Poo without a Loo

I LOVE reading the India paper each morning over breakfast. Almost every morning there is some statistic that just makes you go "WOW, NO WAY!" This morning's "The Times of India" front page featured the article "Every day, 1.1 billion people poo without a loo." How can this not catch a person's attention? As you can see in the attached picture of the article:
-Indians comprise 58% of the 1.1 billion people across the world who defecate in the open, a WHO-UNICEF report says.
-Around 638 million people in India don't have access to toilets, followed by Indonesia (58m), China (50m), Ethiopia (49m), Pakistan (48m), Nigeria (33m), and Sudan (17m).
-This is one world number one tag that 'emerging India' would love to shed.
From my personal experience of living in India the past 6 months I would believe every one of these Indian statistics as we have seen it all in our travels.

Matrimonials

Every Sunday the paper features the Matrimonials Section that is anywhere from 3-8 pages in length. India still has a large number of arranged marriages and according to the popularity of this section they must still use the newspaper to find their matches. Can you imagine your parents reading the paper every Sunday looking for a match for you? Personally I enjoy scanning the section because all of them are good looking, well educated, fair skinned, skinny, beautiful, and well mannered people. I did find one Christian listing where most of them are sorted by the location in India or the religous background of Jain or Hindu. Education is an important attribute as well as the height and weight. Some of the postings specify the physical requirements where others just talk about the father being a doctor. The adjectives to describe some of these poor boys and girls is what gives me a chuckle. Homely girl, (looks younger), seeks well settled boy, slight speech problem, clean shaven, and convent educated are just a few examples. If anyone is looking for a match just let me know.

World Cup...Check!

Saturday we took in our first World Cup Field Hockey Championship in Delhi. High security allowed no cameras in the stadium therefore, all pictures are from Ben's phone. We watched the end of the England vs. Holland match that ended with the Dutch taking the bronze medal. The championship match featured the two time defending champion Germany vs. Australia. We won't say who won or lost, but simply that Germany did not pull the three-peat. =) An interesting sport that consists of men hitting a white baseball sized ball around on the turf with a short stick with a hooked end. It is a combination of ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse from what we could tell. No one looked up the rules prior to the match therefore, we were left wondering most of the match what was going on. All in all a great afternoon to sit in the sun and enjoy the outdoors. The most perplexing for us was the watering down of the turf between games and at halftime. The only hypothesis we could come up with was that it was to prevent the players from getting turf burns on their arms and legs when they slid. Any one have an answer for this one?