Stupid Internet

UGH! I dislike the internet. I have a massive massive post (it's 7 pages in Microsoft Word... single spaced. Yes, I'm really wordy, I'm sorry) and sweet pictures all sized up and ready to upload. However, I'm currently in the middle of the desert and even with my little wireless card, it barely works to check my email, let alone upload 40 pictures to a blog. I started to upload pictures for this post and it was going to take at least 20 minutes for each picture. I grew really frustrated and then gave up. I doubt the post would be as interesting minus the pictures so I'm not going to post it right now. If you are all up for reading a very wordy Krista filled 7 page essay, let me know and I'll post it. I'm going to try sitting on the roof next to the solar panels sometime soon to see if I get a better internet connection. If so, the blog will be updated with pictures. Again, if you want the massive post minus pictures I can give you that.....

Things are busy here but awesome. I love the work I'm doing. My phone receives decent reception if anyone would like to give me a call (I'm 10.5 hours in the future from you). I normally wake up around 7am my time and go to bed around midnight. My phone number - you'll have to look up the India area code - is 919680134273. I love love getting calls from people so if you have an international phone card or some minutes on your phone to burn there is one sun burnt Norwegian sitting in the middle of a desert who would love to hear from you!! I miss you all and give you all my love!

Lessons from India Pt. 2

I've just come home from my final day of class before I head off to my internship in a small village about 2 hours away from Jaipur. This marks the half way point of our program and in some ways I'm really excited to get out in the field, while at the same time it's going to be hard to face everything without the safety net of being surrounded by other Americans. My internship will be working on teaching village women how to build solar panels and then helping install them in their rural villages to be used for electricity in the home and to power their wells that are increasing in depth yearly (currently they are around 800 feet deep). I also will be working with water resources and well and drilling technology as well as helping develop new teaching methods that will incorporate their social traditions into the practices so they feel more comfortable with the new technology. I'm mighty excited about that! Before I head off on that adventure, my roommate Shiveta and I are leaving on Saturday for an extended visit to her grandparent's textile village in Punjab. We'll be visiting the Golden temple which is the largest Sikh temple in the world, watching the crazy ceremony that takes place nightly at the border crossing between Pakistan and India (the village we're going to is about 80 km from the border), doing some shopping, helping make Indian sweets for the upcoming holiday, and just chilling until taking the train back next week Thursday. I sadly must say good bye to my host family who I've grown to adore and then will be leaving next week Saturday for my internship.

I'm going to miss mommi-ji and her amazing cooking a lot!

That being said, there might not be another blog post for a week or more until I get settled into my new place. I do have a cell phone and love receiving calls (it doesn't cost me anything to receive them) if you would like to keep in touch. In the mean while, I'll be keeping my parents and Nathan updated on the status of my adventures so check with them if you are wondering.


Anyways.... On to the lessons from India:

Sometimes it is better to just not ask….

I’ve learned to stop trying to justify people’s actions around here because they will never make sense. Our host dad sings a song to the potted banana tree on our balcony every morning. Every Thursday he feeds a roti, a piece of sugar cane, and a small handful of raw yellow lentils to a street cow. I questioned him about this one day and he replied plainly: “because the astrologer told me to”. Unlike America where stores all have “no shoes, no shirt, no service” policies, here you are required to remove your shoes before entering a store, even a grocery. So yes, I do plod around barefoot between the rows of shampoo, noodles, and raisins during my visits to the grocery to pick up biscuits for chai time. Speaking of chai (and in my case either cups of mint tea or milk with sugar and cardamom), boiling hot cups of it are consumed three times a day, even in 100+ degree weather. My host mother has to have a pearl touch her skin at all times to help keep a leveled head. Before Shiveta and I came to India, mommi-ji and our host dad brought mustard oil daily to the Ganesha temple in hopes that we would have an enjoyable time with their family. Little children under the age of five wear heavy black eyeliner to make them look “ugly” so the evil spirit won’t be attracted to them. If you tell someone their little child is adorable or cute, the family freaks out and will blame you for anything wrong that happens to the child because evil spirits, known here as “the evil eye”, are now drawn to them. Instead, you can smile and make googly eyes but any mention of how wonderful they are brings almost panic. Perhaps you could call people here highly superstitious, but I think these oddities are more so a way to stay connected with their traditions in a world where modernity is fast approaching. It’s really enjoyable for me to watch as the people around me amalgamate thousand year old practices with the workings of a globalized world. People still bring their 2009 Mercedes complete with dual control air conditioning and mp3 players to the Ganesha temple to be covered in flowers and blessed by the elephant headed god on a daily basis. I think even in a more “modern” world, the people here, at least the ones I have come in contact with in Jaipur, will continue to find justification for their ancient traditions. Although they’re really quite odd at times, the traditions provide such a unique coloration to India that I really hadn’t expected to come across and I’ve come to enjoy them. Bring on the banana tree serenades!

