Back in Bangalore

Phew...we arrived back in Bangalore an hour ago after our month-long journey to the North of the country. I had expected to be tired at this point, but I really wasn't; the month was phenomemal!

At the time of my last update, we were in Delhi. We finished off our time in Delhi with a three-day unit on Islam. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to be leading the unit cancelled on us, so David had to throw together some last-minute things for us to do. Although the program was great considering how last-minute it was, we didn't learn much and we had a LOT of free time. But hey - who's complaining? I love free time.

On Wednesday the 25th, we took a 14 hour overnight train to Varanasi. We spent our first day in Varanasi studying Buddhism. We talked to a very nice monk for a few hours and visited a lot of temples. That day (Thursday) was also Thanksgiving.

In the United States, Friday was Eid el Adha, one of the two large Muslim holidays of the year. In India, Eid was on Saturday. I wasn't sure which day I was planning to celebrate on since I really didn't have anything to do for Eid anyway, but my classmates decided for me. They "woke me up" on Friday morning with a bunch of little gifts and a beautiful rendition of "Eid Mobarek to you." Kimberly and Katie had everyone sign an Eid card for me as well. I have never received an actual Eid card before! Their surprise made me so remarkably happy... Later in the day I got some chocolates to share with everyone, and Caitlin and Allie bought an "Eid Cake". I was so touched by the thoughtfulness of my classmates...definitely the best Eid ever! Also on Thursday, we were studying Jainism, another religion that emerged in response to Hinduism.

On Saturday, we woke up early to go see the sunrise from on a boat on the Ganges! Itwas amazing. The Ganges is a holy river and it is seen as most holy in Varanasi, so we saw many people bathing in the river. Doing so is supposed to wash people of all of their sins. After our boat ride, we were free for the rest of the day. I walked around for a few hours with Katie, Kimberly, Allie and Britta before heading back to St. Mary's Cathedral, where we were staying, to relax for a few hours. At night, I went out with a few people who were getting ice cream. I hadn't been planning to get ice cream anyway, but while we were there, Kimberly and I decided not to eat any sort of junk food for the rest of our time in India, meaning no sweets, no soda, no nasty, oily, fried stuff (unless not taking something would be rude). It has only been a few days, but it hasn't been too hard. Depending on how things go, I might continue this once I get home. Also on the subject of eating habits, I really want to become vegetarian. I will definitely be eating vegetarian for the rest of my time in India and hopefully I can continue to do so at home. I have learned of so many reasons why vegetarian is better this semester (I might post about them soon), and I feel like that's a change that I can easily make.

On Sunday and Monday, we studied Hinduism and a bit of the history and spiritual significance of Varanasi. We left Varanasi yesterday right after lunch. Before lunch, I went back into the central area of Varanasi with Allie, Caitlin and Kimberly to walk around a little bit more and do a bit of shopping. Our train ride was all of 18 hours long from Varanasi to Delhi. Then we had a two and a half hour plane ride from Delhi to Bangalore and now we're back at Visthar!

It's great to be back at a place so familiar, but in some ways I'm sad that we're back. The past month was by far the best of our trip. Mostly, I think, because the members of our group spent a lot more time with each other. We had a lot of great conversations and all bonded so much. It is sad to think that in these last two weeks in India, we'll probably be attached to our computers again and then we'll go home and never get this awesome environment to just hang out with each other again. Looking back to September and how long the semester seemed then, it is truly hard to believe that I will be leaving India in just over two weeks. Crazy!