Sunday, July 16 Americans being cheated by the locals

I called the parentals and we ended up talking for a long time, costing me $12 for the call. As expensive as a fifth of Bacardi! It was good talking to them, though. I spent the day on the couch of Dev Dar (the couch on which I have resided for the past 5 days) and studied Hindi for a while and took a nap and then we watched Anchorman, after which this random old white woman started singing to Carry On My Wayward Son really cacophonously. So apparently the EAP group is the laughingstock of Mussoorie, as told to us by these 7 year old Mussoorie kids. This is because the owner of the hotel gloats about how he’s cheating 50 dumb Americans. Also, the entire town has power and water all the time, and we (at arbitrary times) usually don’t have water and have occasional blackouts. The water thing is ridiculous; it’s the middle of monsoon (there CANNOT be a water shortage), and we have to yell at them to turn it on (which means flipping a switch). When we ask why it’s turned off, they tell us “the monkeys turned it off”. Oh please!!! Our teacher told us to just find out where the switch is, and turn it on ourselves. Moreover, we are paying 400R a day (which is ridiculous by Indian standards) without water or toilet paper and BAD food in BULK. They run out of peanut butter, for example, and say they don’t have any more that day. But…the owner of Dev Dar is also the owner of the adjacent convenience store, selling peanut butter. Go over to your shop and refill the peanut butter for your hotel restaurant. And then we realize that in the kitchen that they claim has nothing in it and they post a “keep out” sign, there is a whole load of food. That is so proprietary; we have to buy toilet paper and water at his store because he doesn’t provide it in his hotel! WTF!