Oh, India...

There are quite a few things I've realized in the past couple weeks.

First of all, I need to have more patience than I ever thought I would. Nothing in India operates in a way that I'm used to, and it can be supremely frustrating. For example: The supermarket near my neighborhood. The first time I went there, they put one's groceries in plastic bags, like any supermarket, as you pay for them, so you have something to carry them home in. When I went back last weekend, there were signs up on the door saying to bring a bag from home, as they were no longer handing out plastic bags - to be in compliance with indian government regulations. Cool, environment-friendly government policies. The guard opens the door for me, I start to walk in, and he grabs at my bag, which I had brought from my house without prior knowledge of this rule. He informs me that I must leave my bag outside the entrance in one of the cubbies beside the door. I'm a little confused; at first I thought he wanted to search my bag for weapons, which is standard pretty much anywhere I go here. But no, I'm just not allowed to bring my bag inside the store, period. So I leave my bag, get my groceries, pay, collect them awkwardly in my arms, shuffle them around to hand my receipt to the guard INSIDE the store for inspection, walk outside, get my bag, and dump my groceries in it.

Is that REALLY necessary, India? Really?

More frustrating to me is that my classes still aren't sorted out. IES classes that they told us could be shifted in terms of time are apparently not at all flexible, the commute to Delhi University is absurd, and the local universities are not at all conducive to casual students trying to take classes in multiple departments. Essentially, it's completely chaotic. At least I know that I'll be getting credit for two electives towards my anthropology major, which is really all I need. I just hate not having all the details figured out after being here for three and a half weeks.

Other, not-negative things:

Reading the papers here is...interesting. Also sometimes frustrating, but not in a way that really bothers me. I just think it's odd when for a few days a week the "World" section of the Hindustan Times and the Times of India are only one page each. There's a big world out there with a lot of stuff going on - they can find news to fill up at least two pages. It's also funny how seriously Bollywood and cricket are; stories about Indian celebrities appear alongside news regarding the Mumbai bombings, the Prime Minister's recent surgery, or Obama's address to Muslim nations. The entertainment sections constitute a significant portion of the two aforementioned newspapers in addition to the stories interspersed with real news. The thing I really enjoy about Indian newspapers, though is that they truly are an expression of the freedom of the press. They are open and direct about their biases, and each newspaper contains stories and op-eds from the full spectrum of opinion, from the most conservative to the most radical. Moreover, they openly question official reports and government decisions when necessary. For example, on Monday morning there was a front-page story about Indian police gunning down to Pakistani "terrorists" the night before. The official report said that they were Pakistani terrorists heading to Delhi to attack the Republic Day parade on Monday. (Republic Day is the holiday celebrating the adoption of the constitution of India, and there is a gigantic parade that has made navigating Delhi difficult in the past week or so due to roads being closed.) They claimed that these two men had opened fire first and that the police shot in self defense after a high-speed car chase that lasted approximately 20 minutes. The newspaper had a sidebar highlighting some odd features about the official version of the story, including the following:

- If they were on a terrorist mission, why were these two men carrying legitimate Pakistani passports?

- If there was such a long chase and such immediate danger, why didn't the police call for backup from one of the three police stations they passed in the course of the chase?

- If the police were shooting in self defense, why did the police cars have no bullet holes in them? And why was the only injury to the police a minor wound in the leg to one policeman while each of the "terrorists" had at least four shots in him?

It's refreshing to see mainstream media questioning instead of passively accepting what's presented to them. They don't make unwarranted accusations, just raise legitimate questions.

On a different note, several of us went to a market near Delhi University this afternoon, in North Delhi. It's a completely different feel from the markets in south Delhi: people weren't yelling at us/following us trying to get us to look at things, weren't shoving things under our noses, and weren't telling us ridiculous prices for items we knew should be cheap. That was also refreshing.

The metro is awesome. From what some of the other students have said, it's very similar to the Japanese metro: clean, bright, spacious, fast. It's the cleanest place I've been in Delhi, including, I think, my own residence. It's wonderful. I'm also really impressed with how efficient India can be...when it wants to. Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games in the fall of 2010, and so the city is undergoing massive construction, renovation, and general "cleaning up". But one of these projects is a massive expansion of the metro system (which again, causes traffic problems and whatnot). But there is visible progress all over the city, and they've laid a lot of tracks for it, all of which has apparently been accomplished in the last six months. The director of the program here said she wouldn't be surprised if it was done at the end of this calendar year. Which is astounding to me after seeing how Massachusetts operates when it comes to simple things like filling in potholes. It's pretty cool. Although I guess the sheer number of available workers probably has something to do with it.

