SHIMALAYAS

Hey kids, so I'm heading for Shimla early tomorrow morning yay! The weather is supposed to be beautiful and even a little chilly at night, what a novelty! Even though this week was only 3 days it felt sooo long because we had so many things to do and so much work ahh.

So I just wanted to reflect on Amritsar a little bit before Shimla pushes it out of my memory.  The Golden Temple was one of the most stunning historical sites that I have ever been to.  Not only was it impressive because of it's architectural beauty, but it was also such a haven of peace in the midst of such a crowded city.  I felt so contented and calm, especially when we visited at night.  It is still crowded, but I think it is a quieter sort of crowded, as it is very much in use as a place of religious worship for Sikhs.  When we visited at night, I actually sat and sort of meditated for a little bit because it was so nice.  I felt very complete there.  I think part of the good feeling came from the fact that there is a large pool of water in the middle of the entire complex.  The actual temple is in the center of the water, which is surrounded by pillared halls that are completely white.

Anyways, I've known for awhile that I'm a water baby and that I feel most at home in and next to large bodies of water (preferably oceans or lakes), but every time that I go away from water and then come back to it again it fully hits me how much better I feel with water.  We are pretty landlocked here, so even just this sort of holy lake really re-awakened me to my need of water.

Another cool thing about the temple is the kitchen.  The temple complex is always open, 24/7, including a giant kitchen and dining area which can fit something like 6,000 people. All of the people who work in the kitchen are just people (mostly if not all Sikhs) who are volunteering there. It was really amazing to see this mass production of food, made and given for free.  I mean, what a great thing to do.

Amritsar is right on the border of India and Pakistan, and is actually one of the only safe crossing zones into Pakistan. So while we were there we went to this flag lowering ceremony at the border, aka I saw Pakistan. Apparently in around 2007 Pakistan and India decided that they were going to try to be at least civil to one another officially, so this ceremony was established in which the border crossing guards of both nations lower their flags simultaneously and shake hands at sunset.  The part which came as a surprise to me was that its sort of like an Indian 4th of July celebration.  Literally people sell popcorn and little plastic Indian flags and flag-colored armbands right before the border.  You get to this gate through which you can see Pakistan and it is just PACKED with people (on the Indian side at least, not nearly as many people on the Pakistan side).  Both countries are playing very loud music and everyone is waving flags and shouting HINDUSTAN or PAKISTAN. Then the actual ceremony starts and guards from both sides go through this elaborate series of steps and high-kicks in order to walk to the gate. Finally the flags are lowered together and then everyone shouts some more and leaves. It was just so bizarre because it was like a nationalistic athletic competition between the two nations. It was really a spectacle. Here's a video of the India side before the ceremony started:

So tired and getting up early, so to be continued!
नमसतॆ

Amritsar #1

So I meant to write a long blog post today, but it's already 11:30 so I'm gonna just give a quick snapshot here of things I need to remind myself to write about later. So I guess this is more for me than everyone else but whatever...
1. The word snap/ taking snaps
2. Khalsa College
3. Trains/train food/jumpin mangoes
4. Bhangra
5. Border Crossing Ceremony/Pakistan/crowds/nationalism/flags
6. Golden Temple @ night/day/atmosphere/giant kitchens
7. Water
8. Sikhism
9. Kids
10. Feet/shoes
11. Chilis/eggplant/more kitchens
12. Cab driver
13. Clothing/consumerism/collections
14. Pictures
15. Knees

Okay well hopefully this will get written at some point...Lots of love to everyone! I had a fantastic weekend in Amritsar and saw Pakistan and didn't feel the earthquake that struck NE India, so all is well :D

Crazy Times

So this is for everyone who I have utterly failed to keep in touch with--I am so so sorry I haven't responded to emails recently because things have been so crazy all the time with classes and field trips and transportation and homestay and sleep (which I won't be getting very much of tonight), but we have a surprise day off on Monday, so hopefully I will get to catch up on communication and homework and Hindi then!

Updates:
Headed to Amritsar tomorrow bright and early! Have to wake up in less than five hours...
We are going to see the Golden Temple, which is supposed to be very beautiful! It's a very important site for Sikhs in Punjab (close to Pakistan actually I think). So at least I will be able to catch some z's on the five hour train ride.

Headed to Shimla next weekend, aka old summer capital of of the British raj! Really REALLY excited to get out of Delhi for a little, especially the heat. We're looking at weathers in the low 70s and Himalayan foothills. THIS IS A BIG DEAL PEOPLE. There are 7 of us going, so it should be a good time and relaxing hopefully! Lonely Planet was helpful for planning.

