One Month Down

I have now been in India for more than a month. It's kind of flown by, which is interesting since I was under the impression that time moved much more slowly here. It's also quite strange to think I'm a quarter of the way done with my semester.

One month is, I believe, when it's ok to admit all of the things that I miss and crave from home and here they are:
1. Tofu, apples, soy milk, dark chocolate
2. My car
3. Toilet seat covers
4. Toilets
5. Law and Order SVU
6. Dance Classes
And it goes without saying that I miss my friends and family...awwwww...

Pictures and the Thousands of Words that They're Worth.

**Squeamish readers skip to Paragraph 3**
I had prided myself on my ability to digest spicy Indian food for several weeks now while my peers groaned and complained of heart burn and indigestion. Unfortunately, midway through my Thursday morning class, my bowels of steel were put up to the challenge. I sprang from my desk to expel the demon from my body, and thus began my very adventurous weekend.

The bumpy and twisty cab ride to the train station brought forth several more volcanic eruptions, and by the time we arrived to the station, all forms of matter had flown before me (and most of the city of Hyderabad) in bright displays of projectile vomit. Though I considered throwing my miserable, retching self in front of the train, I was trying my hardest not to complain or ruin the trip for my seven disgusted travel companions. Apparently I didn't completely conceal my anguish though. They later recounted the episode describing me as "deathly," "zombie-ish," or "like a swamp-creature."

The train ride from Hyderabad to Aurungabad takes about 11 hours over night but my condition actually made the journey easier. I crawled into my sleeper bunk, passed out, and rose from the dead a day later in my destination completely cured having passed my disease onto one of my unfortunate friends.

Aurungabad is a smallish city a few hours East of Mumbai. It doesn't have all that much to offer on its own, but it serves as the main stopping point for tourists to Ellora and Ajanta, two near-by sites. We stayed in the Hotel Shree Maya, which someone's guidebook accurately described as "cleanish." It certainly had plenty of character. We had two little rooms split between 8 girls which was cozy, but a lot of fun. We all unanimously agreed that we made a great, drama-free travel group. The whole trip was not very luxurious, but train tickets, lodging, meals, etc, etc, etc for three days cost less that $40 each, so no one is complaining.

We hired a Bollywood-music-loving cab driver for the first two days to chauffer us out to Ellora and Ajanta. In my Asian Art History course last year I learned all about Ellora and it was actually one of the monuments that made me really interested in coming to India. It is a Hindu/Jain temple started in the 4th century AD that is carved out of a mountain. That is to say, rocks weren't piled up to build it, rather, they were carved away. The result is really astounding, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

There were also lots of monkeys around, so Nicole can stop complaining about my lack of monkey pictures.

The driver found us a kitschy local restaurant for lunch, then suggested that he take us to this fort that no one had heard of that turned out to be really cool as well...If I can figure out what it was called or anything about it I'll let you know.

We collapsed in bed from exhaustion then met our driver early the next morning for the long drive out to Ajanta. It takes a few hours through some really gorgeous countryside to get there. Like Ellora, Ajanta is a series of man-made cave-temples, but this time they're Buddhist, and where Ellora is known for it's sculptures, Ajanta is known for the painted walls. Ajanta also requires much more hiking than Ellora. The paintings are only in dim fragments after several hundred years, but each cave is still unique and haunting. Again, there's little I can say that can't be said better through pictures. We ended Ajanta Day with dinner at a questionable restaurant then once again, collapsed from exhaustion in the cleanish hotel.

Day three was much less physically demanding, but no less memorable than days one and two. We began with a breif adventure to Aurungabad's "Mini Taj-Mahal" which is exactly what the title makes it sound like. It was pretty, but inauthentic, and we were hot and tired, so we left to get lunch and someone had the idea that we should all go to a "Ladies' beauty parlor" to get mehendi. There was supposed to be one such parlor near our hotel so we followed some tiny signs down a little alley and up to a little door. The salon was really just the back room of a family home and upon our arrival a few Hinid-speaking women, a man, and a little girl ushered us in, sat us all in the family room, force-fed us tea and snacks and turned the TV on to VH1. One-by-one we had henna patterns slowly and intricately painted onto our hands and feet. As minutes became hours we all grew concerned that we might be over-staying our welcome, but the longer we stayed the more hospitable the family became, even at one point bringing out the bootlegged Bollywood DVDs to entertain us. The little girl also ran away and returned with all of the family photo albums for us to look at. At one moment I observed that hanging around, snacking, getting girly henna, and watching silly movies was quite like being at a slumber party in the home of people we'd never met and couldn't communicate with. It was very fun, but mildly awkward, as you can see by the expressions on our faces in the photo. The journey home included less vomit than the first trip, and other than our taxi hitting a motorcycle (everyone was fine) on the ride back to campus I'd say everything went pretty smoothly. There's more to say and no time to say it. I'm back, I'm safe, it was a wonderful first excursion into India.

