Dinner with our host's family

Joseph - for the last two nights we spent with our guide OP and his family. We were invited to go shopping with the neices and the dinner at their house. Shopping was on a chaotic street where the people and motorcycles and hand drawn carts, cows and rickshaws all try to go down the street together at a fast pace. At times it would be clogged and the horns would be at a constant blare. I cannot tell what kind of stores these are besides the clear pharmacies, food products, or clothing booths. Others look like hardware or repair booths, but everyone is anxiously shopping. We sit in a Sari booth - eight people at a time as the cross-legged merchant rolls our various materials. After looking at 20-30 styles of material we select a few and go off to the tailor that will make the dress for a couple of dolars by tomorrow. Zosia tells me it was some high-school aged girl. I go off with two of the neices to find an India shirt and pants. I select a dress shirt that goes to my knees/pants, and also a white cottom shirt/pants. Together they are $11. Later, I think I should have gotten two more. Actaully Zosia and I got separated for about 45 minues and we couldn't reach each other by the girl's cell phones. I had this horrible vision that I couldn't speak the language, wouldn't know how to get a rickshaw, don't know any telephone numbers, and don't know the name of our hotel My long standing nightmare of having no reference point of where to go next. But we make it home fine and get ready for dinner.
Dinner is very different. Thei living area is outdoors under a corrigated metal roof. The floor is some king of concrete mixed with straw. The focal point is a small open fire stove built into the concrete where OP's wife cooks some of our meal. The fire is from one long log fed continuously in the fire and cow dung paddies. There paddies found everywhere in India are a primary source of fuel. The streets are lined with houses contructed of dung paddies, lined outsdie with decorative dung, and a straw house around it. It preserves the dung paddies through the monsoom season. The fried lintel/wheat ckes are deep fried in mustard oil and are very good. We eat them and drink rum and cokes, and smoke chillum before dinner arrives. The dinner is served in metal plates with rice (made specially because they think westerners expect it). vegetables, curries, no meat really, homemade nam cooked on the oopen fame until it puffed out. . More rum and cokes and chillums after dinner. His complex has 23 family members in it. During the evening people drift by and hang out for bit; often not saying anything, just being there.They were all so open and friendly, but no pressure of being different. They just really made us feel at home and really welcomed.