Decided on a general topic for my independent study project (which I will be doing all of November!)! Even more exciting! I will be researching the work and writings of the Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil, known as the Frida Kahlo of India! She was a pioneer of modernism in Indian art and painted beautifully sad Indian villagers in Shimla (!!!) and South India.  She unfortunately died at the age of 29 of an undiagnosed illness, making her even more interesting.  I think I'm strangely drawn to tragedy. I could potentially also be doing a painting component to my ISP as well, but not sure yet. So in November I will probably travel to Shimla again or the South! Both sound like good options to me and I'm just really excited because she seems to have had a unique outlook on the world and her place in it, and was able to express herself effectively through her art.  I'd recommend people google her if they are interested!

On a side note, eggplant is slowly becoming my favorite food. Actually it's very quickly becoming my favorite food. I just can't get enough of it here!

Also, forgot to mention in my last post that we use firecrackers to deter the monkeys from the program center roof. We discovered this one day when we were eating lunch on the roof and there was a monkey that was getting a little too close for comfort, and this deafening (literally--could not hear out of one ear for a couple of minutes) noise went off. Pretty sure most people thought it was a bomb. The chef keeps a big stock of them though. Can't get enough of the monkeyz.

We heard a beautiful Indian Classical music concert last night.  It was a troup of 6 musicians, and 5/6 played tabla, which is a type of Indian drum (Suchi, is this what you played? If so, you've been holding out on me). It was incredible. First the lead drummer and the sirangi player did a song together, which was very beautiful but in more of a quiet way. I think a lot of us were listening peacefully with our eyes closed, but then the second song started and all five drummers began playing in unison all at once with the most powerful sound, and it was impossible to keep your eyes closed.  Watching them play is more like watching a dance than watching simply an instrumental performance.  They used their whole bodies to play their instruments, and their fingers moved faster than I've ever seen anyone's fingers move. They also showed so much joy while they played, with huge smiles, sometimes unable to contain how pleased they were and emitting cries of approval.  Their music was very clearly their passion and they were a privilege to watch and listen to.

Here's an example of tabla, but the players are not as vivacious in this, but gives a good example of how fast they play. Also, every note on a tabla has a vocalized sound that goes with it, so tabla players literally have their own language that they can communicate in (equally as quickly!), which is almost more impressive than the music itself. I will try to find a good example later.

Gotta try and get at least 4 hours of sleep. So much love.

Monkeys

So, as I mentioned in my last post, there are monkeys that are inhabiting the area around the SIT program center rooftop.  Apparently this has been a problem for years, but only in the last two years has it gotten especially bad.  So what do you do when your monkeys are too hot to handle? Why, you hire a BIGGER monkey of course!! Yes folks, SIT is hiring a man and his monkey to come chill on the roof so the monkey can beat his chest and hoot his claim to his territory.  Apparently this is a fairly common (and cushy) job for a man and a monkey.  They just hang around for a couple of months to ward off the other monkeys and get fed and paid pretty well.  So soon I will get to actually meet a monkey, or rather, I will be formally introduced to one.

I told this to Sunita-ji and she proceeded to tell us how naughty monkeys (bandar) are.  In the district she used to live in, there used to be a gang of about 20 of them that would terrorize the neighborhood, breaking into homes and raiding the fridge, throwing eggs and tomatoes all over the house and eating all of the sweets.

Oh what different lives we lead.

Madam, let us do it in the back.

Okay first week in India officially over! Sooo much has happened already, but I'm always so busy that it's hard to find the time to sit down and write a blog post!

Probably the most important thing this week was that I started my homestay on Sunday! I am living with a very sweet Indian woman named Sunita, but as a term of respect I call her Sunita-ji.  She is a widow, but has one son who is 28 years old and actually lives in D.C.! I'm not entirely sure what he does, but I think he is a software engineer? Definitely something to do with software. Anyways, her English is very good and she is incredibly sweet.  She is sort of quiet right now, but everyday I think we all (there is another girl on my program also staying with her) open up a little bit more.  I was sort of expecting a loud and large Indian family, so it's definitely a different experience, but I think it's actually sort of nice to have a little bit of quiet in such a wild city. To talk about the city a little bit, it's CRAZY! I am having trouble finding the words to describe it.  Delhi is sort of similar to the larger cities in China, like Shanghai or Tianjin, in that there is definitely a huge discrepancy between the modern and the traditional/the middle and lower classes, but the contrast is even more extreme.  It is truly a city of opposites.  Even just in my immediate neighborhood, there are dirt roads with huge slabs of brick and rock in them (making it impossible to traverse them by vehicle at a speed greater than 5 miles per hour) connected to very busy paved highways.  I live in a middle-class gated community, but there is a slum literally a block and a half down the road. There are people walking around in formal business attire and people wearing traditional Indian clothing of varied quality. It's really very interesting.  I was talking with one of the program faculty, Guy-ji, about modernization in India, and he said that just ten years ago there were barely any cars on ANY of the roads, and now it can take 1.5 hours to get to my house from the program center during rush hour (especially if it's monsoon-ing) when it should only take 15-20 minutes.  Guy-ji said that India is developing so quickly that the government just can't keep up. He said this applies mostly to Delhi though, and probably Mumbai, and that once you leave the major cities the rest of India is just as it used to be.  China is definitely much more modernized.