India is certainly not boring, that's for damn sure. As frustrated as I've been trying to deal with a lot of things, I'm still having a lot of fun. The weather's been fantastic, the food is delicious, I am actually excited about the classes (I think and hope) I am taking, and there is so much going on all the time, everywhere. It's exciting and interesting and exhausting, but I love it. It's impossible not to get engaged in your surroundings here, particularly when taking cycle rickshaws or auto rickshaws as transportation. Everything is just so...close. And unavoidable. 

Tomorrow I'm making the commute to Delhi University on my own, which includes the following steps:

1. Walk from the residence to the main road, either to the bus stop or to catch an auto.

2. Take the bus or auto to the metro station.

3. Take the metro to the end of the line.

4. Jump on a cycle rickshaw.

5. Arrive at campus, find the proper classroom.

Oh, India. Even just getting from place to place is complicated. :)

Photographs

I now have a Flickr Pro account, which means unlimited uploads! (Hooray belated birthday presents! Thanks to Mom & Dad!) So expect more pictures in the next couple days...including some goofy inauguration silliness.

Also, that means if you want to download a photo to view at your leisure minus internet connection or to print out or to do whatever it is that people do with photographs, you also have to option to download the original file - that is, the size that the picture was when I took it instead of the tiny compressed version that the free Flickr account gives you. (Just click on the photo you want, then at the top of the photo there should be a little button that says "All sizes".)

Pretty cool, right? I thought so.

Not much else to report...I've been doing a bunch of mundane but necessary things I won't bore you with. Been walking in the park across the street, though, which is nice. Also, the temperature got to 80 today. :)

Agra, Bharatpur, Inauguration, oh my!

Round two of updates.

So Saturday morning we check into the hotel, chill for about an hour, then are off and running to the Tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah (this guy was the grandfather of Shah Jahan's wife, and lots of people think this was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal). That was a beautiful place - the main building had this fantastic detail work (lattice work carved from single blocks of stone, inlay - picture on flickr), and it's right on the banks of the Yamuna River, where you can look out and see the water buffalo.  (See left. Those black dots are water buffalo.)

Here's a view of the main building from the side:

As we were getting ready to leave, Mark, one of the boys in my group, starts wandering off toward the side (towards a wall, as the whole complex is enclosed by a stone wall about 8 feet high). I followed him, and then I saw why: there were monkeys that seemed like they were literally crawling out of the wood (stone?) work. They were playing in the grass that was flooded from the overflow of the flower beds that were being watered:

Next we went back across the river and around town to Mahtab Bagh, the Moonlight Garden. It's an extension of the Taj Mahal garden, across the Yamuna River from the Taj. It used to have all kinds of night-blooming flowers in it so Shah Jahan could wander around at night and seethe Taj Mahal while surrounded by the sights and smells of these flowers. Which must have been phenomenal. But anyway, back to modern day. We walked through the garden over to the bank of the river, where I saw this boy walking towards us (on the other side of a barbed wire fence) with a camel! Of course, me being me, I decide I want to ride this camel - it's already saddled and everything. So I hop down from the wall, talk to the kid, crawl through the barbed wire fence, negotiate a price, and get one of the other girls from the group to ride with me. And someone got a fantastic picture of Erin and me riding a camel on the banks of the Yamuna River with a foggy Taj Mahal in the background. Definitely one of the highlights of the weekend.

It's well after noon at this point, and since we've been up so long we make a quick stop for lunch, then head to Agra Fort, still waiting for the fog to clear before we go to the Taj Mahal. Forts here are entire cities, not just fortresses housing military, so they're pretty giant. We didn't stay too long here, and it was really crowded, but we got to see where Shah Jahan was "imprisoned" by his son. His only request was to be able to see the Taj Mahal from his prison, which he can. But this is what he got for an actual area of confinement (view from inside of fort on left and view of the outside on the right):

...an absolutely beautiful, lavish multi-chamber complex, complete with fountain (that inset area on the floor). I wouldn't mind being a prisoner in that.

The other really cool thing about Agra Fort is that is has this awesome double moat around it. The outside one was a wet moat, filled with water and alligators and snakes and stuff. The inner one was a dry moat with lions and tigers. Which is to say that anyone who tried to attack any way other than parachuting into the center was probably certifiably insane.

While we were at Agra Fort, the sun actually started to peek out, so we rushed over to the Taj Mahal - which, it being a Saturday and the weather just clearing up, was intensely crowded. It's so pretty. And one hell of a way to commemorate a wife.