I'm So Sari

My mom sent me an email saying it was too bad that I wasn't going to be home to see the presidential inauguration on TV. Little did she know I would be watching it at a black tie inaugural ball hosted by the Ex-Patriots Abroad group of Hyderabad. Since the inauguration was held in the morning in the US, here in India we could watch it in the evening while sipping cocktails and eating a fancy catered dinner (all of which cost less than 20 dollars. I love Rupees). A few weeks ago a group of students from my program were eating out when they were approached by a woman who runs the Ex-Pats club who invited us all to come to the event. The majority of us (about 20 people) decided to go since it was not only an exciting, historic event, but it was a good opportunity to get all dressed up.

"Dressed up" in India means fancy saris, and sari shopping was quite an experience. Two of my friends here are staying in a homestay and this weekend I got to tag along with them to the sari store. Their host-mom came with us, which seemed like a good choice...if you ever need to go sari shopping I would recommend bringing an opinionated Indian woman with you. The store had shelves and shelves of sparkly, shiny, silky saris and all of us American girls were completely overwhelmed and befuddled. We had every color and pattern to choose from and when faced with the decision of simple vs. gaudy I picked gold with rhinestones. I suppose I'm not really one for subtlety.

Sari tying is perhaps even more complicated than sari shopping. The study-abroad program has connected us all with Indian "peer-tutors" and a whole army of them arrived last night to help dress us up. Who would have thought that five yards of fabric could turn into a lovely dress just with a few safety pins? Tying the saris was a pretty involved process but apparently it doesn't stop with the dress; in the world of Indian clothing any part of your body which can be adorned should be. The Indian girls helping us with the saris couldn't understand why none of us owned more jewelry. Luckily, I had picked up some pretty sparkly shoes the other day that met the minimum glitz requirement for footwear.


The ball was held in a swanky bar and I was surprised to see so many people there. They were serving an interesting variety of beverages including the "Obamagranate pomegranate martini." The tasty food consisted of American favorites like mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Everyone gathered to watch the inauguration on a big projection screen, and that was immediately followed by a very strange celebratory dance party. The Indian DJ selected a very eclectic mix of American music to play, dragging hip-hop favorites of the late 1990s screaming from the vaults along with techno-remixes of Pink Floyd. Nothing says patriotism like booze, pie, TV, and dancing.









Just a note...Tomorrow I'm leaving with a group of friends for our first out-of-Hyderabad adventure. We'll be staying in Aurungabad and traveling to some cool caves and temples and such. We will return on Monday so I won't blog for a few days, but when I get back I'll probably have a lot of cool things to say.

Getting Schooled

Oh Mondays...

It's so strange to have to go to classes instead of just playing around...
I suppose you are all wondering what classes I'm taking...
I suppose I'll tell you...
I had trouble forming a schedule because they really only give you a very vague idea of when classes are going to be, where they are being held, and who is teaching them...all of the classes that I tried to go to for the last week or so ended up being non-existent or scheduled to be held at a different time than I thought they were. I made it to one class and sat through the lecture for 2 hours before the professor informed me that she really didn't want any American students in the class...But with a little bit of patience and stick-to-itiveness I got a schedule. It is as follows:
Basic Hindi-- I'm excited to be able to read things soon!
Kuchipudi Dance-- It's still not clear if this class exists or not.
Indian National Movement (1900-1947)--History, Gandhi, politics...should be interesting.
Ecological Anthropology-- I don't really know what either of those words mean or what this class is about, but I needed a fourth class and I kind of wanted it to be something completely different from all my other classes...so there you go...

I'm also taking an extracurricular Khatak Dance class and I'm still doing the 6am Yoga boot camp certificate course (I'm badly in need of a nap). Other than the fatigue the yoga is going well, today I touched the soles of my feet to the top of my head.

