Yesterday, our community visitor at the Institute was a snake charmer. Scared the hell out of me. I don't care if the cobra doesn't have any venom. It's still a snake capable of biting. It kept trying to bite the guy, so I think I'm not all that crazy for not wanting to get close it.

Swamiji's father is ill, so my personal tutorial for this week was postponed (twice). I finally ended up with Vidhuji this afternoon, going over relative-corelative clauses. He said he was impressed that I seem to understand them, it usually takes students much longer to catch on, but I pointed out that Russian is pretty much one big subclause, so I've had a lot of practice. He also said something else really nice to me about my Hindi. He sat down and asked me if I was going to do the year-long program. I said, no, I'm supposed to be writing my dissertation, and he said that's really too bad, because if I spent an academic year in Jaipur, my Hindi would be indistinguishable from a native speaker's. He said I'm a very methodical learner, and it's serving me well. So, go me, I guess. That's two compliments on my Hindi in two days.

We're off to Pushkar for Hindi camp until Monday, then I'm off to Ujjain until next Sunady. It's possible I'll find some internet access between now and then, but not likely. Still, that's not an excuse to stop sending me e-mail. It's true that I'm not keeping up with anyone's blogs, and also true that I have a hard time finding more than ten minutes of time to type as fast as I can at this during the day, but e-mail is still nice (I'm just saying.). Wish me luck at Hindi camp. There is already a lot of tension in our small group, who knows what mandatory socializing will do for us.