Animals are smarter in India

There’s a pair of sparrows making a nest on the light fixture above our dinning room table. Whereas in America the birds that become accidentally trapped inside a house freak out, smash into windows, and basically have to be escorted out the door less they have a heart attack from being inside a human enclosure, birds here fly freely in and out the doors and windows.

Bird!

Our host family finds the fact that my real family keeps a pet bird in a cage to be beyond bizarre as there are always two or more little birds flitting somewhere around our apartment. On top of being free, my host family doesn’t have to feed them, and surprisingly I haven’t seen a single piece of bird poo anywhere: “you keep bird in cage?” “Yes we do, his name is Yoshi” “Oooh Yoshi be dumb bird to live in cage”…. “Yeah you’re probably right”

Gecko living in the dinning room

There is always an excuse to have a parade

India is over the top in many ways. Weddings are times to show off the money you have (or lack but are able to still borrow in manners way beyond your means) to your family, friends, neighbors, neighbors’ extended family, neighbors’ extended family’s friends, and neighbors’ extended family’s friends’ neighbor and their class of students from America. I’ve had the awkward pleasure of attending three weddings since coming to India.

Awkward required photo with the random bride and groom who I didn't know at all (they look thrilled don't they?) Host dad in center, Akshara on left.

February is definitely the popular month for weddings and there are no qualms held with randomly showing up at a wedding where you only vaguely know the bride and groom through a long chain of odd relations. India lacks the concept of a party crasher, so random appearances are welcomed and smiled upon if you can come up with some abstract way you’re connected with the family – “ah yes, the bride is my host dad’s mother’s sister-in-law’s brother’s daughter” which is actually the way I was connected to the 3rd wedding we attended.

"wedding crashers" with their ice cream at the third wedding

Bride at the second wedding completely draped in gold

Besides those weddings, I’ve had the pleasure (and sometimes experienced anti-pleasure when they choose to march at 3:30am) of witnessing almost every wedding held in Jaipur process past my balcony window on their way to and from the Ganesha temple. As talked about previously, Ganesha is the remover of obstacles and therefore should be consulted before doing any thing new, setting out on a journey, purchasing a new car, having a child, and of course before getting married. Because of this, the husband-to-be sits atop a horse

Groom riding a horse into the wedding

(or camel or elephant if you have more money) heading to and from the Ganesha temple before the actual ceremony takes place. He is flanked on either side by all his relatives carrying massive lanterns and dancing wildly to the music played by the marching band leading the procession. There are very specific auspicious days (reference previous statement about sometimes it’s better to just not ask why) when it’s best to be married. One of them was February 26th which the newspaper reported 900 weddings took place. Although I didn’t witness all 900, the entire day from 4:30am onwards was filled with parade like frenzy outside my window. There was marching band after marching band, and I had to carefully maneuver myself around elephant droppings, camels wearing ornate outfits, tuba players, and long strands of lights crisscrossing the road draped from various trees and poles in order to make my way to school.

