This week is mid-semester break, so we have no classes. We were allowed to travel the country in groups of at least two. Most of the class went North to the Himalayas and the Ganges, but I wanted to go to a city, so I accompanied my classmate Brendan to Pondicherry, a city with heavy French influences in the southern state of Tamil Nadu that he really wanted to see. It is the home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as well as the international township of Auroville, both of which draw huge numbers of foreigners. Other than those two main draws, Pondicherry, undoubtedly a pleasant city to live in, has little for tourists to do.
On our fourth and final day in Pondicherry, we checked out of our hotel at noon but our bus was not scheduled to leave until ten and a half hours later, so we left our stuff in the hotel's storage room and headed out for one last day on the town. Nadeau and I decided to split up and meet again for dinner. I milked as much time as I could out of my visit to Coffe.com, a cute little coffee shop, but when I felt I had overstayed the welcome I had earned by purchasing a 20 rupee (40 cent) bottle of water, I decided to check out Bharati Park, a large park that we had passed while walking around on each of our previous three days in Pondicherry. In order to make sure I had a proper sense of direction, I walked first to Daily Bread, the restaurant where I had agreed to meet Brendan for dinner. From there, I walked in the general direction of the park. I paid very close attention to the path I took and was delighted to find the park on my right hand side after only having to turn left once at a tall-building that I had carefully noted in my mind. Not only had I avoided getting lost on my way there; I was confident in how I had gotten there and was sure that I would not need to walk in circles to find my way back.
The park was great! Since it was the middle of the day on a Tuesday, it was relatively uncrowded, so I enjoyed the book I had brought along in peace. It had taken me about ten minutes to walk from Daily Bread to the park, but, to be safe, I put my book away and headed back at 5:10, twenty minutes before I was scheduled to meet Brendan. I turned left on the street that bordered the park from where I had first seen it and started walking. I immediately became aware that the street I was walking down did not look like the one I had walked up to get to the park. It was starting to get dark now, though, so I wrote this off. I had made a careful mental note of the route I had taken to get to the park and I was sure that I was now returning the way I had come; my memory of the shops on the street was clearly the faulted one. I kept walking, looking for the tall building that would be my cue to turn right. It did not come and soon I found myself passing cobbled streets full of children speaking French to each other. Upon closer look, these mostly-light brown haired students were French students speaking French to each other. I looked at the buildings around me. Many of them were adorned with simple archways and sunken back windows: I had fallen into France. No, I definitely had not walked this path on my way to the park.
Despite being absolutely sure that I had turned the right way to get back to Daily Bread, I had to resign that I was now absolutely lost. I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, trying to look as though I knew what I was doing, when I ran into Rue Surcouf. There! That was a name I recognized. Unfortunately, it was a name I recognized from having eaten at Kasha ki Aasha, a small boutique/cafe that set on the end of it, a couple of days earlier. I looked down at my watch. 5:25. Hmm...well at least I knew where I was now: good two kilometers on the side of the park opposite the one I needed to be on. Beautiful. I increased my walking speed and headed off in the direction of Daily Bread, finally right about where I was headed. 5:30 passed and I was still six or seven city blocks from the place on Mission Street where I would turn onto Nehru Street, walk a block, then turn onto Ambour Salai, walk a block and arrive at Daily Bread. At home this wouldn't be an issue. I would call Brendan, tell him I was going to be ten minutes late and continue on at a leisurly pace. I was not at home and this was not an option and Brendan is not the type to assume that everything is hunky-dory when someone does not show up on time in an unfamiliar Indian city. I increased my walking speed again; I was now close to running, earning myself a lot of confused glances from other passers-by. Pondicherry's advertising slogan is "Give Time a Break". People do not hustle to get places in Pondicherry.
Finally I got to the Bata shoe store, my cue to turn left. I was nearing the end of the block on Nehru Street that separates Mission and Ambour Salai streets, when I saw it. It being a beautiful orange cloth purse. The zipper on the purse that I had gotten in Hampi a month and a half earlier had broken just that morning. This purse was calling to me in its radiant orange beauty. I was now less than a minute away from Daily Bread. I looked down at my watch: 5:07. I considered ignoring the purse and continuing on to save an undoubtedly anxious Nadeau from worry but ultimately decided the purse was worth rounding out my lateness to an even ten minutes. I wanted the purse for 100 rupees (2 dollars), but I had only managed to get it down to 120 when my allotted two and a half minutes for buying said purse were over. I decided that, in the scheme of things, forty cents wouldn't kill me and bought in anyway. I rushed up to Daily Bread just as the time on my watch switched from 5:40 to 5:41. As expected, Brendan looked anxious. It's funny because at home, being ten minutes would be no big deal. If Brendan had been worried, he would have texted or called me to make sure I was okay and life would continue. Amazing the kind of security just having a cell phone provides. Anywho, I apologized profusely, telling him I got lost (8/11 of the reason I was late, anyway).
Which brings me back to my original point: I am positive that turned the right way out of that park and yet I ended up going exactly the opposite direction of the one I wanted to go in. I have thought for a while about how this could have happened and have come up with only one possible solution. God knows that I am directionally-challenged. He knows that reversing directions causes a lot more strain on my brian that it should, so, he keeps a close eye on me and, on the rare occasion that I do correctly reverse directions, he flips the world so that I am still going the wrong way, ensuring that the "directionally challenged" label will stick with me for life. It really is the only plausible solution. Glad I got that one sorted out.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Only in India
On Friday, we a day in Kolar Gold Fields that can really only happen in India. We started the day by listening to the stories of a couple of women staying at Wimochina, a women's shelter that we, too, had stayed at. Their stories were fascinating, but they were interrupted when one of the women spotted a scorpion in Kirk's shoe, ready to sting. Kirk reached to poke it, but the woman exclaimed "NOOOO! You will die." I was stunned to hear that. It seems so strange that something so innocent and free like a scorpion could kill someone. As it turns out, the scorpion wouldn't have killed Kirk; it would have put him through some extreme pain though.
After listening to the women speak, we packed up our stuff and headed to the bus to go back to Bangalore. Problem: the bus was stuck in the mud and had nestled itself in about half a foot deep trying to get out. Dr. Kittelson looked more anxious than usual, but I think we all knew that it wasn't actually a concern. These things happen in India; the problem would be fixed. The knowledge of all the people standing around regarding how to get un-stick stuck vehicles was pooled and with the use of a couple of wooden boards and the maximum strength of about 2o people we got the bus out. We drove the 60 miles back to Bangalore in about three hours, meaning we made good time for Indian roads.
A few of us decided we wanted to get some ice cream, so we got out of the bus in the village near Visthar. The store we had planned to go to was closed. Why wouldn't it be? I mean - 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. That seems like prime closing time... Instead we went to a much smaller store. I bought something called a "Chocolate Nutty" from the guy. It was a chocolate coated ice cream stick. The ice cream had rose water in it. Again, why not? Rose water makes everything better doesn't it? We walked back to Visthar through some very squishy mud. Although India has a monsoon every year, the roads around the area are made of dirt, so every time it rains, it's more like walking along the shore of a beach than it is like walking on any road I'm used to.