This weekend was really busy.
On Saturday our program took us out to a rural school called the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation. The organization works to abolish child labor one child at a time. The kids there are either orphans or they have some pretty grim life stories. We spent the day there, the kids sang a song for us, then we heard a few of their stories, then we ate lunch with them and played games all afternoon. Our digital cameras were extremely popular. I took mine out to take one single picture and it was immediately pulled from my hands by the two girls on the right. They quickly figured out how to use it and filled up my memory card with really artistic images like the one on the left. When it was time to leave I had to pry it from their fingers in order to get it back. A lot of the girls in my program who have longer hair got bombarded by little girls wanting to give them braids, and not one of us left without getting a bindi painted on our forehead. And they were relentless with the frisbees. Everyone (little kids and us big kids) had a good time despite the language barrier. "Fun" seems to be a pretty universal concept. I couldn't tell whether or not the school had running water or electricity and the classrooms were very sparse, but if nothing else the school is a friendly and fun environment. Compared to the lifestyles some of these kids had before, that's a huge improvement. Even though it was a fun day it came along with a lot of harsh realities about the world. How does one write lightly about these things? If you have any ideas let me know.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Yesterday was yet another national holiday, so once again we had no classes (I still don't officially know what all my classes are so I'm not going to tell you about them yet. Be patient.) The occasion is known as Pongal, and if I understand correctly, it is a celebration of the beginning of the rice harvest season. Families celebrate by flying kites and making colorful designs on the ground in front of their houses (like the picture on the left). After eating a really delicious holiday feast that the cafeteria prepared for us, three friends and I ventured out to visit Golconda Fort.

The fort was in use from the 14th to the 16th century. I won't bore you with all the details, but if you want to know more you can read about it HERE. We had visited Golconda briefly during orientation, but we didn't get to do much exploring so we were eager to go back. Yesterday turned out to be a great day to go too because the view from the top was really spectacular with all of the kites flying all over the city. Unfortunately, the kites don't show up very well in pictures, so use your imagination.

There were a lot of visitors at the fort yesterday because of the holiday but my three friends and I were literally the only white people around. We didn't really think much of it, but the locals certainly did. Within five minutes of entering the fort a little boy and his mother approached us and asked if the boy could have his picture with us. "How odd! How cute!" we thought. A few minutes later a little girl stood by us while her father took pictures on his cell phone. Then again, as we began climbing to the top of the fort a whole family asked us to pose with them. The first five times or so it all seemed very silly and fun, but it all lost its appeal pretty quickly. Little children were cute enough, but we were less interested in posing with groups of teenage boys. Even as people walked by us we saw them slyly whipping out their cameras or cell phones. The whole experience was a little baffling. "Ah yes," they'll say as they pull out the treasured photo album, "Here is the day we visited the fort and saw those sweaty Americans!" They'll fondly remember the day that they text-messaged their friends saying, "OMG white grlz at Glcnda"


The climb to the top was long and tiring in the 80 degree heat, but really worth it. Climbing on dangerous rocks is also much more fun without those tedious American-style hand rails or danger signs cluttering your path. The view was beautiful, exploring the caves and corridors was fun, we got treated like celebrities, and the rickshaw driver didn't even try to rip us off on the drive back--best Pongal I've ever had!

Heads Up

It's time I discuss the Indian head bobble. I believe it was my second day in India that someone mentioned the "head bobble" to me and I was not sure what they were talking about. Within an hour I knew. The side-to-side head-tip is everywhere, an unavoidable form of non-verbal communication designed to fit any conversation. Psychologists have proven that facial expressions transcend culture--a smile or frown carries the same meaning everywhere in the world. Gestures, however, are socially learned behaviors specific to individual demographics. Though a nod of the head means "yes" in most Western countries, in the Eastern hemisphere, in India for example, a nod carries no meaning. Indians have neither a nod for yes nor a shake for no, they have only a lateral tipping of the head that means (from what I can gather) "I understand" or "yeah, sure." English is fairly widely spoken in India, but in haggling with rickshaw drivers, asking locals for directions, or any interaction that we Americans have had thus far with non-English speakers, we have been left with only our gestures to express ourselves. Often this scene becomes a confused face-off between Westerners shaking and nodding and Indians bobbling while neither party knows what to make of the other. In classes I have been nodding away when professors speak to me, only to realize later that I never really answered their question, I only shook my head forward and back in what only appears to them as a meaningless, compulsive tic. You don't realize how deeply rooted you are in your habits until they no longer work for you. Desperate to communicate "yes," I have found myself nodding furiously and when that fails I automatically resort to "uh huh," which also means nothing. Almost every time I have tried to express agreement, my natural habits leave me looking like a nodding, grunting fool before I ever remember that in English we actually have a real word for "yes."

Big Post About Little Adventures

INTERNET IN THE DORMS!!! You may now all skype with me if you wish. My user name is Pink_hubcaps…of course.

