Today’s goals are all fairly mundane and non-blog-worthy–making a doctor’s appointment, unpacking a few of the very last boxes, and you get the picture.  So I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about instead.

As I look up phone numbers online, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is playing on TV.  The movie is about a group of English retirees (who don’t know each other at the start)  who move to India, where they think their retirement money will buy a better and perhaps more exciting life than it would in dear old England.

Their trip hasn’t resembled our trip to India in many ways, but I love seeing images of India again.  And there are similarities.  Some of the people in the movie are struggling with how to interact with the locals.  Who hasn’t felt that way in a culture other than their own?  Some are struggling with the food.  My stomach has definitely been there.  Some are thriving, enjoying every second of newness and smells and colors and wonderful people.

Mixed in with the wonderful people, we did hear plenty of horror stories about people while we were there.  You hear those stories when you work with women who have been rescued from the sex trafficking industry.  But in those women, we saw the beauty of hope.  There was hope in the middle of lives that should have stamped out all hope.

That’s my favorite memory of India.  There were gorgeous colors and patterns, and we stayed in a mountainous area with stunning views,  but the hope was best of all.  There was life and brightness where there should have been none.

Scott and I revisited India a week or so ago with our first curry since the trip.  It was technically a Thai curry instead of an Indian curry, and I know they’re really different.  It reminded me of our trip anyway.

Want to try it?  Thai Red Chicken Curry.  The peppers were crisp, and the basil and lime worked perfectly with the curry and the coconut.

They don’t sell curry paste at our grocery store, so I made it from scratch.  I used this recipe: Thai Red Curry Paste.  It was easy, since you basically just had to chop and mix and process (a.k.a. mix some more).  The non-easy part was finding some of the ingredients.  To remedy that, I used the sophisticated tactic of omitting those ingredients.  Which ones did I miss?  I believe that would be fresh lemongrass and shrimp paste.  I was grateful for the several substitution options that were listed in the paste recipe.

So that’s it, folks.  I’m thinking about curry and hope (and gastrointestinal distress).