At 6 pm we left to go eat dinner at a local politician's "restaurant". It was important for us to leave on time so that we could be there at 7:15 as we had scheduled with him. We were there at 7:15; he came at 9:30. His flight was delayed. There were about 20 of us there and they had around 16 bottles of Kingfisher wine there for us. While we waited, we talked to some of the other random assortment of people there. I talked to "Guru", a man who studied in the United States and now works in politics in India, though he doesn't seem to know what his job actually is. I asked him several times, but somehow he always managed to redirect the conversation to the wild Friday nights he had while in the United States. After food (delicious! the spiciest I've had yet in India), we exchanged a couple of songs and then we decided to sing the song "We Shall Overcome" all together since we would all know the song, Americans and Indians alike. I had never heard the song before in my life, yet all of the Indians in the room knew the words. Love it when that happens!
Oh India...
After listening to the women speak, we packed up our stuff and headed to the bus to go back to Bangalore. Problem: the bus was stuck in the mud and had nestled itself in about half a foot deep trying to get out. Dr. Kittelson looked more anxious than usual, but I think we all knew that it wasn't actually a concern. These things happen in India; the problem would be fixed. The knowledge of all the people standing around regarding how to get un-stick stuck vehicles was pooled and with the use of a couple of wooden boards and the maximum strength of about 2o people we got the bus out. We drove the 60 miles back to Bangalore in about three hours, meaning we made good time for Indian roads.
A few of us decided we wanted to get some ice cream, so we got out of the bus in the village near Visthar. The store we had planned to go to was closed. Why wouldn't it be? I mean - 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. That seems like prime closing time... Instead we went to a much smaller store. I bought something called a "Chocolate Nutty" from the guy. It was a chocolate coated ice cream stick. The ice cream had rose water in it. Again, why not? Rose water makes everything better doesn't it? We walked back to Visthar through some very squishy mud. Although India has a monsoon every year, the roads around the area are made of dirt, so every time it rains, it's more like walking along the shore of a beach than it is like walking on any road I'm used to.
At 6 pm we left to go eat dinner at a local politician's "restaurant". It was important for us to leave on time so that we could be there at 7:15 as we had scheduled with him. We were there at 7:15; he came at 9:30. His flight was delayed. There were about 20 of us there and they had around 16 bottles of Kingfisher wine there for us. While we waited, we talked to some of the other random assortment of people there. I talked to "Guru", a man who studied in the United States and now works in politics in India, though he doesn't seem to know what his job actually is. I asked him several times, but somehow he always managed to redirect the conversation to the wild Friday nights he had while in the United States. After food (delicious! the spiciest I've had yet in India), we exchanged a couple of songs and then we decided to sing the song "We Shall Overcome" all together since we would all know the song, Americans and Indians alike. I had never heard the song before in my life, yet all of the Indians in the room knew the words. Love it when that happens!
Oh India...
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Eid el Fitr
I have little to report from a pretty uneventful Eid, but I'm posting anyway since Tant Nivo told me to.
No mosques have women's sections in India. In the morning yesterday the boys in our group went to the prayer at a mosque, and the girls just hung around. I walked into town and picked up some cookies from a bakery to bring to Asma's house. Asma is the sister of Sham, a Muslim man who works for Visthar, and we went to her house for lunch. It was delicious and it was nice to spend some time with a family on Eid, even if that family was not my own. After lunch we came back to Visthar and continuued class. Driving through the streets, you might not have guessed that it was a holiday. The only indication that it might be a holiday was that there were a few stores closed. Wish I had something more exciting to say...
No mosques have women's sections in India. In the morning yesterday the boys in our group went to the prayer at a mosque, and the girls just hung around. I walked into town and picked up some cookies from a bakery to bring to Asma's house. Asma is the sister of Sham, a Muslim man who works for Visthar, and we went to her house for lunch. It was delicious and it was nice to spend some time with a family on Eid, even if that family was not my own. After lunch we came back to Visthar and continuued class. Driving through the streets, you might not have guessed that it was a holiday. The only indication that it might be a holiday was that there were a few stores closed. Wish I had something more exciting to say...
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Coping with Koppal
Okay...the title has little to do with the post, I just couldn't think of a good name...
We spent all of last week in Koppal. A poorer district in Northern Karnataka. Our purpose there was to help build a school for children of women who are a part of the Davedasi (temple priest) system. Unfortunately (or actually fortunately I guess since the region had a poor monsoon season this year) it rained almost the whole time we were there, so we weren't able to build much. The building we did do was great though. Some of the young girls who will be attending the school helped out and one day we got to talk to some of their mothers who were visiting. A good experience all around.
During the week we also went to Hampi, a city built around the 6th century I think. It was a neat place. On the main temple there are statues of women in erotic positions. Our tour guide explained that this was so that the visitor's eye would be drawn to those images and not to the rest of the temple to prevent people from being jealous of the temple and therefore bringing bad luck upon it. Interesting. A few people got blessed by the temple elephant who was trained to tap people on the head when it was given money. Market and religion, anyone? On that day, we visited Hampi University, a small Master's and Ph. D. program university that is working to preserve the culture of the area. We ran into a couple of arts students who showed us around which was great. I got to talking with Veena, one of the arts students. It was great to connect with someone close to my own age.
On another day we went to a village and saw people working on a handloom and then people working on a machine loom. On the handloom, the man has to pump two pedals continuously and push a handle thing back and forth over and over again for ten hours a day. On the machine loom, a man stands and makes sure the thread doesn't get caught. I have often heard that we should try to support the handloom industry and I heard that again on that day. I have a hard time understanding why now. I can see that, since handlooming is slower, it can employ more people, but it employs more people in back-breakingly hard physical labor. If the alternative is unemployment, I can see why that would be preferable, but isn't there a way that people can have jobs and decent conditions? Then the next day, we went to a human hair processing plant. There men and women comb through hair and sort it by length to send it to factories that make wigs. Vishwasagar, our guide for the day, kept telling us about how they don't have their rights and so on, but the women were sitting close to each other and laughing and joking with each other. There labor was hard, but it didn't require massive amounts of physical exertion. They can talk while they work. I'm having a hard time understanding why I'm supposed to consider that work less ethical than the handloom work.
By far, the hardest thing for me to process this week was our visit to a village of about 45o families, 100 of whom are dalit families. For a while, we exchanged songs and questions with each other which was nice. When the Q & A was done, we went around to homes in the village. At each home, Vishwasagar would do his best to point out just how poor each family was. He would pick up food to show us that it was old. He would show us the pots and tell us how they were metal and not clay, a sign of real poverty. At one point, he poured out some of their food to show us how thin it was. I felt awful that we were treating people as objects. The people and homes of that village turned into our textbooks. We exploited their gracious hospitality by going through their homes and objectifying them, pitying them for their lives. We heard nothing positive about their lives because the purpose of our visit was to see despair.
