Eyes Wide Open

Preface: I would like to apologize to all of my fabulous and exclusive readers (aka all 7 of you) whom I have left high and dry about my experiences in the last month. Obviously, I’m not a seasoned or extremely dedicated blogger, but hopefully this post will be a peace offering and a revival of this blog before it flat lines. To say the least, I’ve been a bit busy. And after you put off reflecting on one experience, the experiences just continue to pile on and you don’t even know where to begin. But I’m going to try. If you’re curious what I’ve been up to the past month, I’ve listed some highlights at the end of this post and most of the pictures are on Facebook.

I’ve surpassed a lot of the culture shock and frustrations that come with being in India. That doesn’t mean that I’m not frustrated now and then, but I’m taking a positive approach to everything. I’ve realized that negativity is the bane of my existence. Sometimes when my entire program (all 30 of us) are in the same small building or classroom it feels as though a dark cloud is looming over my head when there are really only a fraction of the group who have completely given up on even trying to enjoy India. I won’t go too much further into that, but a good piece of advice that I’ve learned is don’t let other people come between you and your experience. No one is going to have the exact same experience in such a foreign place as India, and it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. But for me it is, so I’m continuing to love India.

That being said, I do have one big fear – going home. I’m excited to be back in my comfort zone just to feel a bit more relaxed and to be with people who feel so far away right now. But I’m worried about my sight. In India, I see everything. I see every color, every person, every nook and cranny. I feel like my peripheral vision wraps around my head and I’m completely absorbed in my environment. It’s the best way to experience something. Even though I’m sure I miss things from time to time, I feel like I’m getting the most I can out of every aspect of my travels, and even my day to day life.

When I go home I want to see things in the same way I do now. I want to experience everything about my “normal” life in this new heightened way. I don’t want to continue missing everything that seems to be blurred out of my vision when I’m in the U.S. I also don’t want to see home as boring in comparison to India (even though that’s an easily reached conclusion). I want to see America as a whole new territory for exploration. I want to find the nooks and crannies in my own street or neighborhood that I’ve failed to miss a thousand times before.

Something else is also unnerving me right now. It’s not a fear but an acute awareness that right now I am going through one of the most important and possibly life-changing experiences of my life. Knowing that I’m going to come out a different person in December is a bit scary and exciting at the same time. I can’t wait to see how these four months affect my life back home and my perception of the world around me.

But I am also trying not to focus on December 12^th and instead on today, each and every day. Sometimes I think I miss an opportunity during my daily school and homework-filled life. But even yesterday as I spent the whole day at home, reading my book, I spent time with my host family that is a one-time opportunity of its own. I threaded flowers together to make garlands to decorate the house for Navratri (festival celebrating the goddess Luxmi) and then sat on the floor with a bowl in between my feet and my toes gripping the handles to churn/whip the dessert, Shrikand.

Highlights

I’ve been doing my fair share of traveling, with more to come. I went to the caves at Ajanta and Ellora, which are in Maharashtra and are world heritage sites. For lack of a better word, they were awesome. They are a mix of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves. The ones at Ajanta were built in B.C. – so now they are officially the oldest man-made thing I have seen. At Ellora, there is an ornate and intricate Hindu temple that was carved from one giant piece of rock. If you have had a chance to see my pictures – Google it.

Only two days after the spelunking exploration, I jetted off to Kerala which is a state in South India and is one of the top tourist spots. We started in Alleppey taking a gorgeous 3 hour private boat tour of the backwaters. It’s the Venice of the East. Then we took a boat to our hotel, because, of course, it was on an island. After that we drove to Thekkady where we checked all of the touristy activities off our list: elephant ride, ayurvedic massage, shopping for overpriced souvenirs, and watching a traditional dance – kathakali. Then we failed at seeing wildlife at a wildlife sanctuary in the area and continued on to Munnar. Now we’ve moved from winding canals of rivers to rolling hills of tea. So much tea. In Munnar we did some exploring, visiting the local temple, from which you can see a church straight across on another hill and a mosque to your right. Talk about coexisting. The next day we hit up all the scenic viewpoints and then took a relatively unsafe jeep ride up winding, rocky, narrow roads (oh, have I mentioned it was raining?) to the highest tea plantation in the world. It was pretty great. We tried the tea and then toured the factory. Kerala was the greenest green I have ever seen and is high up on my list of recommendations while in India.

About two weeks after Kerala, my program (so all 30 Americans) went to Mumbai. I took my first train ride where I leaned out between the cars to try and touch sign posts and had the greasiest egg sandwich ever – with fries. We sat through several lectures about Mumbai, especially its development process and the transition from mills to malls. We visited a Gandhi museum in a house where he lived for a period of time, St. Xavier’s college, and a couple other areas. Most notably we went to Dharvi, which is famous as the filming location and setting of “Slumdog Millionaire.” However, the picture we got of Dharvi was very different than the film presents. Dharvi is labeled as the largest slum in Asia, but can we really call it a slum when the people that live there have a thriving local economy, mostly based within their homes, and consider themselves, for the large part, developed. It did not look like any slum I had been to (namely Kibera in Nairobi and Collique outside Lima). And even though I’m sure everything isn’t all rosey in Dharvi, it seemed pretty legit to me.

