Weekend Update

This weekend hasn’t been the best. The sore throat I had devolved into some kind of legitimate bug, but I seem to be on the mend now. Unfortunately, this means a weekend spent mostly indoors, mostly in bed.

However, I would be lying if I said absolutely nothing interesting happened. I am in India, after all.

For example, on Friday I shared a rickshaw home from school with Rachel and Rebecca. Everyone else was going out that night but I had resigned myself to a quiet, miserable night in. Then, suddenly, a huge peahen appeared on the side of the road. My host dad told me when I arrived that peacocks are fairly common around here and that sometimes in the early mornings you can see them in the area from my rooftop terrace. I’ve looked almost every day but hadn’t spotted one yet until that rickshaw ride home on Friday afternoon. It’s still crazy to me that peacocks are native and wild anywhere, and especially that I am living in a place where they are common. They’re just such strange and beautiful animals; it doesn’t seem like they can exist outside of zoos. But the same goes for tigers and those live in India too. It’s like being in a fairy tale.

Saturday was another day of rest and recuperation. In the evening my host mom came upstairs and found me reading The Lord of the Rings on the terrace (they have a hanging chair out there that’s very pleasant in cooler weather). She invited me downstairs for tea, and we sat on the swing out front together for a while and drank tea and chatted. It was one of my first really good conversations with her; I’m not sure if it’s because she works or she’s shy or she’s not as confident in English as her husband, but she has spoken with me a lot less than Bipin jii has. She’s a primary school teacher (just like my mom!) at a private English-medium school nearby. The students are on holiday right now and will return to class on July 1, so right now it’s only the teachers at school each day. She told me all about education in India and asked me about how it compares to the U.S. It seems to me remarkably similar, except that private schools are more popular here I think. She also told me about the diverse culture of India (it was very important to her that I understand that India is not a homogenous place. I’ve gotten that from a lot of Indians actually. I’m wondering if they emphasize this point because they are proud of their diversity or because they are proud of their own state’s culture as being different from the other states). We spent a good while discussing Indian weddings, which are infinitely interesting and lovely to hear about.

After that, Bipin jii and Madhulika arrived home and we all prepared to go to a dinner party at their friends’ house. I had met the Shuklaa family once before when they came over here for dinner. Apparently these dinner parties are quite common in their close circle of friends, which consists of Bipin jii, his two best friends from college, and their respective wives. Madhulika and I were the only young people there, and she looked after me, making sure I liked the food and talking to me in English and translating the conversation when I seemed confused (though I was pleased at how much I was able to understand on my own. Everyday conversational Hindi is much more difficult to understand than the Hindi our teachers use with us in the classroom). The food was very spicy and my stomach was still recovering from the bug, so I didn’t eat much but I was as polite and enthusiastic as possible. It was a really nice time, overall, just hearing Hindi spoken in a natural setting among friends. Plus I was excited that my host family invited me along. They’re very nice people and I like them a lot!

Also an update on Joti: I thought that my host father said that the little boy who lives out back with Joti and her parents is Joti’s son, but I was mistaken. He is her nephew. Joti has a sister who works for another family nearby, and her son lives here with us. Also he is the most precious little boy I’ve ever seen, with giant brown eyes and a shy smile. He’ll wave at me sometimes from afar (he can’t be any older than 3 or 4). I talked to him in Hindi once – he understood and answered my questions but his voice was too soft to hear.

Today I went to the mall, the first time I’ve gone anywhere alone since I’ve come to Jaipur. There is a mall just down the street from our house, just a 5 minute walk. You have to cross a street but although it’s wide it’s not too busy. I had probably ten rickshaw drivers stop and ask me if I needed a ride though. I suppose a sweaty white girl walking in the heat of the day is an easy way to make a buck when you’re a driver, but I declined. The mall was disappointing, though. It was quite large but almost every shop was closed. Plus, they were almost all variations on the same four types of shops: cosmetics, bags, shoes, and womens’ clothing. I bought some tissues, nail polish, and makeup (things I’ve been needing since I got here) but there wasn’t much window shopping to be done. At lunch I asked Madhulika about this, and she said there really isn’t much of a mall culture here compared with other places like the U.S. Now I understand why my classmates were so impressed when we visited Metropolitan Mall last weekend. It wasn’t much by American standards, but all the shops were open and it was clean and inviting.



More updates to come soon. Hopefully from now on my weekends will be more interesting!