Indians lack the ability to feel bad if their singing is terrible. Instead of recognizing this common occurrence by hiding their inabilities, they instead project their voices through microphones for the entire neighborhood to hear at all hours of the day and night. I have a video I took the other day at 2am of the “house party” going on across the street for a funeral but again, the internet is currently too slow for me to upload. For this one, they stayed up the entire night singing songs they made up on the spot with the accompaniment of a very loud electric organ and tabla drum. After listening to their out of tune howling until 5am, they finished up the party with, you guessed it, a parade. They hired out a marching band to blast peppy music as the deceased’s family and friends walked towards the temple. The only thing I can think to compare this to is a New Orleans jazz funeral only with Indian influenced marching band music (think Sousa in a sari).

And just for extra enjoyment, a few random pictures because all my videos won't load which would have made this post a lot more awesome, trust me!

Bangle shopping

Random sight seeing with Shiveta's Grandparents and our Mommi-ji around Jaipur

Our host dad's furniture store. He was completely beaming when he showed us(he's in the doorway)

Much love to you all!

Making fools of ourselves

I'm sorry the font sizes randomly change back and forth and to different sizes. Blogger is being really weird and I can't figure out what's going on.

Today, a blonde haired blue eyed American enlisted the help of an elephant headed god by feeding him small balls of sugar and butter to help her boyfriend with his data structures exam: globalization at its best. Although it seems as though my early morning feeding session with Ganesha did little to improve the outcome of Nathan’s test, the experience was actually really quite breath taking, albeit very strange from a western perspective. Our local Ganesha is awoken from his slumber around 6:45 am everyday. His sleeping blanket is removed; he is bathed, fed, offered flowers, and then dressed in his finest before being presentable for the thousands of people who daily flock to the temple 200 feet outside of my doorstep. I left my house around 6:50 and waited with 30 or so other worshipers for the curtain stopping our prying eyes from seeing the bathing Ganesha to be removed. The small crowd continued to grow as the temple priests brought out a hat and cape for Ganesha’s mount the rat (all Hindu deities have an animal “mount” or “vehicle” which they ride around on), and they pushed forward with their flowers and balls of sugar, Ganesha’s favorite treat, waving madly above their heads. The crowd was completely silent when the priest started pulling away the curtain. As the glistening red elephant god slowly came into view, everyone around me erupted into various songs of praise in numerous different keys. Some people fell to the ground, others raised their hands, some closed their eyes while others stared awe-inspired into their beloved God’s own eyes. I waited my turn to give my little bag of Laddhu to the priest who broke off a small portion of one of them, showed Ganesha my offering, symbolically fed him, and then returned them back to me turning my Laddhu into holy Prasad. I looked one last time into his oversized eyes before walking back through the metal detectors found at the doors of the temple in order to frantically put my shoes back on before losing them in the crowd. All in all, the experience was enjoyable, the fatty balls of sugar were surprisingly delicious, and I gained additional respect from my host parents who loved the idea I went to temple to pray for Nathan (“good wife be you”… ugh).

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, school has been growing increasingly more hectic as we near the end of our classroom session. We have multiple reports and tests on top of daily Hindi lessons and surprising culture shocks outside of school that seem to never cease. So yes, please accept my apologies for the lack of good posts with pictures lately. Lots and lots to recap so we shall jump right in, yes? Yes!

Last week Friday, our class took one of its weekly adventures to experience some of the wonders of Jaipur. This trip landed us in a large governmental sponsored artist village that could probably be classified as a slum. A vast majority of the people in this neighborhood have Indian passports to allow for their international musical endeavors; however, within India they are seen as nothing more than petty street musicians who can barely survive through begging and through following people with large parade like escapades until they pay out of embarrassment. It’s kind of a strange dichotomy as they are prized around the world for their musical abilities that capture what is “truly Indian” for Westerners but within India their music is seen as merely an annoyance. Both perspective aside, the neighborhood was colorful, packed with cheerful children all begging to be spoken to, and basically what I had stereotyped India to be.