Now I am starting an internship at a primary school in Pune that caters to a large slum population. I’m doing some research there (which is still being defined) but I’m really excited to work in such a different field as education. This weekend I will be in Goa relaxing on a beach, and the weekend and week after that I will be in Rajasthan exploring three cities in Northern India and riding a camel.

Rise and Shine

Waking up in India is pretty rough. First off, the mattresses are extremely thin. I’m starting to believe that Indians have a completely different perception of comfort because the pillows are also basically flat rocks.

For the first couple of weeks I would wake up with pains in my shoulders and neck because I would roll over on my side in the night – which these beds are not designed for. But now I’m in my fourth week of being here and the pain seems to be less and less every day. I actually long for my bed after a long day because India wears me out.

A lack of comfort seems to be in every facet of Indian life, or at least my Indian life. There’s minimal privacy, lots of crowds, dust, and pesky bugs. Not to mention that whenever I go outside my house I’m stared at, profusely. Sometimes I feel like I have a spotlight on me and then I remember that my skin is blindingly white in comparison to everyone around me.

If being pushed out of my comfort box was what I wanted coming here, that is precisely what I got. I think I’ve already been through the complete cycle of culture shock, maybe even multiple times. The first day I was in Pune I wondered why I decided to come to India in the first place. I even thought about how nice it would be to be back in the United States. But, I couldn’t just quit barely a week in. So I decided to give India a chance.

Being around the other students on the program and getting to know my host parents better made things a little easier. But as soon as I started to feel a little more at home, some new challenge would make me feel like I was a Martian.

It’s not only being in such a different place and immersed in a drastically different way of life that’s rough. It’s also being so different from everyone around me. Forming personal relationships with Indians seemed like an impossible task.

So why am I here?

I don’t know anyone in India. I don’t know anything really about India. I pretty much came here on a whim. I’ve made up several answers to this question before I came, but the honest truth is that I have no clue why I am here. I just am. Not that any of this brashness in my previous decisions has helped me with intense culture shock.

So basically, after the first week of being in the country I wanted to go home. Four months is the most daunting period of time I’ve ever faced in my life. I felt so weak, helpless, and dumb thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make it until December.

Don’t worry, this didn’t last long.

I don’t know what exactly changed my mind, but I’m going a completely different direction now. Even though I don’t want to jinx anything, I must say that I think I’m in the beginning stages of falling in love with India (thoo thoo – similar to knocking on wood). I’m in awe right now, at least. We’ve still got three months to see what happens.

This change probably started with Aunty (that’s what I call my host mom) truly becoming my Indian mother. Uncle (my host dad) also remind me so much of my dad that I can’t help but feel comfortable here. Not to mention my roommate, Akta, who is Indian but born and raised in America (and we go to the same school at home), has really helped me figure this place out. We both struggled a bit at first, finding our way around the city. She has even had issues with feeling out of place, despite her heritage. So now I have a place to call home.

I also started school. All of my classes are amazing! I’m taking: Issues in Political Economy and Development, Social Justice, Contemporary India, and a Field Study Seminar (later to become an internship). And this is why studying abroad is probably one of the best experiences of your life: Being in a 24/7 living classroom is incredible. Everything that we discuss in class is happening right outside the window. Also having a place to ask questions about what we see and experience helps with processing everything.

To be honest, this blog isn’t going to be extremely helpful to try to relate everything that I’m experiencing. I recommend that everyone comes to this country at least once, because you can only truly understand it when you are here. But I am going through a lot right now and learning so much that hopefully I can relay some of that to all of you.

The culture is so rich and Hinduism is so different from any other religion that the way of life is just so fascinating. Right now I’m hearing continuous drums beating and we have been watching processions down the street to celebrate Ganesh, the god of wisdom and other things with an elephant head. I also participated in my second puja this morning, which involves prayers and several rituals for a particular god.

Earlier this week my program took us to a village area about 6 hours from Pune called Jawhar. There we toured several villages with an NGO that is working to develop farming and production within the area. They were helping fulfill Gandhi’s dream of self-sustainable villages, for the most part. We took vans everywhere and probably one of the best parts of that trip was looking out the window from my bumpy backseat. The countryside is gorgeous – greener than you can imagine, rolling hills, with vibrant colors in the towns and villages. I’m now pretty determined to do some intense traveling around the country, and this trip will hopefully just be the first of many.

But the greatest thing that I’ve seen or experienced so far are the people. India would be nothing without the spirit of its vibrant people. With the exception of a few mean rickshawalas (rickshaw drivers, they sometimes like to cheat you) basically everyone I’ve met has been extremely warm and hospitable, even if we can’t speak each other’s language. Probably the thing I’m looking forward to the most for this semester is continuing to develop meaningful relationships with people here and trying to see India through their eyes.

My ramblings have gone on far enough, and my posts will hopefully be more frequent and detailed from now on. But if you want to know more specific things about what I’ve been doing this month in India, please take a look at the photos I’ve posted on Facebook and soon on here as well.

And let me know if you have any questions for me via email or comments. Thanks for sticking with me thus far. And continue to send good vibes from across continents because who knows what the next three months will bring.