Shopping In Town For The Third Time

Today, I rode with Shekhar to town on his motorcycle for the third time. I needed to shop for some more things as we continue to settle down.

His friend, the same girl from last time, took us around the shops once again.

(Disclaimer: I currently use two crappy cameras for my photographs: my phone, and a used point-and-shoot. I am not happy with my photos, but the stories are better with them than without. Bare with me until I get the time and money to buy a better camera. )

As usual, we stopped at the veggie/fruit market where I bought some ginger, mint leaves, cilantro, papayas, and a pomegranate.

Thanks to a fellow reader, I bought a pomegranate this time. I didn’t want to last time, because my experience with them is a complete mess. But she gave me good advice on how to open and seed the pomegranate without a mess. Her advice: “If you score a pomegranate, and then put it into a large bowl filled with water, you can break it open so easily, and without any mess! Your fingers can easily work the seeds out without smashing them, and the seeds will all sink to the bottom of the bowl. The white pith will float.”

The fruit stand man selling the fruit thought it was so weird that I only wanted one pomegranate. He asked the Indian girl that was with us like 5 times “just one?” (In Hindi of course).

This girl speaks English, but she wouldn’t speak to me directly. She would only speak in Hindi to Shekhar. Not sure why. Adinath and Shekhar, her friends, said she is shy, but she didn’t sound too shy to me when she spoke Hindi with them. I guess she is shy of strangers. I am not very extroverted with strangers either, it takes me some time to get comfortable with new people, so I can understand.

At another shop, I threw a few Hindi words at the sellers, and every time, the girl would laugh. It was cute. Shekhar said it was because she simply wasn’t expecting me to speak Hindi at all.

We also stopped at the kitchenware shop where I got a few Indian kitchen staples: a khadai cooking pot, a chapati making tray, a chapati box, and a masala box. All stainless steel, and all for 1300 rupees. About $21 U.S. dollars. Awesome.

I was most excited about the Masala box. I love my spices. And I am learning the Hindi names for them, which is fun.

We also went to a shop where they sold just plastic bags. All kinds of plastic bags and other plastic things. Here, I bought two different sizes of trash bags, “ziploc” bags, and straws.

The girl we were with (I just can’t learn her name), bought some hair pins at the “beauty shop”, so  I took some pictures around.

I wonder who he was shopping for.

I also bought: ginger powder which I like adding to my black tea, apple cider vinegar which I use to make fruit fly and gnat traps, and essential peanut butter for apples and oatmeal.

It took me about 2 weeks to find vinegar. First, nobody knew what it was. I even googled the word in Hindi, and they still didn’t know. I was very surprised about how hard it was to find vinegar. But yesterday I finally did find both white and apple cider vinegars in a random shop.

Finally, I couldn’t leave town without something sweet for my sweet tooth. I’m happy with anything with dark chocolate. It was cookies filled with it this time.