I hated this visit for several reasons. One, we are learning in class here in India that what India needs is to be village-centered. If that is village life, then why?? Why why why why why? At least in a city, new jobs are constantly cropping up. Although moving there would probably mean poverty, there is a chance of upward movement. Where is that chance in villages? I feel as though this is another instance of those of us who are already well-off saying that others can't become well-off because that wouldn't allow us to continue to live our comfortable lives. Second, people just can't objectify other people like that. Other members of the group said it was nice because we connected with them before visiting their homes, but we didn't really. We asked them questions to determine just how poor they are relative to us and they asked us questions to determine just how great life is for us. Is that connecting? We sat on opposite sides of the room. Third, I realized that day that this is what the program I signed up for is. The program's purpose is to show us how awful life can be, so that we carry that away with us and consider it as we go off into our careers. This isn't a cultural exchange. The hope of this program is not that I would build relationships with Indians but that I would see just how many and how deep problems are in India. It's like an extended mission trip except we are basically only viewing the problems, not doing anything to alleviate them. This isn't a fault of the program, per se. There are people who enjoy that kind of program, who are looking for that kind of program. I just should have looked more into what the program actually is before I signed up for it. Now I need to adjust my expectations of this study abroad experience. I need to accept the fact that I'm not going to connect on a real level with Indians, that's not what's it about. That's a hard thing to do.
In other news, today in most of the world but tomorrow in India is Eid el-Fitr. Ramadan in India has been semi-hard, but only because various people who work for Visthar have continually been recommending that I not fast on a large variety of occasions. It was frustrating that in a country that has way more Muslims than the United States does, I got a lot more flack about fasting. Strange how that works. I realize that the Visthar staff members were just concerned for me that I would be too tired; they just don't realize that I've been fasting and completely participating in regular life for ten years. Anyway, I have about eight days to make up. This is my first Eid not with family. Not a big deal though. It will be fun to see how Eid is celebrated here. The guys are going to the prayer tomorrow, but not the women because no mosques in India have women sections. Is it just me or is that uncommon in most places in the Muslim world? I mean, in Egypt not all mosques have women's sections and they're never anywhere near the size of the men's sections but they exist, don't they? Please comment if you know. That's okay though. I don't mind not going to the mosque; that means I get a free morning. In the afternoon, Dr. Kittelson says we are going to the house of Sham - a Muslim Visthar staff member. I like Sham and the members of his family who I've met before, so that should be fun.
We spent all of last week in Koppal. A poorer district in Northern Karnataka. Our purpose there was to help build a school for children of women who are a part of the Davedasi (temple priest) system. Unfortunately (or actually fortunately I guess since the region had a poor monsoon season this year) it rained almost the whole time we were there, so we weren't able to build much. The building we did do was great though. Some of the young girls who will be attending the school helped out and one day we got to talk to some of their mothers who were visiting. A good experience all around.
During the week we also went to Hampi, a city built around the 6th century I think. It was a neat place. On the main temple there are statues of women in erotic positions. Our tour guide explained that this was so that the visitor's eye would be drawn to those images and not to the rest of the temple to prevent people from being jealous of the temple and therefore bringing bad luck upon it. Interesting. A few people got blessed by the temple elephant who was trained to tap people on the head when it was given money. Market and religion, anyone? On that day, we visited Hampi University, a small Master's and Ph. D. program university that is working to preserve the culture of the area. We ran into a couple of arts students who showed us around which was great. I got to talking with Veena, one of the arts students. It was great to connect with someone close to my own age.
On another day we went to a village and saw people working on a handloom and then people working on a machine loom. On the handloom, the man has to pump two pedals continuously and push a handle thing back and forth over and over again for ten hours a day. On the machine loom, a man stands and makes sure the thread doesn't get caught. I have often heard that we should try to support the handloom industry and I heard that again on that day. I have a hard time understanding why now. I can see that, since handlooming is slower, it can employ more people, but it employs more people in back-breakingly hard physical labor. If the alternative is unemployment, I can see why that would be preferable, but isn't there a way that people can have jobs and decent conditions? Then the next day, we went to a human hair processing plant. There men and women comb through hair and sort it by length to send it to factories that make wigs. Vishwasagar, our guide for the day, kept telling us about how they don't have their rights and so on, but the women were sitting close to each other and laughing and joking with each other. There labor was hard, but it didn't require massive amounts of physical exertion. They can talk while they work. I'm having a hard time understanding why I'm supposed to consider that work less ethical than the handloom work.
By far, the hardest thing for me to process this week was our visit to a village of about 45o families, 100 of whom are dalit families. For a while, we exchanged songs and questions with each other which was nice. When the Q & A was done, we went around to homes in the village. At each home, Vishwasagar would do his best to point out just how poor each family was. He would pick up food to show us that it was old. He would show us the pots and tell us how they were metal and not clay, a sign of real poverty. At one point, he poured out some of their food to show us how thin it was. I felt awful that we were treating people as objects. The people and homes of that village turned into our textbooks. We exploited their gracious hospitality by going through their homes and objectifying them, pitying them for their lives. We heard nothing positive about their lives because the purpose of our visit was to see despair.
I hated this visit for several reasons. One, we are learning in class here in India that what India needs is to be village-centered. If that is village life, then why?? Why why why why why? At least in a city, new jobs are constantly cropping up. Although moving there would probably mean poverty, there is a chance of upward movement. Where is that chance in villages? I feel as though this is another instance of those of us who are already well-off saying that others can't become well-off because that wouldn't allow us to continue to live our comfortable lives. Second, people just can't objectify other people like that. Other members of the group said it was nice because we connected with them before visiting their homes, but we didn't really. We asked them questions to determine just how poor they are relative to us and they asked us questions to determine just how great life is for us. Is that connecting? We sat on opposite sides of the room. Third, I realized that day that this is what the program I signed up for is. The program's purpose is to show us how awful life can be, so that we carry that away with us and consider it as we go off into our careers. This isn't a cultural exchange. The hope of this program is not that I would build relationships with Indians but that I would see just how many and how deep problems are in India. It's like an extended mission trip except we are basically only viewing the problems, not doing anything to alleviate them. This isn't a fault of the program, per se. There are people who enjoy that kind of program, who are looking for that kind of program. I just should have looked more into what the program actually is before I signed up for it. Now I need to adjust my expectations of this study abroad experience. I need to accept the fact that I'm not going to connect on a real level with Indians, that's not what's it about. That's a hard thing to do.
