FOOD

I've had a request (Nonny...) to discuss the food I eat in India. This is a HUGE topic to cover but I'll do my best...
Before school every morning, my host mother cooks breakfast. I always have a glass of cold milk, sometimes with chocolate power in it. There are several things we most commonly eat for breakfast: toast and apples, corn flakes (one of the only cold cereals you can get here), oatmeal, we also have a traditional Indian breakfast that's very popular in this area of the country called pooha. Pooha is a rice-like grain that is cooked with seasoning and potatoes, it's a little heavier than what you would normally eat for breakfast in the U.S. but still very tasty. Sometimes pooha is also served with jelebie, a sweet.
If I don't have school and I'm up by 8ish, when my host parents have tea then I join them for some chai and "biscuits" (almost like cookies but not so sweet.)
I'm not going to lie and say I love any of the school food...
After second period we have snack which can consist of many things, there is always something to drink, luke-warm milk with flavoring, very strong juice, luke-warm tomato soup, or another milk dish with noodle type things in them. Then to eat there's chinese noodles, pasta, bread and jam or a potato based filling, and sometimes other traditional snacks that I don't know the name of...
I prefer the lunch to snack but I still usually eat very little. With both meals at school, you have to always eat everything that's on the plate at your place plus, if there's something not already on your plate when you arrive, you have to take some of that. One of the problems with the school food is that they have to dish out hundreds of plates of food before the bell is rung for lunch so when we take our seats, the food is far from being warm. I've learned a lot of the tricks from my classmates about how to avoid eating food you dislike but it's not always possible.
Lunch is always daal (sort of like a soup...) or something similar (I don't really know what qualifies as daal and not daal), "subsie" (not spelled right) which basically means vegetables and can be anything but at school it usually mostly potato, and rice or roti ( a flat bread).  As a side note, I've noticed that here, potato is considered a vegetable and the main on at that, but at home, it's a starch and not on the same nutrition level as vegetables.
As I said, I usually have the minimal amount possible during the school lunch, so does Shruti (my host sister). When we get home, we are served a real lunch. I usually have roti, daal, and subsie. In some ways, it sounds similar to what is served at school except that the roti is made fresh and is still warm, at is the rest of the food, and the flavoring is much better. Roti, chapati, parata, are some of the many, very similar flat breads that are eaten at meals.
Dinner is eaten anytime between 7 and 10 depending on the day and when people are hungry. Again, we eat more roti  or rice and vegetables as well as some kind of daal. The portions are bigger though. I sometimes have curd with the vegetable too or with a little sugar added after dinner.
The food I eat on a regular basis is different from all of the traditional dishes of which I don't know most of their names. In the house, we eat those dishes on some festivals or when at a party. After meals, many people like to have breath fresheners which is usually fennel, or other natural digestion aids.
My favorite vegetable is lady finger's which several of the other exchange students don't like but I do. My favorite dish so far, it a paneer dish that Shruti makes. Paneer is made from the milk that curdles when you add lemon and then compressed. Like tofu, it tends to take on a little of the flavor of whatever you cook it in. Speaking of tofu, I have eaten meat only twice since being here. Both times is was the same chicken dish at the same restaurant. It's advised not to eat fish anywhere except for in the coast and most other meat except for mutton are against a religion. Muslims don'r eat pork meat and Hindus are either vegetarian or don't eat any beef. The vegetarianism also translates to egg so many baked goods don't have egg. Ritu Grover, the coordinator eats chicken and egg, so I've had eggs for breakfast when staying at her house. The no egg diet makes it hard for me because I want to cook my host family something American but I have a hard time thinking of something I can cook that had not meat or egg and I can find all the ingredients here.
One of the common questions I get is "Veg or non-veg." When I tell people I'm non-veg at home, they all want to know what kind of meat I like best.
I honestly don't really miss meat and I'm trying to decide if I want to go back to eating it when I get home. I might also just cut out red meat.
Occasionally, I eat pizza, pastas, ice cream, and McDonald's food (vegetarian McDonald's). Usually I only eat these if I'm out with friends, traveling, or it's a special occasion like a birthday party.
It took me a little bit to get used to eating with my hands. The most difficult, it learning how to eat liquidy foods with a piece of roti. When eating utensils are used, it is usually a spoon. In fact, they give us both a spoon and fork when we have rice at school, but my friends told me that the fork is supposed to only be used to help push the food onto the spoon.
 A person should always eat with their right hand and handle the serving utensils with their left if they have to. You always should wash your hands after eating with them and wash them before handling anything in the kitchen. My host mother insists in seeing everyone fed or served before she'll sit down to her own dinner which means that her meal times are extremely dependent on the family.
Indian table manners would NOT cut it in the U.S. besides eating with hands, people snort, cough, burp, fart, whatever at the table, at least in the house, in public it's not so bad. However, no matter where you are, some people eat REALLY loudly with their mouths wide open, talking, chewing as loudly as possible, slurping, and smacking their lips. Unfortunately, my obsessive pet peeve is people chewing loudly but I swear after having to live through a year of this in India I will NEVER complain about someone chewing loudly again. Some people I can barely stand to be in the room with when eating and have to leave as soon as possible to keep from loosing it...
The food in India is AMAZING, as I hoped it would be. Sometimes it can get really spicy but I'm getting more used to it and my host family doesn't really eat super spicy food anyways. All food though, is very flavorful whether it be salty, spicy, sweet, or any of the other hundreds of seasonings that there are.