You all flatter me far too much with your comments. I know you can’t be that interested in reading about my laundry…lucky for you the last few days have been slightly more amusing.

We are all becoming a little more adventurous in terms of exploring the city. One needs only a steady sense of inner peace and the task of maneuvering the crowded, noisy streets becomes much easier. A group of us ventured out on the bus the other day because it’s the finest transportation that 8 cents can buy. The buses are also a dazzling display of the human capacity for huddling. The experience of riding Hyderabad’s public transportation could be likened to a big, shaky group-hug with dozens of sweaty strangers. Our destination was the Birla Mandir temple, an intricate marble hill-top shrine to many different Hindu deities. It’s a really beautiful location once you find it. The hill overlooks the whole city, and the temple itself is really gorgeous. Unfortunately, you aren’t allowed to bring cameras up to the temple, and it’s pretty hard to get decent pictures from outside. I suppose that makes sense, but it is truly cruel.

From the temple we decided to intentionally get lost, wandering through some quiet urban neighborhoods then right back into noisy crowds. Tired, and needing a break from the crowded streets, we popped into a bakery called Dadu’s. I had never really tried many Indian sweets or desserts before coming here, but I have been pleasantly surprised by every delicious dessert that they serve us at the dorm. Most sweets come in ball form and really exemplify the Indian passion for sugar. We’ve had sugary peanut balls, sugary coconut balls, and my personal favorite “chocolate barfi sweets.” Having had such positive dessert experiences in the dorm, we were all excited to stock up on more tasty things in the bakery, but without any guidance we ended up randomly selecting a pretty strange assortment. One sweet that I tried could really only be described as a “salty dirt ball.” Dadu’s also had an interesting assortment of drinks, so my friend Julia and I both ordered something described on the menu as “salted lime juice.” We imagined it would taste something like a margarita, but we were disgusted to find out it tasted more like tears…or the ocean…

Worn out by our gastronomic adventure, we tried to find our way back to the bus, which we eventually found when we could see through the crowds. Hyderabad is really not known for tourism, so the sight of white people is truly shocking for most locals. I’m slowly becoming accustomed to the pointing, and the occasional stranger trying to snap a picture of you, and the stares of disbelief that say “what is that ghostly figure?!” When we entered the bus the driver along with everyone around us was fascinated. “What country are you peoples coming from?” they wanted to know. A common request has been for American coins. I can’t yet tell if every Indian we’ve met has just been an avid coin collector, or if they’re just aware of the favorable exchange rate. Brenda’s friendliness immediately attracted the attention of a teenage girl who spoke a little English and wanted to know her email address and her phone number and everything about her. Later, an elderly woman took a strong liking to Brenda and me, but didn’t seem to catch on that neither of us speak Telugu. She told us, what I can only assume was her life story and a lot of grandmotherly wisdom while Brenda and I smiled and nodded.

The next day a group of 12 of us ventured to see a really fabulous Bollywood movie in a really enormous movie theater. (Rab ne Bana di Jodi--add it to your Netflix queue immediately.) If you've ever tried to organize 12 college students, you can imagine how disorganized this event was. If you have ever tried to organize anything in India then...well...you get the idea. The epic 4-hour singing and dancing extravaganza was quite an event, but the real highlight of the evening came right before the movie started when we went to the Domino's pizza next to the theater for dinner. We were all sitting around munching pizza when suddenly the whole ceiling shook, a huge ceiling tile crashed to the floor and out of the gaping hole swung a monkey's long tail. The creature frantically scurried back into the hole and through the roof never to be seen again. Everyone looked around for a minute, someone cleaned up the broken tile from the floor, and everything returned to normal.

Today was "Khojo Hyderabad," the final event of our study abroad orientation and I'm going to need a long time to recover from this strenuous day. It was essentially a scavenger hunt where we were divided into small groups and forced to race around the city going to assigned cultural sites. All of the sites they sent us to were really interesting, but the competitive pressure of the event didn't really allow us time to enjoy or explore any of the places we went. Excuse my lack of eloquence, but I really can't remember any details...we went to this weaving place that's run by this eccentric 80 year old woman and saw ladies working on looms. It was really interesting. Some day when I'm not in a city-wide race I'll go back there and provide you with actual information. Then we went to some museum that looked pretty interesting as I ran from room to room but we weren't allowed to take pictures. At the speed we were going, the pictures would have been a blur anyway. Then we went to some nice park...My team didn't win the race, so whatever.

And to conclude this very scattered post, here's a picture my friend took of me because my "dupatta" matched the flowers.