back on track...where everyone thinks sean looks like harry potter

sean and i stalled out for a few days in jaipur. i guess monsoon is cold and flu season here, and we caught the bugs. the illness hit me a lot harder than it did sean (since illness generally hits him harder in life, it was a fair trade-off), and for a few days i stayed in bed. luckily, we were in the beautiful town of jaipur at an amazing hotel with hot water and a.c. there was no better place to be wretchedly ill anywhere else in india.

our second night in jaipur, sean and i went to the cinema to see our first hindi bollywood movie, fanaa. i hear it got mixed reviews, and none of it was in english, but we both really enjoyed the film. the storyline was remarkably easy to follow, and interesting. it is the story of a blind girl from kashmir who goes to delhi for some kind of dance performance and falls in love with a tour guide. they court and love and the parents, i suppose, approve of the match and come to delhi to meet the guy. while on their way, the girl and guy go to the hospital to get retinal replacement surgery in hopes the girl can see. while the girl is recovering, and before she can see, a bomb explodes (at a gov't complex near the hospital) and she is told her boyfriend has died in the explosion. she's crushed and goes back to kashmir with her parents. it turns out, though, that the guy was leading a double life and was actually a kashmiri freedom fighter planning with his grandfather and other kashmiri soldiers to pressure india, pakistan, and russia to let their kashmir regions go. oh, the "pressure" was with a handheld nuclear device that could destroy delhi, or islamabad. the story gets complex, and i recommend you see the movie, so i won't go into it anymore, but it is a beautiful movie with amazing scenery and really fun music and dancing. sean was laughing at some of the cheezy parts and now i know that i have spent too much time watching chinese movies because it didn't seem that hoaky to me.

laying in bed watching the news i learned that everyone is getting sore throats now because of monsoon. they showed throat exercises and yoga positions to help your throat heal. and the tv told me to eat lots of yogurt.

sean and i are now in amedhamad, in gujarat, plotting our next move. our next immediate move will be to the tailor. and then, hopefully, out into the countryside a bit.

interestingly, traveling with sean, people here tend to think he looks like harry potter, and more than once we have been walking down the street and they will say "harry potter" over and over again, and point, and tell their friends. we were walking behind a guy on the way to the internet cafe today who told the people we passed, "hey, the guy behind me looks just like harry potter!" how cute.