More about the city: the animals! There are TONS of dogs wandering around everywhere. I'm actually very glad that I made the choice to get the rabies vaccine.  Actually all of the dogs have been very tame and calm and not at all aggressive, but just the shear number of them is intimidating. I have to consciously try to not walk into them. It's quite sad since there are so many of them without homes, but most of them actually do not look overly malnourished, just dirty, so that's good I guess? And some people do have them as pets.  I've seen a number of people out walking their dogs.  Okay so that was the dog section, but there are also cows, monkeys, birds, and dragonflies! And normal flies. And mosquitoes. I haven't seen too many monkeys, but today there were three by the program center roof, and one of them had a baby!!! So cute. Apparently you are not supposed to look a monkey in the eye because they are mischievous and will attack you, but it's very difficult not to stare back when the monkey is staring at you, sort of like how it's hard not to stare back when the people here stare...Also there are swarms of dragonflies and flocks of hawks everywhere. Yes, hawks. Strange.  I have at least three mosquito bites to date despite my religious application of toxic deet (which is probably worse for me than malaria, Dengue, and Chikungunya combined. Chikungunya, for those of you who don't know, is a disease that just recently came over from East Africa and apparently the symptoms are a fun combination of malaria and Dengue!).  Here's to hoping those malaria meds stay strong! The flies are also very annoying, and the ants are huge! No giant cockroaches yet though, looking forward to my first encounter with them.

So back to the homestay. I live with Sunita-ji and Natalie, and we live in a two-story house (which is not true of all the students on the program) with beautiful white marble floors (which is apparently in everyone's house, even those staying in two-room houses--maybe because marble is cool? and also white is easy to spot the dirt?). Downstairs there is a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen which are all connected, and then there is a door to a bedroom and a bathroom, which I think maybe used to be the son's room. Natalie and I are in a room upstairs with two twin beds, a desk, and a door to a balcony, which has a screen so we get some fresh air at night.  There is no air conditioning, but we have a nice ceiling fan, and except for my first night here the sleeping temperature has not been too bad.  It has been raining a lot, which apparently does not always happen this late, so it's actually cooler than normal I think, though incredibly humid! Haven't done laundry yet because I want to make sure my clothes will actually be able to dry! Luckily I've purchased a few Indian kurta (I feel like I blend in more..probably false but maybe at least people appreciate that I'm trying? It's much easier to get a rickshaw when wearing a kurta) so I can last a few more days.

Probably the most important things to mention about Sunita are that she paints and (more importantly) is an EXCELLENT cook. Amazing. Not that I have eaten anything here that I don't like (though my stomach does not always like things), but her food is really impeccable. We usually have two dishes each night between the three of us and then chapati. She makes everything herself, including the chapati, which are actually surprisingly easy to make--will definitely bring these home. They are just water and wheat flour! She is Hindu and veg, so we've had delicious baingan bartha (Punjabi style eggplant), aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower), daal, paneer, and paratha, amoung other things whose names I cannot remember.  Unfortunately I'm so distracted by the food that I consistently forget to take pictures of it, but I have all of September and October to remember! Sunita-ji has also promised to teach me how to make things, and I hover around her in the kitchen watching her make things, so I will be bringing home many recipes. I also signed up for cooking as my practical study, so I will have 7 cooking classes to look forward to! Sunita-ji has this beautiful tray with little bowls full of brightly colored spices, which I also need to remember to take a picture of and learn the names of the spices. The food here never disappoints.