In other news, today in most of the world but tomorrow in India is Eid el-Fitr. Ramadan in India has been semi-hard, but only because various people who work for Visthar have continually been recommending that I not fast on a large variety of occasions. It was frustrating that in a country that has way more Muslims than the United States does, I got a lot more flack about fasting. Strange how that works. I realize that the Visthar staff members were just concerned for me that I would be too tired; they just don't realize that I've been fasting and completely participating in regular life for ten years. Anyway, I have about eight days to make up. This is my first Eid not with family. Not a big deal though. It will be fun to see how Eid is celebrated here. The guys are going to the prayer tomorrow, but not the women because no mosques in India have women sections. Is it just me or is that uncommon in most places in the Muslim world? I mean, in Egypt not all mosques have women's sections and they're never anywhere near the size of the men's sections but they exist, don't they? Please comment if you know. That's okay though. I don't mind not going to the mosque; that means I get a free morning. In the afternoon, Dr. Kittelson says we are going to the house of Sham - a Muslim Visthar staff member. I like Sham and the members of his family who I've met before, so that should be fun.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Turkey is not Egypt (posted by Mona, Ayah's mom)
Turkey is so much like Egypt too, but yet different. I think the Eastern and Muslim/partly Muslim cultures share common features and yet are distinct from each other.
Izmir & Istanbul remind me of Cairo so much. Either the Ottomans left permanent marks on Egypt's culture or they absorbed Egyptian culture & brought it back to their homeland. Probably a little bit of both. And the Turks I met so far are not at all like the ones we see in the series. More like the Egyptians i met in Cairo. They are very friendly and simple and down to earth. And they mostly have dark hair and eyes. Most look kinda like dad (your dad). Lots of poverty and homelessness around here too, although probably a little less than Egypt. They even have 3shwa2ee neighborhoods in Istanbul. They call them “gecekonde” which means overnight i.e. they were erected overnight without much planning and so they lack sewage & proper infrastructure..The men don't hassle women on the streets but they do stare and there are hardly any females on the streets after dark in Izmir. A lot more women wear scarves than i expected to see, but the mosques in Izmir are practically empty at prayer times and there are hardly any Ramazan festivities in Izmir. Although i saw ads for coca cola and ice cream on TV that referred to Ramazan. I have yet to go inside a mosque at prayer time in Istanbul, although around Friday prayer time they seemed inhabited from what I could tell from my tram window. At Iftar time they offer free food for those who want in Istanbul. There is a big tent right by the Bosphorus and a huge line of people waiting to get in to eat Iftar for free. Nice touch.
I don't know how but the air smells like Egypt and the stray dogs barking in the streets and the cars honking their horns and the little coffee houses in alleys with men smoking shisha & playing backgammon all remind me of Egypt. (by the way shisha is a turkish word that means “bottle” as in “shisha su” for “bottle of water”and is not used to refer to the smoking pipe here). Also, no street names on most streets, people don't know where things are on the map & don't know street names & give you wrong directions. I feel so at home. The hotel in Izmir even had the pitch black staircase that we are so used to from living in teta's house. Good thing I brought a tiny key-chain type flashlight ;) They do have light in it, but it is motion sensitive & it is set to turn on only when you are directly below the bulb, and for only one second. There are so many energy-saving practices here. I love it. The room's lights and air conditioning are also set to turn off if you leave the room & take your key out of its holder. There is little or no parking on most streets and around most buildings, so people just ride public transportation instead of polluting the environment driving their individual cars. The soap and shampoo in bathrooms are in dispensers so there is no waste of half used little plastic bottles. The paper napkins are tiny and thin and simple, just enough for what you will use them for. No fancy frills. The elevators and waste baskets are tiny, inviting people to use the stairs and to not throw away stuff.
Here are some surreal experiences I had in Izmir & Istanbul:
The Turkish audience at my presentation in Izmir (which went well & attracted lots of discussion from the Turkish people) were all excited about watching season 2 of Kivanc's new series (Ask i Memnu or AIM as the fans call it) that night at 8 on Turkish TV. Here the episodes are aired once per week. There was a conference-organized social gathering at the same time but the Turkish participants said they were not coming because they want to stay home and watch Kıvanc. They are all crazy about his looks. They said they don't care about Songul (the female lead in Gumus) because she does not have blond hair or blue eyes and she is older than Kıvo....interesting how open they are about their euro-centric biases. I got back to my hotel at around 10:30 that night and found AIM still airing on TV. It was kind of surreal to watch it live in Turkey. And i actually understood a lot of the dialogue. It is amazing how fast language is acquired with immersion especially here because Turks don't know any English and even those working in hotels and airports have very little English (although in Instanbul there is a little bit more English used than Izmir). So i found myself just using all the vocabulary i thought i don't have that i picked up from watching Kivo's series and from my Beginner's Turkish book.
And here is the second odd experience: I met with a travel agent yesterday to plan the turkey trip for the summer course and when i told her about what i came to turkey for she literally jumped out of her chair. She is a big fan of kivo and thinks he is the best looking guy in Turkey. And she just met him last month in Konya where she was visiting a friend. She showed me a picture she took of the friend's 10 yr old daughter with kivo. And...she knows a writer of Gumus. A guy who wrote the first 10 episodes or so then quit to work on other projects. He writes for the theater and does magic shows. She said that if there had been enough time she would have had him contact the Gumus main writers and arrange a meeting for me with them. She also said Kivanc played basketball on the same team as her cousin and went to school with her sister in law's husband. I can't believe how small the world is.
Istanbul is a dream city. I am totally and completely in love. So beautiful. So much character. And it is so alive, not like the dead ancient sites of Paris. Here in SultanAhmet area people live on and in and under and around history. They don't even bother to learn the name of the ancient site they are living or working next to, because every meter has ancient history in it. It is a magical area. Truly enchanting! Just like old Cairo and Azhar area in Egypt, or the big Medina in Tunisia & Morocco, or the hilly old town in Greece where we had our beloved Crepe....but Istanbul combines the best features of all these places: It is clean, picturesque, well maintained, lively with endless crowds of locals & visitors, safe, and well served with orderly public trams and buses.
I attended a dervish dance/prayer performed at an old restored mosque. Awesome. I walked/rode by all the historical sites in the old city (SultanAhmet) but did not stop to visit any yet. Istanbul can easily take a whole month to see. I am frustrated by how little time i have here. I'll just have to come again...
Izmir & Istanbul remind me of Cairo so much. Either the Ottomans left permanent marks on Egypt's culture or they absorbed Egyptian culture & brought it back to their homeland. Probably a little bit of both. And the Turks I met so far are not at all like the ones we see in the series. More like the Egyptians i met in Cairo. They are very friendly and simple and down to earth. And they mostly have dark hair and eyes. Most look kinda like dad (your dad). Lots of poverty and homelessness around here too, although probably a little less than Egypt. They even have 3shwa2ee neighborhoods in Istanbul. They call them “gecekonde” which means overnight i.e. they were erected overnight without much planning and so they lack sewage & proper infrastructure..The men don't hassle women on the streets but they do stare and there are hardly any females on the streets after dark in Izmir. A lot more women wear scarves than i expected to see, but the mosques in Izmir are practically empty at prayer times and there are hardly any Ramazan festivities in Izmir. Although i saw ads for coca cola and ice cream on TV that referred to Ramazan. I have yet to go inside a mosque at prayer time in Istanbul, although around Friday prayer time they seemed inhabited from what I could tell from my tram window. At Iftar time they offer free food for those who want in Istanbul. There is a big tent right by the Bosphorus and a huge line of people waiting to get in to eat Iftar for free. Nice touch.
