TAJ MAHAL!

Guess what I saw on Thursday.
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The Taj Mahal!
I know...that was suspenseful; the title definitely didn't give anything away.

The building itself is absolutely magnificent. It is funny that in our studies here in India we are learning so much about living simply and not extravagantly, yet we celebrate the Taj Mahal, the epitome of extravagance so much. Of course, the Taj was built 362 years ago. Emperor Shah Jahan lived in a different time than we do. Also, I'm not sure if you know this, but the Taj Mahal isn't a temple or anything; it is a memorial built by Shah Jahan for his third wife after she died. To me, it sounds like an excuse to build something huge and memorable. We are still talking about Shah Jahan today aren't we?

The Taj Mahal is big, but what made the day most memorable was that all of the female students on the SJPD program wore saris, as per the SJPD tradition. I got up at 4:30, a full hour before our scheduled time of departure from Delhi, to figure out how to put it on. With the help of Youtube, I think I was mildly successful. Walking around the Taj Mahal and a few other tourist attractions in Agra, we attracted even more attention than our group of 15 white and 2 not-quite-as-white people usually does. Even the other foreigners were stopping to take pictures of us. It was so embarassing. I hate an abundance of people staring at me anyway, but when you add to that the fact that I was wearing a sari for the first time in my life, I was more self-conscious than ever before. By the end of the day, though, I realized that, walking in a group of 15 very obviously Western people and one very obviously Japanese person probably makes it so there is minimal attention on me. I am the only one of the 17 of us who looks like she could possibly be Indian. Anyway, I have a lot of pictures and stories from the day - some of which were included in the 27 postcards I sent out; some of which I will have to tell when I get home.

On Friday, we had a city tour of Delhi. We were all still a bit worn out from the Taj Mahal the day before (we had returned to the Church of North India where we are staying past midnight), but it was still fun. We saw a few sights around the area, but the highlight for me was the Indira Gandhi museum. It was full of pictures, news articles, and items from her life. I was surprised by how captivated I was by the museum. I was absolutely fascinated by her life. I found myself heartbroken at the picture of her at her older son's funeral and then again at the picture of her younger son at her funeral...and his father's funeral.

Yesterday was an entirely free day for us. I had a good time walking around for a while with a few girls from our group. Dr. Kittelson had decided to make yesterday our day of Thanksgiving celebration, so we all went out to a super-expensive restaurant for dinner. We were there for over three and a half hours and did corny, cute Thanksgiving dinner things like go around the table and say things that we are thankful for. I said that I'm thankful for the health and happiness of myself and my family if you are wondering. I am also thankful for the opportunity to travel, for the priviledge of an education, for the security I have in life (I know that I will always have somewhere to sleep and something to eat), for the awesomeness of my family, for a few people on this trip who I really admire and much more.

Today's free again and tomorrow we start our religion unit with a few days on Islam!

I'm in Delhi now. There is now officially less than a month until I am home. Up until a few days ago, I had been counting down day by day, but last Wednesday I realized that I finally don't actually feel the need to count down. One month seems like such a short amount of time and, after that, I'll probably never be in India again. I am finally enjoying every minute of my time here. We have finished our Environment and Livelihood course (the one I was least interested in) and will be moving on to our Religion course (the one I am most interested in). We are going to the Taj Mahal in TWO days. There are a few people in our group who I absolutely love spending time with. The rest of our month-long travels will be spent in cities (as opposed to villages...). Life is good.

Right now we have been away from Visthar and Bangalore for two weeks. We have another two weeks left before we return to Visthar. On November 2nd we set out by plane to the central state of Orissa. We spent five days with an NGO called Integrated Rural Development of the Weaker Sections in India (IRDWSI). IRDWSI works with several villages in the Koraput district of Orissa. They have a variety of projects, including solar power projects, hydrodam projects, multi-cropping projects and alternative education projects. During that week we visited a lot of villages to see IRDWSI's work. We even spent one night in a village. It was a neat experience, but I caught a cold that night which I still have today, 12 days later.

After IRDWSI, we spent a day in Hyderabad before heading over to the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh. There we stayed with the Deccan Development Society (DDS) and saw some of their work. Their focus is primarily empowering the people of the local villages who are mostly Dalit (a group of people formerly known as untouchables who are excluded from the Hindu caste system) to use traditional knowledge that already exists in their villages. We saw some village seed savers who are working to preserve crop varieties, village health workers who use traditional herbal medicines, the Green School that teaches traditional skills in addition to the usual education and many other awesome things. The theme of the week was millets. Don't know what millets are? I didn't know either until I came to India. Millets are a type of grain that is more nutritious than rice and wheat and can also grow under more adverse conditions. Millets have disappeared from the fields of many Indian farmers due to the Green Revolution. Haven't heard of that either? Again, don't worry. It's new to me too. The Green Revolution, championed by American scientist Norman Borlaug, brought high yielding varieties of rice and wheat to India as a way to prevent famine in the 1960s. Since the Green Revolution, crop varieties in India have decreased drastically and malnutrion has increased as people are no longer consuming nutritious local crop varieties like millets. Not only are millets nutritious, but they are delicious as well! We ate primarily millet-based foods while we were at DDS.

We left DDS on Friday. We were in Hyderabad again for the weekend, and we flew here to Delhi on Sunday. We will be here until the 26th when we'll hop on a train to Varanasi. We have had yesterday and today to work on our end-of-course papers for the Environment and Livelihood unit. Tomorrow we will present our papers. On Thursday, we will drive four hours to go see the Taj Mahal in Agra. All of the girls are wearing saris. All of the guys are wearing dhotis... It should be a good picture. On Friday, we'll have a city tour of Delhi. We'll have the weekend free before we start our religion course on Monday.

In other news, I have decided not to go to Chicago next semester. I am really excited about the Washington, D.C. semester that I have planned for the fall 2010 semester and I don't want to burn myself out before then. I had been really excited about Chicago, but now I am getting excited about being at Concordia next semester. I will get to play another tennis season. I will get to be in the classroom a bit more (I find that I'm actually missing a classroom). I can get a job. I will be close to my family who I love so much. Chicago would have been great, but I'm happy to be spending another semester at Concordia.