GARDENING??

Well that is what they call it here when you take the entire campus and divide them up by classes, and go to separate sections of the campus to pull weeds... Gardening. So this is what we did on Saturday morning after breakfast. I went with a group of guys that I have started to get to know and pulled weeds.

It was 8:00 in the morning and about 90 degrees outside, at about 90% humidity. Yeah, I nearly dripped out of my shirt and jeans, that’s right… JEANS… The Indian culture is still pretty modest so not only to men sit on one side of a classroom and women the other, but they all wear long pants when they do outdoor work. Me being the culturally sensitive guy that I am wore a pair of jeans.

So they also mow the lawn with a long metal blade, that looks like a putter… but it’s not. Because if it hits you in the shin it hurts… I don’t know this from personal experience but I have seen it in action.

As the piles of cut grass and pulled weeds began to pile up we would take the piles and dump them over the retaining wall near where we were doing the yard work... ahem... gardening... and there was a totally random cow munching on some of the weeds that were being thrown over the side and probably whatever else it could find. Cows are everywhere but I did not expect one to be here. I would find out later in the day that they really are everywhere.

I helped for an hour then promptly changed out of my jeans, which felt like they were a pound heavier. Then we went for a little drive further up into the hills (foothills that is). More on that in the next post...