I'm 21.. but that has no relation to this post whatsoever

It's been a month since my arrival in India! Dad mentioned time going slowly but over here time is just indescribable. I kind of feel I've been here forever and at the same time we've already gone through a month, which means the other 3ish months should fly by, particularly with the travel plans in store for the upcoming months ( Ashrams, Goa, Agra etc!). I figured it's been a week so I should update on... something.

I'm going to be starting Tabla classes this week! We finally went to the store with our teacher and bought them. The tabla is a type of drum ( see picture- that one is the one I bought) which is used to accompany the sitar or dance very often.It has a great sound and I'm really excited for class! Even if I can't actually play it well it's fun to mess around with and to have it.

I've been trying to upload more pictures and also organize them a bit. I'll try and separate them out into albums for the future ( see the left side of the page) so here is the link again and also a link to pictures from the bridge school.
Classes are still pretty low key, as in it seems like we are still introducing the class after like 3 weeks, but I guess that's ok by me. It is getting hotter and hotter here every day. This weekend is pretty quite because a lot of people went on trips already.
Yesterday I walked around Old City with Miriam and Dan because I really wanted to get out of the house. It was a bit less insane then the first time we went with our whole group. I like traveling with less people too. We bought a pomegranate off the street because Miriam and Dan had never eaten one before( though Miriam was not inspired to try one). It was pretty good actually though it could have been sweeter.

On a different note, it makes me mad that "fairness" is a standard of beauty here. All the models are white or pale and there are skin whiteners for sale all over the place. I think that it is just ridiculous and makes me angry because it's pushing "westernized" standards and also dark skin is incredibly beautiful. I took a picture of this sign because it was funny but it is also sad. At the mall, the advertisements were all of white people. No wonder Indians are so fascinated by us- it's shoved in their faces all the time. On that note, I've decided that I'm becoming a bit more ok with being stared at since I do my fair share of staring too ( though sometimes it is just creepy). So as tea time is rapidly approaching I will leave you with this picture....

Field Trip!!

Saturday was a pretty incredible day. We visited a school for children who have been rescued from child labor. These schools are known as bridge schools because they are meant to bridge the gap in education that a child would have had appropriate to their age. The bridge schools are made so children can join their proper grade-level and not have to feel uncomfortable being in a grade far below their age.

We arrived at the school and were surrounded by children who were excited to see us. We quickly learned that they were fascinated by cameras and having their pictures taken and those of us who were willing to surrender our camera into the hands of a child came out with some pretty fun pictures. They enjoyed taking pictures as much as being in them and were quite adept at the whole process, catching on to the details of the cameras very quickly.

We had a little while to just enjoy their company and then we heard a bit from the director about the program itself. Telegu – a regional dialect- is the main language there with smatterings of English and Hindi. The program is amazing and really seems to work. There are a huge number of youth volunteers who go door to door to get children into the program. It is still hard to understand how families can send their children to work but a lot of it has to do with debt and just the customs. The program this GOP has set up is excellent because they train people and then the people they train go out and train other people and so on so that it grows and grows.

We heard a few case studies as children told their stories and had them translated. The stories were about as heart-wrenching as you can get but the happy bit is that all of them have made it to the school. Some of us were discussing after the trip how amazing it is that these children can still smile and laugh and play and go on with their lives. It was extremely powerful to have the experience of being among them and made me almost a little embarrassed that I’ve ever been bothered by anything in my life.

After our lunch we had time to play with the children with balls and Frisbees or just sit with them. A group of the girls decided to give everyone bindis so we all got to go home decorated. My camera battery unfortunately died in the middle of the day which was hard to explain to the kids. I was sitting with one girl for a while and she gave me her bangles to wear. Just how she jammed them on my wrist is still somewhat beyond me. I let her wear my scarf in exchange. The kids discovered that some people were sunburned and so poking their skin made it turn whiter. They tried this with me but shockingly I was not one of the burned people so it didn’t have much affect.

When it was time to leave I was struggling to take off the bangles from my new friend so I could give them back. They were thin glass and to my horror one of them broke when I was taking it off. I managed to get the rest off one arm and was working on the second arm when the girl pushed them back onto my arm. I tried to give them back but she was insistent that I keep them. I didn’t want to take something so nice from her but I was also touched. She was showing my arms off to a few people and there seemed to be some unhappiness with another one of the girls over the bracelets which I didn’t really understand. I couldn’t really figure out what was going on since I had tried to keep giving them back but she wouldn’t let me. In the end I ended up going home with them but looking back over my pictures I see that when we first arrived the girl I got them from was not wearing them and the girl who seemed upset was. So I feel a little guilty because I’m not really sure what happened there because I thought I was getting a gift but I hope I didn’t end up making someone sad.