I don't know how but the air smells like Egypt and the stray dogs barking in the streets and the cars honking their horns and the little coffee houses in alleys with men smoking shisha & playing backgammon all remind me of Egypt. (by the way shisha is a turkish word that means “bottle” as in “shisha su” for “bottle of water”and is not used to refer to the smoking pipe here). Also, no street names on most streets, people don't know where things are on the map & don't know street names & give you wrong directions. I feel so at home. The hotel in Izmir even had the pitch black staircase that we are so used to from living in teta's house. Good thing I brought a tiny key-chain type flashlight ;) They do have light in it, but it is motion sensitive & it is set to turn on only when you are directly below the bulb, and for only one second. There are so many energy-saving practices here. I love it. The room's lights and air conditioning are also set to turn off if you leave the room & take your key out of its holder. There is little or no parking on most streets and around most buildings, so people just ride public transportation instead of polluting the environment driving their individual cars. The soap and shampoo in bathrooms are in dispensers so there is no waste of half used little plastic bottles. The paper napkins are tiny and thin and simple, just enough for what you will use them for. No fancy frills. The elevators and waste baskets are tiny, inviting people to use the stairs and to not throw away stuff.
Here are some surreal experiences I had in Izmir & Istanbul:
The Turkish audience at my presentation in Izmir (which went well & attracted lots of discussion from the Turkish people) were all excited about watching season 2 of Kivanc's new series (Ask i Memnu or AIM as the fans call it) that night at 8 on Turkish TV. Here the episodes are aired once per week. There was a conference-organized social gathering at the same time but the Turkish participants said they were not coming because they want to stay home and watch Kıvanc. They are all crazy about his looks. They said they don't care about Songul (the female lead in Gumus) because she does not have blond hair or blue eyes and she is older than Kıvo....interesting how open they are about their euro-centric biases. I got back to my hotel at around 10:30 that night and found AIM still airing on TV. It was kind of surreal to watch it live in Turkey. And i actually understood a lot of the dialogue. It is amazing how fast language is acquired with immersion especially here because Turks don't know any English and even those working in hotels and airports have very little English (although in Instanbul there is a little bit more English used than Izmir). So i found myself just using all the vocabulary i thought i don't have that i picked up from watching Kivo's series and from my Beginner's Turkish book.
And here is the second odd experience: I met with a travel agent yesterday to plan the turkey trip for the summer course and when i told her about what i came to turkey for she literally jumped out of her chair. She is a big fan of kivo and thinks he is the best looking guy in Turkey. And she just met him last month in Konya where she was visiting a friend. She showed me a picture she took of the friend's 10 yr old daughter with kivo. And...she knows a writer of Gumus. A guy who wrote the first 10 episodes or so then quit to work on other projects. He writes for the theater and does magic shows. She said that if there had been enough time she would have had him contact the Gumus main writers and arrange a meeting for me with them. She also said Kivanc played basketball on the same team as her cousin and went to school with her sister in law's husband. I can't believe how small the world is.
Istanbul is a dream city. I am totally and completely in love. So beautiful. So much character. And it is so alive, not like the dead ancient sites of Paris. Here in SultanAhmet area people live on and in and under and around history. They don't even bother to learn the name of the ancient site they are living or working next to, because every meter has ancient history in it. It is a magical area. Truly enchanting! Just like old Cairo and Azhar area in Egypt, or the big Medina in Tunisia & Morocco, or the hilly old town in Greece where we had our beloved Crepe....but Istanbul combines the best features of all these places: It is clean, picturesque, well maintained, lively with endless crowds of locals & visitors, safe, and well served with orderly public trams and buses.
I attended a dervish dance/prayer performed at an old restored mosque. Awesome. I walked/rode by all the historical sites in the old city (SultanAhmet) but did not stop to visit any yet. Istanbul can easily take a whole month to see. I am frustrated by how little time i have here. I'll just have to come again...
A Day on the Town!
Today was our first free day since we got to India. We all went in to the city of Bangalore together and then spread out from there. It was great to finally feel some autonomy over my own actions.
We started out at a relatively expensive but very clean and organized Indian clothing store on Commercial Street called Fabindia. I bought a couple of things from there. I realized that things were expensive there, but they were also pretty high quality and had the sleeves already attached. Sreet places sell the shirts with the sleeves pinned inside, and you have to go to the tailor to get them sewn on, so at least I saved a step.
A group of us went to lunch at a place called Shilpa's. The food looked great, but it's still Ramadan, so I'm still fasting. After lunch, Katie and I headed over to a market/plaza area. A lot of different vendors have set up little stalls inside to sell clothing, tapestries, handicrafts, jewelry, wall-hangings, incense, dried fruit and more. I got a nice scarf to go with the outfit I had purchased earlier in the day. Really it's something I could have gotten at Old Navy, but it's authentically Indian. The man originally told me the scarf would cost 150 rupees (3 dollars). I bargained with him but was only able to get the price down to 120 and even this price he seemed very unhappy to grant me. This is something I'm not at all used to in bargaining. Most of my bargaining experience comes from Cairo I suppose, and in Cairo, paying 4/5 of the originally quoted price would be getting ripped off big time. I don't think I got ripped off necessarily. A man on the other side of the plaza/market area had tried to sell me a similar scarf for 300 rupees. Perhaps the man who I bought the scarf from was nice and just quoted me a more reasonable price to begin with. I also bought some dried mango and some dried fruit-I've-never-seen-before. The guy selling the dried fruit and other little snacks insisted that I try everything that he was selling. I kept telling him I didn't want to try things like "spicy mango", "rose dates" or "tamarind coated strawberry and mango sauce dipped in apple juice" because I was sure I wouldn't end up buying them, but he absolutely insisted. In the end, I only tried a few things of the many that he insisted I try, but he didn't seem angry at all that I didn't buy more. I was a little worried that he would say something about how I owed him a larger purchase after trying the 12 different items he had insisted I try, but that wasn't at all the case.
After this market area, Katie and I headed to Mahatma Gandhi (MG) road. I stopped by an ATM to get more cash. The ATM was in a little air-conditioned room and to get inside you had to swipe an ATM card. It was interesting. Are ATMs inside banks in the US like that? We went to a grocery store to look around and pick up some essentials like peanut butter. I picked up some biscuit things with creme filling. 16 cookie/biscuits for 10 rupees (20 cents). Cheaper than oreos...I also got some lime soda because every time we've gone out so far people have gotten some, but I haven't gotten the chance to taste it yet since I'm fasting during the day when we're out. The bottle was 15 rupees/30 cents. I like.
