This morning while Erik was sleeping in (Independence day, Erik has the day off), Annika was at school, and Auggie was watching cartoons, I went for a little walk to buy some items at local shops.
I went to a small fruit/vegetable stand to get some apples. Because I'm an American, I browsed the produce, found what I wanted, picked up a plastic bag, and started to pick up an apple... that's not how you do it here. I quickly learned that you tell the vendor what you'd like and how many and he picks the produce for you. He was very nice and was very selective in the six apples he picked for me.
Then I turned and eyed some bananas, I picked up a bunch that looked good, handed them to the gentleman, he eyed them, tore one off, tossed it to the side, then weighed the bunch (I guess one was not up to standard). I was trying to pay when he showed me a beautiful stack of mangoes. By this time I simply said "Six please" and he picked six beautiful mangoes and I was on my way. Very nice experience.
After picking up a few more things, I headed home to unload then headed back out to buy some packaged items at a "grocery store".
The grocery store near our house is gross. There is no other word to describe it. I've been to several grocery stores so it's not like this is how grocery stores are in India. This is the store where, in an earlier post, I mentioned finding cockroaches in my Apple Juice container.
Since it's walking distance and I needed a couple necessities I went there. The items are dirty or sticky or greasy. I tried to buy a simple cylander of table salt and of the whole bunch could not find one that was decent. I tried the apple juice again and checked them out for cockroaches and, by golly, there were roaches or roach poop on nearly every container I picked up.
OK, this entry is over...
No comments:
Post a Comment