So I've already written so much, but there's still so much more ah! We went to a Bollywood film called Bodyguard on Tuesday.  It was completely ridiculous, as expected. A wealthy girl's parents are worried that she will be kidnapped while at school and sold into prostitution in Thailand (??) so they hire a bodyguard for her who has an overweight sidekick who wears great shirts like, "I'm in shape, round is a shape too" and "Six pack coming soon." The girl is annoyed about having a bodyguard follow her around so she of course decides to call his cell phone and pretend to be a secret admirer, because that's what people usually do. Then she ends up falling in love with him but for unclear reasons she can't tell him. They encounter the bad guys and almost die, but then he runs to the train station.  Her best friend runs after him and pretends she was the one calling him, and they get married and have a child.  Five years later the best friend kills herself because she is depressed about what she did, and leaves a notebook for the child explaining things.  Then Bodyguard and the kid return to wherever the main girl is and it's magically okay that Bodyguard's wife died and he loves the original girl and it's a happy ending. Quality film with some quality singing, dancing, and jokes.

I RODE MY FIRST RICKSHAW. And many since. IT IS CRAZY. like you are in this tiny, three-wheeled vehicle made basically of thin sheet metal with no windows or doors and you go along on Delhi roads (which are full of potholes and bricks and mammoth puddles during monsoon) at around 40-50 mph, weaving between buses, cars, motorcycles, cows, dogs, pedestrians, and other rickshaws with lots of honking. There basically are no traffic rules. People will usually stop for lights on main roads, but many roads have no names (including heavily traveled ones).  The lanes are not really even guidelines for where you should be so much as what you should attempt to remain somewhat parallel to. It's rare to see any sort of vehicle that actually drives in a lane. So it's a pretty exciting commute to and from school. Actually it's very exhilarating (and can be nice to have the wind blowing over you as you relinquish all traffic-related fears). I haven't remembered to snap a pic yet, so here is what a rickshaw looks like.  You always have to bargain with the drivers to get the price it really costs to get to where you want to go, since all the meters in Delhi are broken or rigged.

We started real classes on Wednesday, and we already have so much work! But the subjects are interesting, and Hindi is so much fun! But lots to memorize! Still struggling to read the script. Individual letters are no problem, the hard part is stringing them together to actually read the words...

On Wednesday there was a bombing on the steps of the Supreme Court, which is very sad news. I think the official count that I last heard was 9 killed, 42 injured, but that might have increased by now.  Our professors have asked us to lay low this weekend with the upcoming 10th anniversary of 9/11. On Wednesday night there was a 4.2 earthquake about 100 km from where we are in Delhi, so I felt that right when I was going to sleep! I actually wasn't sure what it was since I wasn't aware that there are earthquakes in Delhi, but apparently they come every 2-3 years, though I don't think they are very big.  It was startling, as we are on the 2nd floor and everything was shaking fairly violently! Afterwards all of the birds outside started chirping loudly, not common at 11:30 PM.

Well this is incredibly long.  I know there was more I wanted to say but I think I'm too tired right now! Oh, I signed up for yoga (which happens to be with a teacher who's fairly famous in India?) which we've had the past two mornings at 7 and it has been great.  It's nice to have something that's sort of familiar in a strange place. I'm also starting to love my group and feel like I'm getting to know them all a lot better. I finally got my Indian phone to work, so more exciting things will hopefully happen soon! Also, we have a travel weekend coming up soon and a group of us are hoping to head to the hill station Nainital in the Himalayan foothills, famous for its beautiful lake.  We have to check out train tickets, but hopefully it will work! If not, we might head for Shimla.

I will try to post again soon, lots of love to all!
Mujhe Hindustaan pasand hai (not sure if this is right)
Clare

AHHH

So much has happened in just a few short days.  Bombing, Bollywood, earthquake, homestay, classes, food ah! I'm super tired so I can't elaborate now, but here's a tasty tidbit for next time: Experience the wonder of Bodyguard:

Jetlag

Okay so I've really only been in Delhi for two full days so far, but I feel like I've been here for so long already! It's so weird. Everything is still very surreal.  So I'm too lazy to write out a full blog post but there are some interesting things that I want to note.

Two days ago we went to Humayun's Tomb, which was the tomb built by the great Mughal Emperor Akbar (literally meaning "great") for his father Humayun.  It's important because Humayun had actually lost the Mughal empire in India and had just won it back before his death when Akbar took over, so the tomb was meant to indicate to the Indian rulers that the Mughals were there to stay this time.  It was very beautiful with deep blue skies while we were there but also incredibly hot! I think that though northern India at this time is around DC summer temperatures numbers-wise, it is actually much hotter since the humidity is very high all the time and it does NOT cool off at night. And I think the sun is hotter here right now. I mean, we are closer to the equator.  So here is a picture of Humayun's temple:

So that was pretty sweet but by the end of walking around we had all finished our waters and were swimming in sweat (yum) and then road back with 9 of us stuffed into this van which claimed to have AC but it didn't really work but the driver refused to let us open the windows. Here's the back seat which is really meant to seat two:

There is actually another person sitting next to Dylan there on the right, but I was too close in proximity to get that in there. So we're all pretty tight now I would say.

