still so much to learn....

So yesterday was a- Yes, I'm American, I don't know Hindi, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm accidentally making it very obvious-morning. It was a little on the humiliating side of things, but hey, I guess its just partly how you learn right? I decided to take a little bit of a different way out to the orphanage today. I knew it would be a little cheaper then what I've been doing and I wanted to try it. Hmm…bad idea. A normally hour trip out there, took over two and half today. Not so fun.

Usually I take a tuk tuk (public taxi type thing) from Rajpur to Dehradun, and then take a smaller almost rickshaw type thing out to the orphanage. To get home, Prem (my awesome taxi driver) comes and picks me up. Well, today I decided I would take the tuk tuk to Dehradun, take another one from there to Prem Nagar, and then take another from Prem Nagar out to JoyBells. Seemed simple enough. Welllll…here's how what seemed so simple turned out….

I took the tuk tuk from Rajpur to Dehradun. Got off, and walked across the street to where a bunch of other ones were parked waiting to leave. I stared asking which ones were going to Prem Nagar. One guy told me that he wasn't, but the guy in front of him was. When I asked the guy in front of him, he said "not now, 10 minutes." so I waited about 5 and then he told me to get on. I got on along with 9 other people….it was close fellowship for sure. I was squished in the middle and really couldn't see anything, so by the time half of the people got off and I could actually see where we were going, I realized that I was halfway back to Rajpur…the complete opposite direction of Prem Nagar. At that point I really had no better choice then to just go all the way back to Rajpur and then go BACK to Dehradun. When we got to Rajpur the guy asked me if this was where I wanted to end up. I said no, and tried (emphases on tried) to tell him where I was trying to get to. He told me to get back on. So we started back to Dehradun. I’m sure everyone along that street probably found it pretty funny that the white girl who just passed by twice, once being about 2 min ago, is now coming back. Again.

During the midst of accidentally coming all the way back to Rajpur, I called Prem, my wonderful taxi driver. We've become good friends and I knew he would be happy to help me out with a little translating. The guys driving the tuk tuk were really pretty nice and trying to help me, but had no idea what I needed help with, since we couldn't understand eachother and all. After a long time of trying to explain to Prem about where I was, and what I had done, he said "ok janky girl, give them the phone and let me talk to them." He explained to them that once I got to Dehradun, I just needed help knowing which tuk tuks go to Prem Nagar.

What I didn't know, and what would have made things SO much easier if I had, is that to get a tuk tuk to Prem Nagar, you have to walk from where the Rajpur tuk tuks park in Derhadun, to the clock tower. That’s where they come to. They don’t sit with all the other ones. So my friends the tuk tuk drivers, were super sweet and dropped me at the clock tower and told me to find one with the #7 (some more valuable info).

While looking for one with the #7 on it, I realized that I didn't have any more small change with me, due to the extra trip to Rajpur and back again. Therefore, after ALL that, I couldn't take a tuk tuk anyway, since no driver would have had change for a 500, seen as it only takes 7 rupees to ride the thing. So I ended up taking one of the smaller rickshaw things out to the orphanage like usual. What’s funny about that, is that fact that I could have taken one of those in the very stinkin' beginning, when I first got to Dehradun, and I could have skipped the extra accidental "tour" of the city. So trying to do it the super cheap way, I ended up paying MORE, and being about an hour and a half late. It’s times like that, that you have to just keep laughing or you simply might cry. Ha. Oh well, I guess I now know how to do it for next time :)