After shopping, Katie and I headed over to the cricket stadium. Neither of us had ever seen cricket before and we had absolutely no idea how it works/what the rules are. The only two things that came to mind when I heard the word cricket were men in turbans and Hayley practicing her "cricket throw" this summer at camp. Do sikhs play a lot of cricket? Because I definitely associated Sikhs and cricket very strongly. Despite our clear lack of knowledge of the game, we paid our 49 rupees (1 dollar) to go watch the Bangalore Brigadiers battle it out against the Malnad Gladiators. We watched people run back and forth between two lines, listened to people cheer at seemingly random intervals and gave each other confused glances for a while before deciding to ask the man sitting next to us how cricket works. He told us that this game was part of the inter-Karnataka league, so both teams were from within the state and the game wasn't really important and then turned away from us again. Katie asked something about scoring and told the man we really knew nothing about cricket. He told us to watch and learn because explaining the game would take too long and would make him "lose the match". Oops. It was worth a try...
2 hours later we knew that the batters can earn 1, 4 or 6 points on each bat, we knew that cricket somehow involves something called 'overs', we knew that the live band plays very excitedly when good things happen to the batting team and we knew that cricket games take a loong time to complete. Yeah...definitely going to wikipedia cricket when I'm done with this post. During the game, vendors were going around selling all sorts of food items: lays potato chips, ice cream bars, samosas, popcorn, real corn. There was a short intermission when the teams were switching from batting to bowling (that's what they call the pitching action!) and vice versa. During that break, many people went out and got big plates of rice and stuff. It was interesting. I guess samosas are the hotdogs of Indian cricket games. The family next to us bought a few bags of chips. When they finished with them, they tossed them casually behind them. Classic. The young boy sitting on the other side of us had had dyed-orange hair. He was probably five or six, and I'm thinking his mother probably was going for a light brown color. Definitely orange though. There was a group of about 12 or so elementary-aged boys sitting in front of us. They seemed pretty proud to be there on their own. Incidentally, there were no turban-wearing men on the field today.
We came back to Visthar after the game. There was dinner waiting for us, and it was actually Indian food. Here there is normally Indian food for lunch and American or Chinese food for dinner. That's nice of them, but, since I haven't eaten many lunches here, that means not much Indian food for me. It was great to have some today. I also got to drink my lime soda although it turns out it's lime juice: no carbonation. Still delicious though!
Overall, a very good day. It made me reminisce about the many days last summer that I spent walking around downtown Cairo. I wish I could do the same every day here, but that's not what I'm in India for...
Oo...somehow that reminded me! My mom is in Turkey now, and it sounds amazing! She says that it's a lot like Egypt too. In her e-mail to me she said that the air somehow smells like Egypt which is exactly what I feel about India. I hope to go Turkey someday too.
On Monday we leave for a week-long field visit to Koppal. There we will be helping to construct a school. I'm nervous but excited. It will be good to be doing something different and seeing a new part of India.
Sleepy time for me! I'm so excited to get to sleep in tomorrow.
We started out at a relatively expensive but very clean and organized Indian clothing store on Commercial Street called Fabindia. I bought a couple of things from there. I realized that things were expensive there, but they were also pretty high quality and had the sleeves already attached. Sreet places sell the shirts with the sleeves pinned inside, and you have to go to the tailor to get them sewn on, so at least I saved a step.
A group of us went to lunch at a place called Shilpa's. The food looked great, but it's still Ramadan, so I'm still fasting. After lunch, Katie and I headed over to a market/plaza area. A lot of different vendors have set up little stalls inside to sell clothing, tapestries, handicrafts, jewelry, wall-hangings, incense, dried fruit and more. I got a nice scarf to go with the outfit I had purchased earlier in the day. Really it's something I could have gotten at Old Navy, but it's authentically Indian. The man originally told me the scarf would cost 150 rupees (3 dollars). I bargained with him but was only able to get the price down to 120 and even this price he seemed very unhappy to grant me. This is something I'm not at all used to in bargaining. Most of my bargaining experience comes from Cairo I suppose, and in Cairo, paying 4/5 of the originally quoted price would be getting ripped off big time. I don't think I got ripped off necessarily. A man on the other side of the plaza/market area had tried to sell me a similar scarf for 300 rupees. Perhaps the man who I bought the scarf from was nice and just quoted me a more reasonable price to begin with. I also bought some dried mango and some dried fruit-I've-never-seen-before. The guy selling the dried fruit and other little snacks insisted that I try everything that he was selling. I kept telling him I didn't want to try things like "spicy mango", "rose dates" or "tamarind coated strawberry and mango sauce dipped in apple juice" because I was sure I wouldn't end up buying them, but he absolutely insisted. In the end, I only tried a few things of the many that he insisted I try, but he didn't seem angry at all that I didn't buy more. I was a little worried that he would say something about how I owed him a larger purchase after trying the 12 different items he had insisted I try, but that wasn't at all the case.
After this market area, Katie and I headed to Mahatma Gandhi (MG) road. I stopped by an ATM to get more cash. The ATM was in a little air-conditioned room and to get inside you had to swipe an ATM card. It was interesting. Are ATMs inside banks in the US like that? We went to a grocery store to look around and pick up some essentials like peanut butter. I picked up some biscuit things with creme filling. 16 cookie/biscuits for 10 rupees (20 cents). Cheaper than oreos...I also got some lime soda because every time we've gone out so far people have gotten some, but I haven't gotten the chance to taste it yet since I'm fasting during the day when we're out. The bottle was 15 rupees/30 cents. I like.
After shopping, Katie and I headed over to the cricket stadium. Neither of us had ever seen cricket before and we had absolutely no idea how it works/what the rules are. The only two things that came to mind when I heard the word cricket were men in turbans and Hayley practicing her "cricket throw" this summer at camp. Do sikhs play a lot of cricket? Because I definitely associated Sikhs and cricket very strongly. Despite our clear lack of knowledge of the game, we paid our 49 rupees (1 dollar) to go watch the Bangalore Brigadiers battle it out against the Malnad Gladiators. We watched people run back and forth between two lines, listened to people cheer at seemingly random intervals and gave each other confused glances for a while before deciding to ask the man sitting next to us how cricket works. He told us that this game was part of the inter-Karnataka league, so both teams were from within the state and the game wasn't really important and then turned away from us again. Katie asked something about scoring and told the man we really knew nothing about cricket. He told us to watch and learn because explaining the game would take too long and would make him "lose the match". Oops. It was worth a try...
2 hours later we knew that the batters can earn 1, 4 or 6 points on each bat, we knew that cricket somehow involves something called 'overs', we knew that the live band plays very excitedly when good things happen to the batting team and we knew that cricket games take a loong time to complete. Yeah...definitely going to wikipedia cricket when I'm done with this post. During the game, vendors were going around selling all sorts of food items: lays potato chips, ice cream bars, samosas, popcorn, real corn. There was a short intermission when the teams were switching from batting to bowling (that's what they call the pitching action!) and vice versa. During that break, many people went out and got big plates of rice and stuff. It was interesting. I guess samosas are the hotdogs of Indian cricket games. The family next to us bought a few bags of chips. When they finished with them, they tossed them casually behind them. Classic. The young boy sitting on the other side of us had had dyed-orange hair. He was probably five or six, and I'm thinking his mother probably was going for a light brown color. Definitely orange though. There was a group of about 12 or so elementary-aged boys sitting in front of us. They seemed pretty proud to be there on their own. Incidentally, there were no turban-wearing men on the field today.