Upon arrival, we were greeted with at least 70 laughing/singing/running/smiling/yelling/happy children as well as an entire Indian marching band and a man in a giant horse shaped suit.

Yes, it was a little awkward at first as I felt like we were being made fun of. Yet as they kept encouraging us to dance around and throw our hands in the air I came to realize that even if they were, it was still pretty fun to make fools of ourselves and really, when is the next time I will be able to dance to a private marching band surrounded by children in India? Probably not for a while.

Our class was divided into little groups and taken to various families who practiced specific arts to learn a little about their trade. We got to don the wonderful horse suit and jump around to tabla music.

We learned the art of puppets and how to do a typical Rajasthani dance.

And to try our best at sewing on the intricate handmade blankets that are sold around the various markets.

The children were gorgeous and overly excited to talk with us which made me really happy.

After school, another girl from my class, Alex, and I headed off to the magical hippy city of Pushkar. Because of our field trip, class ended a little later than normal, but we easily caught a rickshaw that brought us to the local bus station. This being our first bus experience, we were happy, or so we thought at the time, to be greeted by a man selling bus tickets to that went straight to Ajmer, the large city outside of Pushkar from which we could take a connecting city bus over the small mountain rage into Pushkar. Our happiness turned into a tiny bit of worrying as we sat on the bus and watched two hours tick by past the time the bus was supposed to depart, but being India, we assumed it would all work out. The bus pulled out of the station around 9:00pm and we settled in for the ride. After a two and a half hour ride, our worrying increased a little more as we were informed that the bus we were traveling on was not a governmental bus and therefore couldn’t actually enter Ajmer and would be dropping us off just outside of the city. Puskkar is only 10 km away from Ajmer and we thought we could easily pay for a rickshaw to drive us to the bus station or even all the way into town. As I hopped down the bus stairs, we were greeted with a completely dark night (it was around 11:45-midnightish), a small food stand full of rowdy truckers, and one rickshaw driver. I tried to keep calm as the realization that we were in the middle of nowhere with a large group of men in the middle of the night completely by ourselves started to sink in. I made sure I exaggerated my Hindi skills and we acted as confidently as possible as we were informed that the next bus for Pushkar was leaving 7:30am the following day and that rickshaws were not allowed to travel through the mountain pass. To cut a long and uncomfortable story short, we were badly ripped off by the rickshaw driver who mega-overcharged us to drive us to his cockroach infested friend’s guesthouse where they charged us triple the price they should have, tried to repeatedly flirt with us in very over the top manners, laugh at us, and then ask for a kiss before we slammed our hotel door in their face. Definitely not a night I had planned, but nothing too terrible happened. Although we felt that we were completely ripped off, it translated to only around $10 in American currency so we kept reminding ourselves of that fact and woke up to get on the earliest bus out of that messed up city.

In contrast to the stressful night in Ajmer, Pushkar is gorgeous, completely relaxing, and really a magical city. The government bus from Ajmer to Pushkar wound through terrifyingly high hill tops and mist filled valleys as we slowly worked our way through the small mountain range that separates the more vegetation filled eastern half of Rajasthan from the arid desert land of the west.


After descending into the small desert town, we walked it’s sleepy streets to the Pink Floyd hotel which our trusty Lonely Planet Guide book (which is also a complete “look at me I’m a stupid tourist” marker) informed us had breathtaking rooftop views of the city and delicious food for the homesick traveler. We gorged ourselves on banana pancakes and mango lassies while watching the sun rise above the mountains in complete peace and happiness.