I’ve included a few pictures from the day including the girl with the bangles and the bangles themselves. The kids actually took some pictures of me that I like, which is quite impressive (maybe because I was genuinely happy?). I see future careers for these kids. Oh and I would totally adopt an Indian child; they are beyond adorable.

Some Random Thoughts

I have never eaten so much rice in my life as I have in the past 3 weeks ( I generally don't seek out rice unless it is in sushi. It would never be my first choice of food so I'm pretty sure that is not an overstatement).

Yesterday was a festival of kites. I celebrated by reading more of kite runner ( it's very moving and intense but very good).

It is still weird to see boys walking together with their arms over each other just in a friendly manner.

It's ok to drive on the wrong side of the road if you are planning to turn soon.

There was a cute lizard in the bathroom for a while and then in the SIP classroom but I haven't seen it recently.

I'm not very gifted at Hindi, or I suppose languages in general.

Every time there is a situation where it would be helpful to use Hindi, I immediately think of every other language that I've learned instead. Suddenly Italian and Spanish come rushing into my head but I realize that "Dove" is not going to mean much to a Hindi speaker and neither is 'si'.

There are smells in India which I couldn't even begin to name, a lot of which I believe come from burning trash.

ALSO, from the movie we saw, a great song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifh8l2aB7ic

Classes and Khojo Hyderabad

So I finally have my classes worked out! I haven't been able to attend one of them because I just was going to try it today and the professor was on leave for the day and weds is a holiday! woot!
But I looked at some people's notes and I'm gonna go for it since we were supposed to hand the forms declaring our classes in today ( although time is relative).
Classes meet for 4 hours a week so either 2 hour lectures or 1 hour classes or some combination
So I'm taking:

Conversational Hindi M-Th
Anthropology of Complex Societies ( the one I have yet to attend) M&W
Indian Philosophy T-Th
Gandhian Philosophy M&T

Then I also meet my Hindi tutor twice a week.
Anyway, on Sunday we had a big CIEE game which was a "treasure hunt" around Hyderabad. We were split into teams and then we had clues and questions to answer at each site. We started on campus then had to take buses and rickshaws around. They gave us 600 R and whichever team spent the least money and arrived earliest to each site would win. It was actually tons of fun though absolutely exhausting. I had Mary, Maya and Craig on my team and Craig was super into it so it was pretty funny. We let him run ahead of us since he really wanted too. Luckily both he and Maya know some Hindi, which was helpful for negotiating rickshaws ( although we still got the 'white tax' and were ripped off). People were teasing Craig cause they said pushed a lady and her kid out of the way at one point running through the mall.... but it was all in good fun, I really don't think he did it.
The locations we had to stop at were a fabric school, where this lady has been keeping the art of loom-weaving alive. The fabrics are beautiful and she employs women who need jobs or are uneducated. The amount of work that goes into these pieces in unbelievable!!! I will get pictures up some time. The second place was lunch at a swanky restaurant in a mall that played American music and had a whole bunch of food from different places including a curry pasta which was pretty yummy. Place number three was the Salar Jung museum, which was neato but we were so tired by that point from running around and hanging out of rickshaws etc.

Our final destination was a sort of school/ self-improvement center. It taught vendanta philosophy (aka sop style philosophy) and things of that nature. It was pretty cool I was just so tired. They had lots of classes which they offered on self-improvement and mind-management. I was super excited because at the end of our little question and answer session the guy said a prayer in sanksrit and it was one that I knew! I had to go ask him what it meant at the end because I couldn't remember but it was the असतोमा सद्गमय prayer, so lead me from untruth to truth, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality. They also had a really nice art gallery with teachings illustrated. There was definitely a Hari the lion one :)

AND we actually won second place in the competition so we got 8000R to split between us, which is about $40 each! Hooray.

Yes, Another update

Enjoy them while you can. We now have internet in the common room which is great and unexpected.
Since I have been getting demands for pictures I am providing the link to where pictures will be going. It takes a long time to upload them so they are coming slowly but I will try and keep loading more as I go.

http://s453.photobucket.com/albums/qq253/NJtraveler/

What is your good name?

