup and then coconut chutney, super good!
After lunch Jim took us to an electronic store so we could get outlet strips with surge or spike protection as they call it in India. And then we were going to this ice cream place that everyone raves about, but apparently the owner had just died the day before and they shut down the shop in memory of him. Instead we went to McDonalds (yes they have McDonald’s in India, but instead of hamburgers you can get veggie or chicken burgers - there is also a Dominos in the bazaar in Mussoorie). A bunch of us were going to get ice cream there, but there were out of ice cream. I just drank some Fanta instead, but it definitely wasn’t as good as ice cream would have been…
We had a fairly long bus ride back to Woodstock (although it is was so much fun to watch the scenery as we climbed up the mountain). Megan and I ate dinner at school – not very tasty- with James and Saahil, who are both are age and Julie and Ray (the couple from Ireland). Then we just had a relaxing night hanging out at our place for the night! Today, one of the families is hosting “high tea” in the afternoon and I will probably continue cleaning and organizing my studio.