Today we awoke to the waves of the beach and the sounds of birds chirping away. We said goodbye to Benhalium and hopped a bus to Margao, a city 15 minutes down the road to catch another bus to Paloleum, Goa. As we sat on an over crowded bus for 2 hours, I thought to myself, I really hope this place is worth the trip. Well rest assure, it is. We arrived in the center of town and walked a very short distance to the beach front. After walking for a few minutes we realized that we needed to find a place to rest our heads. So we literally took a right a headed up to a house. We found a woman with the biggest smile on her face. She said she had an open room for 400 ruppes a night. (To put this into perspective, 45 ruppes is equal to $1 making this place about $8 a night. I havent lost math skills just yet).
This place is amazing and the price is just right. Now if I can only get the women on the beaches to stop asking me if I will buy something.... I would be in heaven. After we found our new home we bought sarongs to use at beach blankets and sat on the beach for a while. We being me.. Danny still cant get over the fact that I can be half way across the world and still cant get away from consumerism.
If we had one person come up to ask us if we wanted something we had one hundred. In America, we probably would just give these people a dirty look and not reply. At first, that's exactly what I did. My counter part did the exact opposite. He just simply said, "no thank you". And they gave a simple smile and went on their way. I thought to myself, it's that simple huh.
As the time past and the people came over to us, we started talking to them. Men would come over to us but they weren't offering anything but high fives or thumbs down. Why you ask? Well when we were packing to come on this trip Dan showed me this little yellow Manchester United (England Soccer) Jersey. It's too small for him and I laughed and was like you're going to bring two shirts to india with you and one of them is going to be that?? Well little did I know, that shirt would make my boyfriend is a God here. People, mostly men, just come up to us and start talking about soccer. Little do they know Danny doesnt really know a thing about soccer or anyone on the Manchester United Team.
We met girls that we younger than I am that we married with three plus children that sold jewelry on the beach while their... and i quote.."Lazy husbands sat at home". These girls were uneducated not knowing how to read or write, yet they knew how to speak English. Mind boggling.
As we sat for about an hour talking with them, we looked over at a group of men playing cards. At first glance I laughed and pointed and said more lazy men. The girls were in agreeance and said, "You are so lucky. If you didnt like you're boyfriend you could leave him, but me, I have to stay with my husband and do whatever he tells me to do." I sat there not knowing what to say and put my head down thinking how lucky I actually am. As my head dropped I noticed the playing cards. Dan and I were in the middle of playing cards before the girls came over. I made a joke about lazy men playing cards, when what am I doing?
After they left us, Dan went to grab something at the market and left me on the beach to myself. I sat there thinking. What am I actually doing? Why am I here? This is where you pose the question Why instead of Why not. Hopefully the answer comes to me soon.
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