Someone asked me this after yoga the other day and I almost started laughing ( seriously, watch Outsourced; its a good movie and I will likely reference it a lot). Luckily I knew that they were just asking my name so I could answer. He seemed like a very nice guy and not creepy, though I was still wary ( I really hate not being able to trust people) and he is studying philosophy too ( he offered that information before I said anything about philosophy). I went to afternoon yoga since my internal clock seems to be shifting back towards not being happy to be awake so early. I was the only non-Indian person in the class, which was kinda nice and definitely different. I may just stick with that time since it is convenient, though I feel bad that I don't speak Hindi, since the instructor asked me if I did.
On that same note, it is very weird to be a minority. I've never really been one, at least not one that stood out so much. I'm probably as white as you can get so there's no way to blend in. I do love wearing the Indian clothing but I can't hide my skin color. People are fascinated by us. India is an interesting country because while there are many warnings about being safe and not making too much eye contact etc, the people are actually very very friendly and feel that as a visitor, you are a guest. It's hard to get used to being oggled all the time though. Yesterday was a Muslim holiday so we had no classes and a group of us went out to one part of the city. We went to visit this giant Buddha statue ( pics to come) which you need to take a little boat to get to. On the boat, the three of us were swarmed by people who wanted to take pictures with us and kept asking us all kinds of questions. They were very nice ladies, traveling together from somewhere near Mumbai, but they were absolutely entranced by us. We are pretty sure they took more pictures of us than the Buddha. Other people in our program have had similar experiences. On the boat ride back from the Buddha ( which is I believe either the largest or one of the largest in the world) the ladies had us come into the center of the boat and dance with them. It was quite fun and made my day. I was also asked twice if I was Russian, which I attribute to my uber-whiteness.
Today on the way to the library, I was stopped by a group of woman who were also just interested in me and what I was wearing ( a very plain shirt and skirt). It's hard to tell what exactly they are thinking because they smile and laugh, but it seems to be just genuine curiosity. I've read and been reading a lot about India and this seems normal. What I was reading last night was saying that fair skin is being pushed on Indians as an ideal of beauty, so they are very interested in it. While mostly things are still "traditional" in India, I have seen some people dressed or acting in ways which we have been told is inappropriate, so there is a range of behavior.
Yesterday, after lunch and the Buddha we walked around and found a really cool architectural park type thing. We didn't want to leave our shoes or pay so we didn't go in but we got some pictures from outside. There was a very LOTR looking structure/ temple inside which someone pointed out looked almost computer generated. Probably the most awesome part of yesterday ( besides the boat) was visiting a Hindu temple. Five of us went together, which was a good thing because we had to leave our bags and shoes outside in a coatroom, which none of us felt comfortable doing, so we went inside in shifts. The temple is amazing! It sits in a location up on a hill where you can look over the whole city( we weren't allowed to bring cameras in or I would have taken pictures). The carving is beautiful and people come to pay their respects to the various shrines for gods. I definitely saw ganesh and shiva, but I'm not sure about the other ones. The best part was the views over the city. It was close to sunset and it was also a semi-clouded day so that the sun was not unbearably hot, which made it beautiful. Yesterday was the first clouded day I've seen here. The temple was quite big so there was plenty to see and I could have stayed there all day, but when two boys came up to me saying, "sister, are you American?" I decided it was time to leave. Sister, or Didi (older sister), is a common term that people use to address girls, just as boys are called brother.
My classes are almost sorted out so I will be able to post them soon. I had a not completely unbearable cold shower this morning which was nice too. Things are really settling in nicely but I am also understanding a lot more of what I have read now that I am experiencing it. Soon it will be time to plan trips! We need to give 2 weeks notice to ciee so I need to get on that. AND my birthday is coming up soon!! yay! Oh, in addition, we have all been having really weird and vivid dreams. It is supposed to be a side affect of at least one of the types of malaria pills, though we all seem to be having them and we are on different medications so who knows!It could just be that we are in a really different place but it is weird to wake up every day and remember at least one dream. I usually don't remember mine, or I very rarely remember them. If you are reading this then there is a pretty good chance that you've been in one or more of them.

Some housekeeping...

Sorry that I really can't spell or type for my life. I dunno why but I can't type on these keyboards and I am also trying to not take up a lot of time since people are all sharing computers and I don't want to be a hog. So sorry if there are horrible errors.. hopefully you know me well enough to know that I am a spazz.

As for those looking for pictures, as soon as I can use my laptop I will work on pictures.

Qick update

A little quick update after the massive post.
We had yoga this morning. I almost didn't go because it was at 7am and when I woke up I was really not enthused by the hour. I did decide to go since I was awake and I'm really glad. The bike ride down was pretty painful. The parts of the road that seem flat are oddly deceptive and the worst to bike on.
At the start of yoga class they recited a sanskrit prayer I knew which made me happy! I think it was this one: May He protect us both. May He take pleasure in us both. May we show courage together. May Spiritual knowledge shine before us. May we never hate one another.
May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.
Anyway that was awesome and the bike ride back was nice too. Right now I am having a break because classes are still a little up in the air.