मैं बीमार हूँ (I am sick)

Just when things were starting to go really well...
I woke up with a sore throat today. My host parents are certain that the cause of my discomfort is drastically changing temperatures; hot outside air and cool interior A/C, plus drinking cold water (which apparently nobody does here because it's bad for your throat???) Honestly, this seems like a likely explanation. Plus the air here probably isn't that great for me anyway. Whatever the cause, I came straight home from school today and have been laying in bed most of the evening. My host parents are taking good care of me, giving me chai and telling me to rest. I may go to the doctor tomorrow and try to get some proper medicine if I'm still feeling crummy in the morning.
In other news, classes are going well so far. They are definitely challenging. We are taught entirely in Hindi and most of our classes involve higher level discussion and conversation. School is only 5 hours a day, including lunch, but by the end of it my brain is so tired from trying to function in another language! Its amazing how worn out I am each afternoon. But I take this as a sign that I'm being challenged and that I'm going to improve. Being forced out of my comfort zone in class and having to speak and listen (my two lowest skills in Hindi) is a very good thing, and I keep picturing myself at the annual HUF back to school party knocking everyone's socks off!
Tomorrow is Friday. I've heard hearsay that some students are planning a weekend trip to Udaipur. While I'd prefer to go on a big trip during a long weekend, I'll take whatever chance I get to visit Udaipur. It's my number-one most important tourist destination while I'm here! It's a smaller city in the south of Rajasthan set on a big lake against a backdrop of mountains. Every day, when the sun rises over the mountains, sunlight cascades onto the lake's surface and the people of the city watch and applaud. It's supposed to be very beautiful and more peaceful than Jaipur, so if I hear that people are going I will do everything I can to tag along. I do hope that they wait until another weekend though, since it's late notice and I'm feeling rather crummy...
Below I'm including photos from today. I'm making a conscious effort to take more pictures for you all (and for my future self).

Today in class we played "सेब से सेब तक," a homemade Hindi version of Apples to Apples. The people on their phones are busy checking definitions -- there were a lot of difficult vocabulary words in the mix!

This is the view from the roof of my school. In case you're wondering, I'm not just climbing around on roofs here all the time. Rooftop terraces are quite common. The building on the right with the roof that looks like flower petals is an enormous jewelry store that is sort of close to my house. It's many stories tall and the roof lights up at night. Believe it or not, there are many other gigantic jewelry stores in this area. Apparently Jaipur is known for its jewelry, and these shops are filled to the brim with gold.

This is Birla Mandir, a large temple just down the street from my house. I pass it on my way to and from school every day (this was taken on my ride home today). I haven't seen it up close yet but I want to! On the hill behind the temple is an old fort called Moti Dungri, which was modeled after a Scottish castle. Also in this same area is a very important Ganesh temple.

BONUS: Here's a quick look at my typical morning commute via auto rickshaw

Bonus Post: Some Pictures

To make up for my recent absence from the blog, I've decided to include a few random pictures I've taken recently. Unfortunately, I really haven't had much chance to take many pictures yet. Between being busy with studies, not wanting to look like a tourist, and avoiding running into any cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, buses, or pickpockets on Jaipur's crazy streets, I haven't had many opportunities to whip out my iPhone camera. I promise I will try to take more, especially when I visit the more picturesque and touristy spots.

Here are some pictures from the past few days:

Sunday is laundry day for me. I hand wash my clothes in the sink (so as to avoid paying a dhobi) and hang them to dry on my rooftop terrace. It's actually a very nice system, and because it's incredibly hot and dry here the clothes dry very quickly and come out warm (just like a dryer!)

I mentioned shopping in Baph Bazaar in my last post. Here we see a shameless selfie of me in one of the kurtiis I bought there. Please note my frazzled and sweaty appearance; this is my constant state here.

Here we see all the materials required for Advanced Hindi class at AIIS -- folder filled with useful information, student handbook, planner, five subject notebook for copious notes, flash cards, laptop, Hindi-English dictionary, Hindi grammar book, and, of course, a full bottle of filtered water. It's going to be an intense semester.

This evening two of my classmates and I visited Jaipur's old city in search of clothes and a ukulele (my friend Grace is an artist and musician, and she needed a portable instrument in her life). Here we see some typical Rajasthani architecture as well as the famous pink buildings Jaipur is known for. I need to take more scenery/surroundings pictures like this, but I always feel like such a tourist. Then again, I got hundreds of stares today anyway. Everyone already thinks I'm a tourist. At least I can speak Hindi (though not very confidently); that usually surprises people!