Pushkar is known for two things: its abundance of over 400 temples including the only Brahma temple in the world, and its crazy appeal to the western dreadlocked hippie seeking enlightenment. For some strange reason, this small town has one of the highest concentrations of western tourists in Rajasthan, and all of them are clad in indo-hippie clothing, totting their corduroy saddle bags and nalgene bottles decorated with Bob Marley and pot leaf stickers. Because of being surrounded with a lot of ignorant tourists, we were not stared at, not haggled, not followed or pointed at, and in fact, because we were studying in India and could speak Hindi, we were really respected by the locals and treated even better. For the treatment alone, I would love to spend longer in the area. The shops are filled with more western influenced clothing and the restaurants carry food like hummus and avocadoes. It felt amazing to put my guard down and just relax for a few days.

After our breakfast at the Pink Floyd Hotel (really, the name alone portrays how over the top hippie influenced this little town is), we set up arrangements for our over night camel safari and then did some shopping before embarking into the desert. I love camels. I completely and probably irrationally love camels. I was unaware of this immense passion towards them before I arrived in India; however, after daily watching them plod down my street with their ridiculous grins, I have completely fallen for them. The camel safari is another one of those lifetime moments I will cherish for many years to come. We were first driven by jeep to a small camel farm on the outskirts of the town to be introduced to our camels and camel drivers.

Sedar, on the left, is my camel, Krishna is on the right

Sedar, my camel, is a young, ornery, opinionated, spunky camel who makes a lot of noise and definitely informs you when you aren’t making him happy. Although he does grin sometimes, and when he does, it’s completely awesome and made me overly happy.

Camel love

Krishna

Sedar

The desert of Rajasthan isn’t really the rolling sand dunes seen in Disney’s Aladdin, yet there are a few and lots of little hills and valleys worn away by intense monsoon rains and then long periods of drought. The camel drivers sat behind us making jokes and enjoying my ability to communicate back with them.

After trekking through the desert for 6 hours – basically a 6 hour private Hindi lesson, we joined with a vacationing Korean family of four and discovered that our humble camel drivers who have never set foot outside of Rajasthan, speak very good Korean (as well as French, German, Japanese, English, and a smattering of Indian dialects) simply because of conducting safaris. We rode a little further before stopping on a hill top to watch the sunset and settle down for a night of camping under the stars.
The camel drivers cooked up dahl (a lentil dish), a mixed vegetable curry mash, rice, and traditional Rajasthani roti over the camp fire. Instead of the normal flat roti I have grown accustomed to eating every day, these were in the shape of a ball. To cook, they were left in a pile of ashes buried below the desert sand to become crunchy on the outside while remaining delicious and soft inside.
We ate our food sitting on top of thick blankets next to the fire while listening to the playful joking of the camel drivers and soft tinkling of the bells on the camels’ feet. The piercing stars were breathtaking and I battled with my camel riding tired self as long as I could in order to see them for just a little long.
We were greeted with hot chai and biscuits in the morning and then headed on our way back through the desert in to Pushkar.

I thought this was too ridiculous not to post... check out the pom pom plus the scarf!

I do believe I love camels even more now. It was an amazing experience.

The rest of our time in Pushkar was spent temple hopping, shopping, eating, and doing a short lesson with Tibetan monks on meditation. Before leaving on Monday morning (Monday was a holiday here so no school for us!) Alex and I woke up early to climb up to a hilltop temple.

Wanting to be as authentic as possible, we removed our shoes and picked our way barefoot up the side of the hill for an hour before reaching the top. The views were beyond description.


Large panoramas of desert, city, and mountain range lay out before us and we sat for a good hour resting and taking it all in. Unlike the trip to Pushkar, we had learned our lesson and took government buses back home which were surprisingly fast and cheap. It was an utterly wonderful weekend. Completely wonderful and exactly the break I needed from the hectic life of Jaipur

Our family attended two additional weddings this week but I’m going to be doing another blog post to describe those sometime soon as we’re heading off to see a bollywood in five minutes or so. Thanks so much for your patience with my posts and all the lovely lovely comments. They make really happy! You really have no idea how much it means to me to hear from you all. I hope your weeks have been wonderful and I miss you dearly!

Much love!!

Okay one sari photo because I want to be vain….