Im in French Guiana in South America typing on a funky french keyboard

i went for a run during sun rise on the beach this morning at 6am 4 am  Houston time:  The skies were absolutely stunning with a pink and blue tranquility ive been missing as of late:

However; note to self; remove back street boys from ipod….there is just something about French Guiana and the Backstreet Boys that dont quite jive.

Our passengers invited us to the shuttle launch this afternoon so ill write more about that later as there is a glorious pool here begging to be swam in. and an ocean i have yet to jump in and oh how i do like to jump.

This is the first country ive traveled to where no one speaks english so its back to communicating with hand gestures. Anyone know french phrases they can pass on?

Much love and thanks jenn and jimmy for hosting a fabulous 4th of July celebration

Lindsey and I breaking into her storage unit - at the last moment possible we decided to film this from my camera.  The laughing you hear in the begining is my text message alert

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| View Show | Create Your Own

I wanted to bring her with me but then I remembered “NANNY NOT INCLUDED”

RE: excited and sad

“What are the odds we’d get stuck in the car with two teeth suckers?  When I get back to the room I’m opening a bottle of scotch and putting a gun to my head.  You in?”

“For the scotch or the gun?”

Phhhhhsssh (teeth suck sound from the back seat of our car.

Eying one another in a “is this really happening moment” I responded, “BOTH!”

And  began to laugh the ridiculous stupid way a mental person does with out having reason to the hilarity of a moment in time.  Our day had reached hell freezing over riding back to the hotel in Mumbai after another 14 hour day, an hour and a half in traffic, two teeth suckers; one of which kept singing Hindi songs.

Don, pilot from U.S., is 61 years old and has this horrible habit of sucking his teeth.  It’s nails on a chalk board grating and down right irritating.  On our flights I’m in the back of the plane “being punished” by our passengers and Dave is stuck in the cockpit with Suneal (the Indian Pilot who forgets to wear deodorant) and Don the “Teeth Sucker”.  When you spend as much time with one another like we do, as a crew, we become old married couples living on borrowed time who nag one another and become irritate.  Somehow in the middle of it all it’s funny.  I’m a laugher and find the humor in the strangest of all places….that’s how I get by in life…it’s a survival tool I could teach to some of the whiners.

Two minutes later the Indian Handler in the back seat was singing Hindi when his phone rang and he broke out of Hindi and said, “What. Shit.!”

Chuckles

Spying a bottle of wine that was set on a room service table I grabbed it and said, “Fuck it! Let’s drink,”

“Put that down. We’ll order a fresh bottle from the lounge.”

Dave called twenty minutes earlier to ask what time we were meeting in the lobby.

“Was it 6:00 am or 6:15 am?”

Ten minutes later he knocked on my door, “You’re never going to believe this. Our plane is in Singapore.”

After a half hour of banter in the lounge (no alcohol included) I broke out of our five star prison and on to the beach.  I love my walks in the morning on the beach– people just stare at me and smile.  It’s a delicate and quaint way to communicate.

Last night I sat in the lounge for two hours talking to an Aussie Pilot and learning of his life in Australia.  I saw photos of his wife and kids, etc…

And now, I’m heading out to take breakfast to this adorable little girl Misharata – she’s four and a street kid.  She’s so stinking cute and doesn’t ask for money – just food. 

Yesterday in an email I wrote this to a friend,

There’s this little girl with crazy hair who can’t be any older than five.  Anyway, you know I take all the catering with me and give it away as we’re headed to the hotel.  Yesterday I gave about five dishes to her and her sister.  I walked past them today she just stared at me until I waved hi. Then she did the whole hand to mouth thing asking for food.  She asked for food, not money…food.  I told her I’d get her something and I’d be right back.  She followed me down the street a bit then another girl appeared next to her.  I bought them both meals from street vendors which was only 40 rupee which is the equivalent to ONE DOLLAR!  As we were walking back an older girl appeared who said she was the sister of the second girl.  I talked to her briefly…I really wanted to whisk them away and let them take a shower.  They are so stinking cute it hurts. They are street kids and live right here on the street.  I don’t know what to do on this one.  We’ve got a day trip tomorrow to pick up Sunny and Anu ((digression every time I think of them I can’t help but visualize them as cartoon characters…their names are Sunny and Princess Anu) I’ll have a load of catering on my return and will bring the kids dinner again but my dilemma lies in what if they get caught in a cycle depending on me and never learn to help themselves and then suddenly my contract is done and they end up hungry.

OF COURSE I’ll bring her food…HOW COULD I NOT?

Its heart wrenching.

I may be coming home July 8^th for a week – we’re still trying to work everything out.  Or I may just come back for good – it’s all up in the air still.

“Why does seeing people carry things on their head make me laugh?”

“What was she thinking?”

“I’ve got a twelve pound bag of rocks?”

“So I’ll use my head as a shelf?”

The car swerves to one side violently and we are slammed against one another.”

“What the hell was that person thinking?”

“Seems like a perfect time to cross the street when cars are going 45 mph.”

“It’s only a matter of time before someone becomes road kill.”

Shortly after I first came to Mumbai on the front page of the paper was a guy with his head split open, dead and bleeding on the road.  India does not censorship it’s press one bit. 

We call crossing the street “Playing Frogger.”

Recently, after a child was murdered in bed CNN – India showed the bloody hand prints and blood stained sheets.  This is a country unafraid to show the hardships of it’s people.  Nor is it unafraid to publish improper English and misspelled words.

