welcome to the hotel vegetarian

anytime i talk about indian food...or really food in general, i think about my wonderful friend carolyn button...(now parker). her love of foreign food and inclination of writing solely about it caused her to only get an A while i received an A+ in our international class. so obviously she is in need of some type of retribution. this probably isn't it, but it's worth a shot.

restaurants here are not called restaurants. they are called hotels. i know, the natural follow up question is what are hotels called. sadly the chain of oddities ends here as hotels are called anything from hostels to inns to homestays.

in preparation of india i began to eat vegetarian about 3 months before moving. i did not eat vegetarian last time i was here, but felt compelled to do it this time. i blame this paradigm shift to an entire year of studying nothing but infectious disease outbreaks, including but not limited to avian influenza, dovine spongiform encephalopathy, campylobacter, salmonella and e. coli. seriously, a big thank you to public health. plus, i figured since half the country is already vegetarian, there is safety in the majority. i'm also a big fan of the phrase 'when in rome' (thank you ron burgendy). bottom line, the food is amazing- even when its all vegetarian. so i figured i would not be missing much, and could potentially be saving my digestional system from potential...complications. dire and dangerous complications.

i had a difficult time with my new diet back at home...especially at the start of crab season. i was known to blankly stare at friends eating a hamburger until a line of drool snapped me out of my trance. i am happy to say that all of this has officially changed. i may never eat, or lust after meat again. this is due to a serious of event that occurred within a minute from each other.

*warning- if you are currently consuming meat at this time, or plan to in the next several hours- be warned and read ahead with your own digression. also don't swim for at least half an hour after reading this blog.*

we took a journey to fort cochin this sunday for a little sightseeing, history, and a game we like to refer to as 'openly and unabashedly stare at, follow, and take pictures of the americans.' fun times. we decided that instead of taking a rickshaw between one ancient church to another ancient synagogue we would walk the three kilometers. this proved to be a fantastic idea. it was a beautiful day, and even though we were clearly walking through a 'slum' area, the people were incredibly friendly, and we were able to see some incredibly...interesting sights- to say the least. plus we were away from the tourist locations so we did not need to constantly practice our poor language skills by shooing the vendors away from us. people in this neighborhood were genuinely happy to see us and interested in talking with us.

sorry, i digressed- back to the meat and point of this post. the first incident occurred while walking past a butchers shop. there was some laughter and movement around the tiny shack. when we got closer we learned that the cause of all this merriment was that the butcher had a fresh slab of meat laying out (by fresh i mean possibly still moving) and was cutting up pieces of raw bloody meat and flinging it at the men standing around. throwing it. at them. i had a difficult time handling raw packaged chicken at home...i had a much harder time stepping over and on (it squished) pieces of blood and meat. i had my head down trying to process the situation, and by process, i mean trying not to vomit- and because of this i almost ran directly into reason number two i never want meat again. a truck full of carcasses. bull carcasses to be exact. about a food from my face. all i know is that there was just heads, horns, no skin, apparently there were no brains, a lot of flies, a strong putrid order, and a strong gag reflex. i'm not sure if bull brains are a delicacy of sorts in this part of the world, but either way i plan on never finding out. never.

and that is my story. i hope you all enjoy a rare piece of meat today. and think of bull brains. yuuuum!