We've had our Devanagari script exam and apparently we all got 100s so that's a good sign, though I don't think we actually all got everything right...but our teachers all seem really amazing and are very impressive people on paper so it should be a good semester. Also, the food at the program center is amazing, and they actually serve us salads and raw fruits and veggies that are safe to eat which is incredibly exciting! And the chai is the best I've ever had, and probably will ever have. Don't think it could get any better. Actually all the food I've had here has been really good. All the faculty and students went out to dinner at a nicer restaurant last night, and the food was superb. I remembered to take a picture at the last minute, so they had already taken away some dishes but here we go:

The big pot (it's huge and could serve like 6 people but we were sharing it between two of us...mistake...) is Murgh Makhani, so chicken in a creamy tomato-based sauce with incredible spices. Then there is garlic naan which was also the best I've had, tandoori paneer, and there also used to be stuffed tandoori mushrooms but they took them away right before I snapped the photo. Also, the hands on the left are being dipped in warm rose water to clean and sweeten them! Trying to perfect my eating-with-hands skills. Also had the best mango lassi I've ever had, it actually had a tartness to it and wasn't ridiculously sweet or heavy like most of them in the US. Okay well gotta pack for my homestay! I just realized that the title of this post is jetlag and I didn't say anything about it, so let me just say it's been rough, especially yesterday, but today I managed to sleep until 5AM HOORAY so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Lots and lots of love to all,
Namaste
Clare

DELHI

I AM FINALLY IN DELHI. After 24 hours and 7000+ miles we arrived in Indira Gandhi National Airport.  I flew fr/ Dulles to Newark in one of those tiny planes with three seats per row and then sat in the Newark airport for a really long time, like 5 hours. Mostly I just sat in Starbucks and tried to walk around a little.  Then I went to the gate and met one of the girls in my program named Louise :D and I think we were both happy to have someone else there.  I'd say predominantly the flight was Indians, but there were a few Westerners, mostly older.  I was actually sitting next to this really sweet couple who live in LA, but the wife was born in and grew up in Mexico and the husband was Indian. They have two older daughters so they were very kind to me. The wife, Ofelia, asked me if my mom cried when I left and said that she still cries when her daughters leave or she leaves her mom.  The husband, Jesse, kept saying he was just like me in that India was a foreign country to him because even though he grew up there, he left during college and didn't go back for ten years and now, though he goes back fairly often, he always feels behind.  He kept saying that he couldn't tell me very much, but then he would go into long speeches about Indian history (when they found out I was a history major and the wife joked that he didn't know any Indian history), or about the people, or about his experiences, just to end with, "I can't give you advice, but this is what I can tell you" and then he would continue on a new topic.  They are here until September 12, and they gave me their contact info for both their Indian cell and their American number.  So I'm really happy that they were so friendly! And I thought it was really cool that English was the second/third language for both of them but they were married and so in love.
So Louise and I got to the airport and were really overwhelmed and then we got our bags and I changed money and there were three people waiting outside for us and they didn't really speak English so it was pretty intense and we went out into the street to wait for our car that was being sent for us (except for we didn't really know what was going on) and then we got in this random car! But first, let me just say that I LOVE the smell.  I mean I'm sure there are tons of bad smells, but the smell at the airport was just so rich and spicy and smokey and golden.  So we got in the van and drove through the streets for about 30-40 minutes (with no idea where we were going btw, we got these orientation packets in a little canvas bag along with half a cheese sandwich and an apple and a banana, and the calender says that homestays were supposed to start today, so we didn't know whether we would be going straight there or to the Ashram). On the streets there were a lot of people walking around under the trees that line the sidewalks.  Most of them were males.  I did see a few groups of women, but not many. All of the women were in traditional Indian dress.  There were also tons of dogs, some on leashes and some not. So we got to the Ashram and checked in and there is one other girl, Kerrie, here right now because her original flight was canceled too so she just got here yesterday night.  She was really helpful and explained everything that was going on to us! We and people who haven't arrived yet are staying in the Ashram until Sunday. Everyone else is at their homestays.  We are continuing orientation tomorrow and I think going to Humayun's Tomb!  So excited! Going to shower and probs go to sleep pretty soon, so peace out! Love!

Namaskar