I call reading the paper a reminder to use spell check and now understand, sometimes censorship can be a good thing.  Not always, just sometimes.

And sometimes when I’m frustrated beyond human consumption and talking over a glass or two of wine about this Indian Aviation company we have to deal with the pilot will say, “Why are you yelling at me?” to which I always reply, “stop tooting my horn.”

And that is a joke that carries on for months on end with stupid punch lines whenever we’ve had enough and don’t understand the “WHY” of Indian culture.  

Yesterday evening I fell asleep as I was still beat from work 20hours straight the previous day.  I woke myself up with my own wheezing.  We had been in Kolkata the day before.  The polluted air has captured my lungs.  It’s left me with a consistant cough, a good ab work out, and a wheezing only known to veteran smokers.  I woke to flowers on my dresser and a hand written note that read, “Miss Henry I’m sorry I did not know you resting.” Beside it was printed note from the JW Marriott, “Welcome to your home away from home.  I hope you are enjoying your stay with us.  I Ajay Das am your housekeeper for the day.  Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.”  The day earlier I returned to my room here and found a gold nose ring with a note on my dresser.  Chalk that one up to things I thought would never happen in my life.

I’ve posted photos of the beach in the morning but no photos of the beach in the evening.  Imagine the streets of a NYC sidewalk bustle on a beach.  Merchants, kids playing, adults walking slowly, business people contemplating, etc. Everyone here walks the beach at night.  So, last night I decided to do the same and walk the beach with my IPOD.

There is a big brown door/gate I enter through to exit to the beach.  The hotel requires guests to sign out (when we come back in they give us a cold towel and bottle of water).  There were Indian girls milling all around the perimeter sipping coconuts and staring at me because the guy wasn’t there to sign me out. I smiled at them and they soon smiled back offering me a coconut.  After I was signed out I began my walk turning to the right – no big feat.  I then reached the end where it was no longer safe and turned around to walk back. I passed the hotel and continued walking down to a very crowded area. 

***Now, those that know me are about to shake their head and go “Fucking Jessica” because the WEIRDEST things are constantly happening to me**

Two boys approximately 16 or 17 ran up to me.

“You not from this country. I am Indian. Welcome to my country.” 

“No, I’m not from here. Thank-you. Thank-you.”

“Can we take photo with you?”

“Ugh, okay,” this is where I started to get leery of the situation.  The photo was taken as both boys grabbed on to my arms and three other boys jumped in behind us.

“You think I’m handsome?”

“Yes, you are cute.”

“Kiss me, kiss me,” he said as he pointed to his cheek.

Knowing how I react to such things a huge look of disgust probably crossed my face.

“You come meet my Mother. Please, come meet my Mother.”

Both boys began to beg of me to meet their Mother’s.  The day prior I had learned after speaking with my waiter, Sunil, a boy can like a girl but it is not until the girl tells the boy she is in love with him that they can date and then marry.  Sunil, my waiter has liked the same girl for six years and it is customary for the girl to put off telling a boy she loves him.  If we had that custom in the states there’d be a lot of boiled rabbits with some of the crazy stories my guy friends tell me.

I digress, I dismissed the boys walked another half mile and then turned around heading up the beach so I would not see the boys again.  One of them spotted me and ran up to me once again begging me to meet his Mother.  I succumbed figuring there were tons of people around and no harm could come to me.  The other boy soon followed in route running behind me.  We reached a blanket with three women sitting on it.  One was holding a baby.  The boys said, “This is my Mother” and the other said, “This is my sister and this is my Mother.”

And this is where I should have stopped.

Instead, Phi Beta Stupid here bent down to ask the woman if that was her baby or not.  I looked up and noticed there was a circle surrounding us thirty people deep.  I began breathing a little heavier as fight or flight began to take over my system.  The advice Tom Joyner’s bodyguard gave me a month ago on the plane surely would not work here. 

I stood up not waiting for her response when the boy grabbed the baby out of the woman’s arms and thrust it at me.  I had no choice but to hold the child and began rocking it to make him stop crying.

“Kiss it. Kiss the baby.”

He wanted me to kiss the child on the forehead; I refused as I was beginning to get really nervous and what if the baby had a disease?  Someone behind touched my hair.  “Here, please take the child you’re freaking me out,” I stated.  He took the child and said, “Okay. You go.”

A path cleared and I ran back to the hotel approaching one of the workers.  “Do you speak English?” 

“Yes, I do.”

I then told him about what happened and inquired if it was maybe because they don’t see a lot of Westerners  They see a lot of  Westerners so that wasn’t the case.  The hotel had the general manager call me. The hotel staff was truly alarmed and has never heard of such a thing happening. The GM thinks it was probably a gang and told me to read a book called Elephant Suite.  A half hour later another manager rang my room and asked me to meet with him and a police officer. 

An hour later I sat in the coffee shop with the two men recounting the incident.  We all think what happened to me was really weird. I was instructed not to go that far down on the beach as there are a lot of people visiting Mumbai and maybe they don’t see a lot of foreigners. They wanted to know if I wanted to file a police report.  “Why nothing really happened to me.” My theory is, of course, duh they probably think I’m a Hollywood actress. 

I met Dave for dinner and recounted the story again.  In the elevator I handed him the business cards of the police men and the JW Marriot manager.  His response was priceless, “Why does everyone here have American Rock Star names here? Hinder and Luda! Are you kidding me?”