Beggars, Bazaars, Books, and Brahmin Priests

I've been in Jaipur for about a week now, and I'm finally starting to feel like I'm settling into Indian life. The dust and pollution bother me less, and I'm handling the heat. My palate is getting used to Indian food and I have a lot of meals that I really like now. I like pretty much everyone at school, my host family is very nice, and I am enjoying my classes. Basically, so far so good.
It's been a few days since I was last able to update my blog. Getting a wifi dongle for my room at home turned into a bit of an ordeal, but I should be connected from now on, no problem.
Since my last post, a lot has happened. I've talked to Joti a few times and found out that she is eighteen years old, one year younger than me. She's very sweet and talks to me more now that I've (attempted to) talk to her in Hindi. It's really interesting comparing my life to hers, and also to Madhulika's. Madhulika is my host sister, a university-educated 25-year-old fashion designer from a Brahmin family. We are all girls, all so close to the same age, living in the same place, and yet our lives are all so different.
Yesterday was our first regular class day at school. I'm in the advanced class (top level), and it looks like it's going to be challenging and exciting! We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I know that means that my Hindi is going to improve significantly by the time I return home! Most days we have 4 class periods, but on Tuesdays the advanced class has one regular class and then we watch a Hindi film for the rest of the day. Yesterday we watched "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai," a 1998 Bollywood film. It was a cute, fun film, with all the singing, dancing, and melodrama for which Bollywood is so famous. I was able to follow along really well (without subtitles!) so I'm taking that as a good sign!
This past weekend our class took a trip to Bapu Bazaar, an old open-air market in the Pink City area (Jaipur's historic walled city). We were taught briefly how to haggle and then set free to fend for ourselves. I ended up with two pretty kurtiis and a set of painted bangles. The experience of haggling was very draining. Not only do I dislike arguing (especially with strangers), I felt incredibly cheap. Everything in the bazaar was very inexpensive, and we were expected to try to get them to sell it to us for less? Why? I could easily afford what they were selling. It felt immoral to try to haggle the salesmen out of their commissions when I knew how much I buy clothes for back home.
Also on that trip we visited the bookstore at Rajasthan University, which is just near our school and my homestay. Again, the prices were outrageously low (everything here is so cheap. American money goes a long way here). I bought Harry Potter books 4-7 in Hindi. My new goal is to purchase the first three and spend the next three years working through the books. They're supposed to be difficult translations but it will be great practice!
When we left the bookstore, though, there were two little boys running around the campus. They looked like brothers. The younger boy was maybe five years old, and he ran up to all of us with an outstretched hand, yelling "Money!" His brother kept trying to cover his mouth and drag him away, obviously annoyed. When he came up to me, he asked me for one of the Harry Potter books I had just purchased. I kept it for myself because I knew he was too young to read it and wouldn't get any use out of it, but I felt really guilty not being able to give him anything. There are homeless people and beggars everywhere in this city. I thought I was used to it in Austin, with such a large homeless population near campus, but it's on a whole different level here. I can feel them glaring at my light skin and clean clothes as I walk past on my way to school. They know I have money and I know I can't help them, not really. I've never felt as privileged in my life as I do here.
One last interesting story before I leave for school: This morning when I went downstairs for breakfast, I heard a man's voice chanting somewhere in the house. It wasn't my host dad's voice, and I couldn't understand the words he was saying. At breakfast, my host dad told me that next month is an Earth festival for the goddess Durga, and that part of the preparations involves intricate prayers to be said in the temple room in our house. Since Vandana jii (my host mother) works during the day, they had asked a Brahmin priest to come over to perform the prayers which, according to Bipin jii, take two or three hours. He showed me the small "temple," which included a wooden shrine with paintings of gods and photographs of Bipin jii's parents, among other items. I'm learning about Hinduism in small increments while I'm here, and I hope to learn more. In America I've gained a pretty solid understanding of Semitic religions, but Hinduism is still mostly a mystery to me.
Hopefully I will be updating more frequently now, though I have to make time for homework as well.

There's no place like homestay

Today is placement test day at AIIS. We just finished our reading and listening proficiency tests. Soon we will find out if we are in the Intermediate or Advanced class for the summer.
Yesterday I met my host family for the first time. My host parents are Bipin and Vandana Sharma, a retired government worker and a primary school teacher, respectively. Their home is gorgeous. They have a 25 year old daughter named Madhulika who is a fashion designer and a son named Rohit who lives in Mumbai. They've also got a huge and love able German Shepherd named Eddy.
There's a lot to get used to living in the Sharma household. The family has a full time maid/cook named Joti. She lives in a guest house out back with her small son. I know that  live-in help is the norm for middle and upper class Indians but it is still extremely strange for me to not carry my own bags, get my own food, or clean up after myself.  I also have to get used to limiting my electricity use, eating Indian food, eating with my right hand, and hand washing my laundry (my host family hires a dhobi aka washerman, but that's so strange to me and I don't want to pay for laundry).
My room is absolutely perfect, I will include pictures.
My upcoming missions are finding Indian clothes, getting Internet to use at home, and finding a walking route to get home after school.
Some more India observations:

• Chai is absolutely delicious, and we have it all the time at home. It's milky and spicy and kind of sweet. It reminds me of hot chocolate.
• Everyone knows that the Nazi swastika is a backwards version of a Hindu symbol, but I did not expect to see it everywhere here. It's painted on auto rickshaws and other things, including my host father's car. Also seen everywhere is elephant images. I actually like vey close to Ganesh Mandir, the temple of the elephant-faced Hindu god.
• I rode in an auto rickshaw for he first time today, arranged by my host father. It's mostly open, very light and bumpy. It doesn't feel like it should be in an actual street. It feels like an amusement park ride. Fortunately, it's fairly cheap transportation, and much nicer than walking all the way to school in the morning. I think I'll walk home in the evenings though/ I'm to scared to call my own rickshaw and I could use the exercise anyway.

Pictures of my host home:

Desk area in my room. 

It's Madhulika's old room, so there is fashion design stuff everywhere!

Super huge bed. I'm spoiled.

These paper elephants are awesome and I want to make some of my own for the apartment this fall.

My room is on the roof all by itself, and I have a great view from the rooftop.

Madhulika painted some positive affirmations on her bedroom mirror and I love them <3

Welcome to Jaipur (It's been waiting for you)

Hello all.
It is early morning and I'm in a hotel in Jaipur. I've been having trouble sleeping more than a few hours at a time since I left the States. Hopefully that resolves itself... but for now, I'm resigned to writing blog posts in the dark at 4:45am.
Yesterday all of the Hindi AIIS Summer Program Students travelled together from Delhi to Jaipur via bus. This was my first real chance to see India, and it was both exactly what I expected and incredibly surreal and shocking. Here are some of my first impressions:

• The streets are populated with feral dogs. They're seriously everywhere. Most of them look healthy enough, surprisingly, but some are definitely worse for wear. In Delhi I also saw several small groups of wild pigs roaming the streets.
• Cows really do wander around freely here. And not just the Brahman cows that we usually think of. I saw several different kinds, including a black and white dairy cow. I also saw a surprising number of camels on the journey down to Jaipur, plus one horse who looked sorely out of place,
• There is garbage EVERYWHERE. Seriously. Just in huge piles and swaths along the highway and in the streets. According to one of the other girls in my program, India doesn't have any kind of organized trash collection/disposal system. There's nowhere to throw trash away and nobody to pick it up. It's a real shame, I think. It's very jarring.
• There are men everywhere. In the streets, riding on the highway, running shops. They're very visible. The women are nearly invisible. I think on the ride down I probably saw ten men for every woman. When I did see women I caught glimpses of them at home or working in the fields, cloaked in bright saris hunched over in the heat. The gender dichotomy is impossible to ignore. I feel very aware of my gender here.
• There is a lot of Hinglish in the signs and advertisements here. Hinglish takes many forms: Hindi interspersed with English words, English written in Devanagari script, and even sometimes Hindi written in Roman script. I'm also definitely noticing the prestige aspect English seems to have here, and it's very interesting to say the least.
• Indian driving is as terrifying as everyone says. It involves a lot of horn-blowing and ignoring of lanes. However, there does seem to be a method to the madness. Drivers are very alert and negotiate non verbally with each other rather than simply staying in their lane and riding it out. The large trucks here are almost all hand-painted in bright colors. Most of them have some variations of "Blow Horn" or "Horn Please" painted across the back. Horns are used to warn larger vehicles that you're approaching from behind. This is how those tiny motorbikes and rickshaws avoid getting run over, I suppose. I imagine that if you are confident, competent, and aware of the Indian rules of the road, driving here probably isn't actually that dangerous. It's just a different mindset than the U.S.

So far in Jaipur we haven't seen a lot. It seems like a very nice city. Everyone keeps saying how nice it is compared to Delhi, which from what little I've seen I do agree with. We spent some time at AIIS yesterday. They served us lunch, introduced themselves, and answered some of our questions. Today we will have orientation and then meet our host families. My host home seems nice; it's a couple in their 50s with a 25 year old fashion designer daughter. I'll have my own room and bathroom with a cooler (not quite an air conditioner, but it's supposed to be fairly effective). They also have a pet dog, I don't have to pay extra for electric, and it's only 2.5km from my school. Pretty much all of us (especially the girls) have been assigned curfews by our families; mine is 9:30pm. But while that would probably bother a lot of us back home (especially considering a majority of us are graduate students), it's not really a big deal here. The city isn't safe after dark, especially for women. It's just a reality of living here, and it's true for local women as well.