Yes, I am in fact still alive!

Ever since the move to the new guest house we have been without internet. The guest house is brand new and so somewhat still under construction. All the rooms are there but things are still coming together like internet and such. They are slowly adding things day by day. This is India. I'm getting used to it.
Whenever I find myself stressed it is because I am not accepting the way things work here. I've always thought of myself as easygoing and very adaptable so it surprised me that I was struggling for the first few days, but then suddenly I realized that I really do have a western mindset. It is so much a part of me that I didn't realize that it was there. Once I gave in to India things went much better. The movie Outsourced is right, you have to stop resisting or you will hate it here. It is still a very intense country and there are times when I just am overwhelemed, but I really love it. Each experience though is very draining and I feel like over the course of time it could become difficult. I'm trying to give myself breaks because we have been on a very go-go schedule.
I operate on a very different time schedule here too. I am used to being a night-owl and staying up to obscene times of the morning but here I can barely stay awake at 10pm and I am getting up at 7-8. Morning yoga is also on the agenda once it starts up. I am looking forward to what I am calling the 'India diet' in which I walk/bike ALOT and eat less. I'm getting used to the food but I'm a little tired of spices already. We went out and got nice chinese food one day and there is some plain snack food. With my schedule I may end up forgoing lunch most days, which is fine cause I am used to skipping breakfast. They have told us the distance from the guesthouse to anything useful on campus is about 2 km or 1.5 miles, so every day I will get that walk. It's not terrible, just not what I am used to, being a lazy person and coming from a campus which is 1 block long.
There are so many things to update the blog on that I will just have to give little tidbits because I can't do everything justice. As you may have gathered, time moves at a different pace here. Nothing starts on time. We also live in a perpetual state of dust. Most buildings aren't really completely enclosed and there is just unescapable dust so I am getting used to being not totally clean all the time. Showers have been icey cold- the water in our building is 'solar' meaning its literally a tank heated by the sun. I did actually get a little hot water the other day which was soooooo nice. It's hard to really get motivated to shower when you feel like walking into an icebox. Lets see, I'm living with the other berg student, Laura. Way to go program with mixing people up. They placed a lot of people with the people from their uni though so I dunno.
Ok a few highlights. For new year's we went to a nice Indian resteraunt in Banjara hills, which is like the Beverly Hills of India. It's super nice but everything here is so cheap that it still is a pretty reasonable price. When we all came back to the guest house we went up to the roof deck and watched some fireworks. There is a little tent-village of workers behind us and we shouted happy new year across to them and were sort of shouting celebrations with them. I went right to sleep after midnight because I was so tired.
We got to go into the old city which was fantastic and completely indescribable. I am of the thought that there is NO WAY to describe India, it is just something you have to experience. I read a lot and I understand what I read and have experienced some of it, but you really can't know until you get there what it is like. Certainly this day of touring was impossible to accurately describe. We saw some really neat tombs and forts but walking through the streets was the best part for me. I will get pictures when I can. Walking through the traffic, past the vendors who are calling out to you, trying to not get run over is rediculous. Also, I love rickshaws! They are absolutely the way to travel!
Orientation is mostly over since classes will be starting, though this first week is pretty open. We have gone out in little groups to different places. We went to a really cool craft market- Shilpanara I believe is the name. We also were taken shopping for 2 sets of Indian clothes at a really nice store. Even still the prices are amazing. One top cost about 350 r which is roughly 7 dollars. There are rows and rows of colorful pants and tops and scarfs. The staff there is really great at helping you match the clothes colors. The clothes are super nice and super light weight so that even wearing long sleeves isn't too bad. The weather has been not horrible, though a bit hot. I am trying to get used to it since it will only get worse. Yesterday we met our language peer tutors and went to see the hindi remake of Momento ( Ghanjini), which was quite an experience. As someone in our group put it, that was the human experience in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. There are several bollywood dance numbers but also intense emotional scenes. It was pretty Nuts.
We had hindi today and learned the alphabet. My class is mostly going to focus on speech though, so after this week we won't use the script, just transliteration. The sounds are much harsher than sanskrit, though the letters are mostly the same. Instead of का being pronounced as kahhh, its more like kuh. Anyway, my hands are hurting and it's getting late so time to go.
I have no idea when I will update again.... just stay tuned.