SOMETIMES AUDIO TAPES ARE BETTER

With Sunday being my day off from volunteering, a resident by the name of Rajan has tried to use these days as an opportunity for him to show me as he put it “the real Kolkata” and on today’s agenda was experiencing a Chinese breakfast in Chinatown.  Can’t say I had any idea of what exactly a Chinese breakfast consisted of, but with the knock on my door at 5:45 a.m., I suppose I wasn’t gonna have to wait too long to find out.  Once we arrived to the district, which was only about a 15 minute transport from the Salvation Army, it was like walking into a buffet of vendors on the street.  Ideally, I ‘d be able to describe to you all the different types of food I saw on the buffet line, but quite honestly, I had no idea what most of it was.  Some stuff had chicken in it, other fish, and everything grease.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned anything about the grease in Indian food so far, but if Indian food was a fast-food burger back home, it would make the Big Mac taste so healthy to where you could blindfold Jerad from Subway, let him eat one, and he’d think it was a chicken onion teriyaki foot long.  Grease aside, Indian food is quite good though.  How I’ve managed to lose weight on this diet of grease is beyond me, but my diet here isn’t that much different from the Atkin’s so I guess it kind of makes sense in a weird way.   

After breakfast, I got a couple more hours of sleep in before I went to church with Mike, “my other half,” as I told him I’d go with him this week so he could introduce me to a couple girls that took him under their wing awhile back.  Nice girls.  In the interests of your ear drums, I’ll save you the sermon from this week as in this particular instance the message didn’t leave me saying “that really hit home,” but rather, “I want to go home."  Nothing against the preacher.  He delivered a good message and he's a CARE MORE kind of guy when considering he started a organization that takes girls out of the sex trade in India, but when it comes to listening to him preach, I think I'll take the audio tape format.   Once the service was over, I then went back to the Salvation Army to get some more rest and in waking up a couple hours later, I found myself with Reverend Mike at the pulpit again and me in the front pew.  Even though Mike’s sermon was a little longer in length than the morning message, to his credit, his delivery was much easier on the ears.  Nothing against the Assembly of God or Mike’s church in the “Assembly of Tyson,” but after today, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t take the “two a days” of sermons on Sunday.  As to what will get cut out of my Sunday routine, it’s a tough decision since each venue has its pros and cons, but I’ve got a week to make a decision so we’ll see.