Since I've been on a  bus most of the time I don't have any pictures yet, but I will be posting them to Facebook once I get a chance!

Thoughts on Air Travel, etc.

I’m sitting in a sunny airport gate in Munich, Germany. It’s midmorning, and I just disembarked the first of two extremely long flights that will carry me to Delhi. I can’t sleep on planes, not really. I’m kind of exhausted. I wanted to grab some Benadryl from the pharmacy here at the airport to help me sleep on my next flights, but then I realized I don’t speak German and I don’t understand European pharmaceuticals.

However, aside from being tired I’m also incredibly excited! Not only am I IN GERMANY (a goal since childhood), but I’m on my way to India for my first study abroad experience. I’ll (hopefully) be documenting that experience here on this blog, so you can all follow along with me.

Let me catch you up on where I am so far.

I’ve been really nervous about this trip for months now. Of course, I’m the type to let nervousness spiral out of control, so I got to the point where I was dreading the trip. And I hated that feeling. I’ve always wanted to travel and I love languages, and this is my first real chance to travel abroad to study a language in depth and improve my fluency. I didn’t want it to suck, but I couldn’t shake the gloomy raincloud that appeared every time I thought about spending 9 weeks in India.

Luckily, that storm cloud has dissipated (so far). The trip is finally here and I have no need to be anxious with anticipation anymore. For now, I am having a blast listening to Hindi speakers in the airport (and talking with some of them!). Also, I’ve always been a huge fan of air travel in its own right. Airports are so awe inspiring. They’re massive and hella expensive. It’s pretty interesting to be in a building that cost millions (if not billions) to build, and to look out the window and see dozens of gigantic planes. I also love the variety of languages you hear in an airport. Even when I was young, I loved to be in places where people were speaking lots of different languages, and I would challenge myself to guess what they were speaking. Grand Central Station is another example of a place that I loved as a kid for this reason.

I also just really enjoy the experience of flying. Sure, economy seats are super cramped, the food is meh at best, and it’s REALLY hard to sleep. But every time I get on a plane I’m just so inspired by the ingenuitity of humanity. The fact that we are able to fly is really a miracle, and a testament to the human spirit. It’s also an exercise in trust. When I board a plane, I am entrusting myself to the engineers who designed the plane, the mechanics who built and maintain it, and the pilot and copilot who fly this incredibly heavy metal bird-contraption which is able to soar through the air against all logic. I don’t know, when you place yourself into the hands of other humans like that, it really makes you realize how incredible and capable and intelligent people really are.

Not only that, but you get to see the planet in a unique way. Our flight took us up near the coast of Greenland. We were so far north that the sun never really set; it hovered just below the horizon for hours, casting an eerie pink glow against the dark clouds and sky. When you’re close enough o the ground, you can really appreciate the differences between different parts of the world just from the aerial view. For example, taking of from Houston the view was very large and regular. Neighborhoods were big and square, with aquamarine pools in every other backyard. Highways were big and straight, and agricultural fields were huge and orderly. However, flying into Munich was a whole different story. The fields were smaller and bordered with rounded, squiggly lines. Towns were irregularly-shaped clumps of buildings. It was a real testament to the relative age of the towns in Germany compared to the Houston suburbs. It really made me think about what it’s like to live in a German city rather than an American one. When I fly into Delhi it’ll be nighttime, but I still hope I can learn some things about the city from the air.

Also, I’m just going to take a second to talk about clouds. Clouds are, without a doubt, my favorite part about air travel. Like, we live on a water planet. And part of living on a water planet means we have huge collections of weightless water just floating high in the air in various formations. We get so used to it, but seeing clouds from a new angle really makes you reconsider how amazing they are. The really fluffy ones (cumulo nimbus? Katie would know) remind me of giant sleepy animals, like slow-moving whales. Sometimes they look more architectural to me, like towers or citadels or just enormous palaces. They are just so big! I don’t think I’m conveying this well in words. Suffice to say that I think our planet is beautiful and flying makes me appreciate it so much more.

I’ll sign off this post with a Bible verse sent to me by my friend Mandi shortly before I departed from Houston.

Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created. Esther 4:14.

I really do feel like this – travelling the world and studying languages – is what I was made to do. I hope I’m right.