We came back to Visthar after the game. There was dinner waiting for us, and it was actually Indian food. Here there is normally Indian food for lunch and American or Chinese food for dinner. That's nice of them, but, since I haven't eaten many lunches here, that means not much Indian food for me. It was great to have some today. I also got to drink my lime soda although it turns out it's lime juice: no carbonation. Still delicious though!
Overall, a very good day. It made me reminisce about the many days last summer that I spent walking around downtown Cairo. I wish I could do the same every day here, but that's not what I'm in India for...
Oo...somehow that reminded me! My mom is in Turkey now, and it sounds amazing! She says that it's a lot like Egypt too. In her e-mail to me she said that the air somehow smells like Egypt which is exactly what I feel about India. I hope to go Turkey someday too.
On Monday we leave for a week-long field visit to Koppal. There we will be helping to construct a school. I'm nervous but excited. It will be good to be doing something different and seeing a new part of India.
Sleepy time for me! I'm so excited to get to sleep in tomorrow.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
I'm in India. India is not Egypt.
A rather obvious statement but one I have to regularly remind myself of. So much of what I see every day here reminds me so much of Egypt, but I have to remind myself that it is not Egypt. I keep bringing up stories about Egypt or relating things I see here to things I've seen in Egypt and then I just have to take a step back and remind myself that the other students on this trip haven't been to Egypt and have no interest in Egypt.
There are many ways in which India is similar to Egypt and many more in which it is not. Let me start with traffic. Like Egypt, India has a lot of it. I've only been to Bangalore so far, but the streets are packed there. They are not quite as packed as the streets of Cairo, but it is still pretty hectic. Unlike Egypt, a large percentage of the vehicles on the road are 3-wheeled auto rickshaws. These are the same things as Egyptian "tuk-tuks", but in Egypt, tuk-tuks aren't allowed on main streets, so they are not seen very often. Here in India, auto rickshaws are the primary form of taxi transport. If you want to ride in a car taxi, you have to call it and have it come to you.
We recently came back from weekend homestay experiences. I was staying with a Muslim family, and I was struck by how similar their house and life were to the houses and lives of Muslim families I've seen in Egypt. The walls of the house were adorned with Quranic verses. The kitchen looked similar. The living room looked similar. The bathroom looked very similar (complete with the lack of shower curtain). Even the beds had a similar hard feel to them. The hospitality of the host family was at once tremendous and overwhelming as I have often found to be the case in Egypt. No matter how much I ate, my generous hosts insisted I was eating "too less". Familiar...
There was a 17-year old girl in my host home named Shifa. She is incredibly nice. She is in her first year of medical school, and, when I first saw her, she had just come from classes. She carried a large white purse with her books, notebooks and pens inside and her cell phone was glued to her hand. It reminded me very much of the students at the AUC last year. Speaking of cell phones, people give them such priority here! They are constantly ringing during class/presentations and people are not at all embarassed to answer them and carry out conversations. This was something I had noticed in Egypt as well. I wonder if it is because in both India and Egypt (and many other countries that aren't the US), only the sender and not the receiver of a telephone call pays for the call. This means that answering the phone when it rings rather than letting yourself miss the call and then calling back later equals saving money.
There are Hindu temples all around Bangalore (obviously since India is 80% Hindu). I had never seen a Hindu temple before, and I am awed by how decorative they are. They all are adorned with little statues of many of the Hindu gods and goddesses. They are a marvel to look at and unlike any place of worship I have seen before.
One thing that I've noticed here that is very different from Cairo is that men do not talk/hiss/shout/stare at women who walk past them on the street. In Cairo, no matter what you a woman wears, she gets a lot of attention from males if she is walking alone. Although we had been told that this was the case in India during our orientation, I haven't found that to be true at all. Perhaps it is true in other cities but not Bangalore. Even as a group of Americans who clearly stands out, we haven't been bothered by men on the streets at all. That reminds me! A large part of why we, particularly the women, stand out is that we don't wear salwar kameez or saris. I'd say about 95% of the women wear one of those two clothing items. Some of us got the chance to buy similar things this weekend with our host families, and I think all of us are hoping to buy at least one Indian outfit soon. Men tend to wear clothing similar to what men wear in the US. They also sometimes wear a kurta, but kurtas are not nearly as common as salwar kameez and saris.
I am staying on the campus of and NGO called Visthar. It is an absolutely beautiful campus full of all sorts of greenery, including many fruit trees! The campus is also home to about 70 girls who attend the Bandhavi school. Had they not been taken from their homes to attend the school, they would have eventually become temple prostitutes. They have all been here for a few years now, and it is clear that they absolutely love it here. The food at Visthar is great! It is currently Ramadan, so I haven't gotten to eat much of it, but what I have eaten is delicious. Our classes take place on campus. So far, our classes have been long and seemingly pointless. It feels sort of like an extended college orientation. We are, though, still in the section of our syllabus called Orientation. I am sure that as things get going, it will be more intense.
So far we have gone on our homestays, been welcomed to Visthar and India in an elaborate inaugural celebration, been invited to participate in the games and feast involved in Visthar's celebration of the festival Onam, toured a slum and an elite mall in Bangalore, been tasked with finding our way by bus to St. Mary's Basilica in Bangalore to celebrate the festival that revolves around the birthday of the virgin Mary, watched a play by the Indian theatre group 'Rafiki' about South African apartheid, and spent many hours in a classroom talking about how we can build community at Visthar.
It has been fun, but I am missing home greatly. I keep reminding myself that I am in India, so I should really be living in the moment and enjoying every moment of it. It is hard, but I think it will get easier as time goes on.
I currently have a mosquito bite on my eyelid and one on my lip, so it looks like I got in a fight. I also have little bug bites all over my forehead and the sides of my cheeks. I'm hoping they don't swell because then I'll really look strange.
Oo...I just thought of some other things to mention. My host family to me to get Mahindi (Henna) on my hands. It was only 25 rupees per hand (50 cents). They also bought me some bangles and a beautiful Indian scarf. It was pretty amazing.
Also, we started yoga classes yesterday. So far, we really haven't done much yoga. The instructor talks about yoga theory/history for most of the class and then yesterday we did stretching exercises and today we did breathing exercises. He said we will start doing poses tomorrow.
Okay, this may be the most scattered blog post (or any piece of writing for that matter) that I have ever written. Sorry about that, but there is a lot of things that I would like to be able to write, and I kinda just wrote things down as they came to mind. Hopefully my next blog post will be at least marginally more coherent.
There are many ways in which India is similar to Egypt and many more in which it is not. Let me start with traffic. Like Egypt, India has a lot of it. I've only been to Bangalore so far, but the streets are packed there. They are not quite as packed as the streets of Cairo, but it is still pretty hectic. Unlike Egypt, a large percentage of the vehicles on the road are 3-wheeled auto rickshaws. These are the same things as Egyptian "tuk-tuks", but in Egypt, tuk-tuks aren't allowed on main streets, so they are not seen very often. Here in India, auto rickshaws are the primary form of taxi transport. If you want to ride in a car taxi, you have to call it and have it come to you.
We recently came back from weekend homestay experiences. I was staying with a Muslim family, and I was struck by how similar their house and life were to the houses and lives of Muslim families I've seen in Egypt. The walls of the house were adorned with Quranic verses. The kitchen looked similar. The living room looked similar. The bathroom looked very similar (complete with the lack of shower curtain). Even the beds had a similar hard feel to them. The hospitality of the host family was at once tremendous and overwhelming as I have often found to be the case in Egypt. No matter how much I ate, my generous hosts insisted I was eating "too less". Familiar...
There was a 17-year old girl in my host home named Shifa. She is incredibly nice. She is in her first year of medical school, and, when I first saw her, she had just come from classes. She carried a large white purse with her books, notebooks and pens inside and her cell phone was glued to her hand. It reminded me very much of the students at the AUC last year. Speaking of cell phones, people give them such priority here! They are constantly ringing during class/presentations and people are not at all embarassed to answer them and carry out conversations. This was something I had noticed in Egypt as well. I wonder if it is because in both India and Egypt (and many other countries that aren't the US), only the sender and not the receiver of a telephone call pays for the call. This means that answering the phone when it rings rather than letting yourself miss the call and then calling back later equals saving money.
There are Hindu temples all around Bangalore (obviously since India is 80% Hindu). I had never seen a Hindu temple before, and I am awed by how decorative they are. They all are adorned with little statues of many of the Hindu gods and goddesses. They are a marvel to look at and unlike any place of worship I have seen before.
One thing that I've noticed here that is very different from Cairo is that men do not talk/hiss/shout/stare at women who walk past them on the street. In Cairo, no matter what you a woman wears, she gets a lot of attention from males if she is walking alone. Although we had been told that this was the case in India during our orientation, I haven't found that to be true at all. Perhaps it is true in other cities but not Bangalore. Even as a group of Americans who clearly stands out, we haven't been bothered by men on the streets at all. That reminds me! A large part of why we, particularly the women, stand out is that we don't wear salwar kameez or saris. I'd say about 95% of the women wear one of those two clothing items. Some of us got the chance to buy similar things this weekend with our host families, and I think all of us are hoping to buy at least one Indian outfit soon. Men tend to wear clothing similar to what men wear in the US. They also sometimes wear a kurta, but kurtas are not nearly as common as salwar kameez and saris.
I am staying on the campus of and NGO called Visthar. It is an absolutely beautiful campus full of all sorts of greenery, including many fruit trees! The campus is also home to about 70 girls who attend the Bandhavi school. Had they not been taken from their homes to attend the school, they would have eventually become temple prostitutes. They have all been here for a few years now, and it is clear that they absolutely love it here. The food at Visthar is great! It is currently Ramadan, so I haven't gotten to eat much of it, but what I have eaten is delicious. Our classes take place on campus. So far, our classes have been long and seemingly pointless. It feels sort of like an extended college orientation. We are, though, still in the section of our syllabus called Orientation. I am sure that as things get going, it will be more intense.
So far we have gone on our homestays, been welcomed to Visthar and India in an elaborate inaugural celebration, been invited to participate in the games and feast involved in Visthar's celebration of the festival Onam, toured a slum and an elite mall in Bangalore, been tasked with finding our way by bus to St. Mary's Basilica in Bangalore to celebrate the festival that revolves around the birthday of the virgin Mary, watched a play by the Indian theatre group 'Rafiki' about South African apartheid, and spent many hours in a classroom talking about how we can build community at Visthar.
It has been fun, but I am missing home greatly. I keep reminding myself that I am in India, so I should really be living in the moment and enjoying every moment of it. It is hard, but I think it will get easier as time goes on.
I currently have a mosquito bite on my eyelid and one on my lip, so it looks like I got in a fight. I also have little bug bites all over my forehead and the sides of my cheeks. I'm hoping they don't swell because then I'll really look strange.
Oo...I just thought of some other things to mention. My host family to me to get Mahindi (Henna) on my hands. It was only 25 rupees per hand (50 cents). They also bought me some bangles and a beautiful Indian scarf. It was pretty amazing.
Also, we started yoga classes yesterday. So far, we really haven't done much yoga. The instructor talks about yoga theory/history for most of the class and then yesterday we did stretching exercises and today we did breathing exercises. He said we will start doing poses tomorrow.
Okay, this may be the most scattered blog post (or any piece of writing for that matter) that I have ever written. Sorry about that, but there is a lot of things that I would like to be able to write, and I kinda just wrote things down as they came to mind. Hopefully my next blog post will be at least marginally more coherent.
Never Ever Delete a Blog
Last summer, I kept a very detailed blog about my travels. Shortly after I returned home, I decided the best thing to do now that I had nothing meaningful to write in my blog would be to delete it. I immediately regretted this decision, so I recovered all of my blog posts using Google. (Even after you delete something from the web, it's still out there...) I saved those posts, and, now that I am again ready to use my blog, I decided to re-post them because I didn't write those posts to have nobody read them. They are all below listed by their original titles and post dates.
well I figured out what people do in summer (originally published August 28, 2008)
5 weeks and one day after I wrote a post called 'what do people do in summer?', I'm starting classes unable to remember a single second of boredom this summer. I wrote at some point that boredom hadn't sunk in yet but that was just me being pessimistic; boredom never did sink in. My planner is covered in things I've done and things yet to do. I sleep 6 hours a night and yet every waking minute is occupied. I love it that way.
My job as an RA (Resident Assistant) started a couple of weeks ago and has been absolutely amazing so far. I love the ladies on my floor. Classes start today. I'm really excited about my classes this semester. I'm finally returning to Spanish after a two and a half year gap. I'm taking a linguistic-ish course, something I've always been interested in. I also have International Politics (if you know me, you know that I'm ecstatic about that). I'm even looking forward to my required Religion 100 course. The fall tennis season starts on Monday. I'm a little nervous because I'm still not playing my best but that's okay. I got a job as a tennis instructor!! I can't even put into words how excited I am about that. I always wanted that job but the supervisor Jerry said that he only hires people who work in the summer first which meant that, since I'm never here in the summer, I'd never be able to be a tennis instructor. He called me a couple of days ago asking me to work this session. When I listened to the message, I got happier than I've ever been in my life I think. :)
As a side note, motorized scooters/mopeds have made a big appearance in Fargo. I don't remember ever seeing people riding scooters around here before but I see them quite frequently now which is, of course, great.
Posted by ayah at 2:17 AM
returning to my one true love (originally published July 28, 2008)
After days of bonding time with the ball machine, I played with a real person today. It was good to finally play someone who has both a strategic mind and a true interest in playing tennis not in getting paid.
Posted by ayah at 12:42 AM
Posted by ayah at 12:42 AM
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