I managed to be a celebrity in the midst of all those people, with someone asking to take my picture every few minutes, and some not bothering to ask at all. I didn't really mind taking pictures with people - we as a group had been warned that we would probably be asked when we were at the Taj - but it bothered me greatly when the same group of guys asked me at three different points in my walk through the area and took a half a dozen photos each time, and also when people started snapping pictures without asking at all. Not something I've had to deal with before, and it almost started detracting from my enjoyment of this spectacular place. So instead of letting my day get ruined, I started taking pictures of my friend Sam doing 

gymnastics on one of the platforms in front of the Taj....We're not typical tourists, most of the girls in this group. We were dancing on the lawns at the Tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah, riding camels where camels probably weren't supposed to be, and Sam was doing gymnastics at the Taj. Although that was somewhat legitimate; the photographer who took our group photo asked her to. And I got some fantastic shots of her. Anyway, we stayed at the Taj Mahal until the sun was setting, which was gorgeous, and then we went back to the hotel, where they handed us some money and told us we were on our own for dinner. I ended up a couple blocks away from the hotel at some weird little restaurant with a very eclectic menu (macaroni and cheese, chow mein, and biryani, just to give a sample of items), but it was very good. My friend Sydney and I convinced them we seriously liked authentically spicy food, so they made our biryanis Indian-spicy, not American-spicy. Oh, and the six of us were the only people in the restaurant until three Russian men came in when we were halfway done eating. It was a little strange.

Sunday morning we drove to Uttar Pradesh, once again through a very foggy morning and

picturesque countryside. I wish we had had some time to walk around not in a city for a little while...it feels very dream-like knowing it's daytime but not being able to discern objects in the distance, or being able to see isolated objects amid the fog, like a tree or a hut. It's quite calming, and definitely a welcome break from the noise and dirt and chaos of Delhi. It's a shame that I had to experience it behind the window of a bus, but I guess it's better than nothing at this point. I know we're going on a "rural excursion" at some point in the not-so-distant future, so I'm sure I'll get that same sort of calm there, wherever there happens to be.

En route to Bharatpur, we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, another fort, built by the emperor Akbar in 1569 and abandoned just fifteen years later because they ran out of water. (There are a few pictures on my flickr page of Fatehpur Sikri.) We were there before the tourist rush, so we got to climb around on our own for a while, which was really nice....a lot of it has been built up/preserved, but there are some sections more or less in ruins that were fun to explore. The buildings were all made of red sandstone and, like most of the other places built and inhabited by Moghul emperors, ornate and pretty.

We then continued on to Bharatpur, where we spent the afternoon in the Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a giant bird sanctuary spanning 29 square kilometers. We were supposed to go through it by cycle rickshaw, but at lunch we were informed there were other options, so nearly all of us opted to go by bicycle. In addition to thousands of birds (pelicans, storks, cranes, hawks, parakeets, ducks, and many many others whose names I do not know), I also came across lots of cows, a three-foot-lizard, a whole village of monkeys, some blue bull antelope, a jackal, and a wild pig. It was quite the adventure. We spent the night in the Ashok Forest Lodge inside the park, which was a little creepy because the jackals sounded like they were right outside our room. But when I went down to breakfast early the next morning, there was an antelope and two peacocks right outside the door to the dining room, just kind of hanging out on the patio. 

These guys were following me around for a few minutes when I was going by all the monkeys. They're pretty much the most adorable creatures I've ever seen.

So Monday morning we got back on the train to return to Delhi, and everyone crashed when we finally arrived back at the residence. Tuesday night the nine of us in the residence decided we wanted to find someplace American to hang out and watch the inauguration. Our first thought was the Hyatt, but then we decided it might just be us and a bunch of rich white middle-aged people. So we changed plans and decided to go to T.G.I. Friday's. Turns out they really were having an inauguration party, and it was the craziest T.G.I. Friday's I've experienced. Red, white and blue balloons and miniature American flags EVERYWHERE, and all of the waiters wearing cowboy hats with a red, a white, and a blue balloon attached to the hat. It was pretty hilarious. And the whole event was made even funnier for us because we were certainly the only Americans there, and we were the only white people other than a group of four Irish boys who sat quietly drinking their beer. We, on the other hand, insisted that the tv get tuned to any channel with inauguration coverage beginning at 9:30 p.m. our time, and closer to the actual swearing-in, we requested that the dj (yes, they had a dj) stop until after Obama's speech was over. We figured it was okay because with the addition of a few homestay kids there were 13 of us and we were running up a huge bill, and we were upstairs, away from the people at the bar who probably didn't care about the inauguration. So that was pretty cool, and kind of strange to be so far away from where it was happening (I also had temporarily forgotten what the weather was like in D.C. and was laughing at all the people freezing their butts off). But I'm very glad we managed to get out and get most of our group together, even if we didn't find other Americans to be around.

This weekend is a long weekend for us before classes start, and our longest break of the semester (boo no spring break!), so everyone decided to go away to various places. I was going to go to Varanasi (formerly - well, I guess still sometimes - known as Benares) with my roommate and two other girls. We booked plane tickets late on Wednesday night, and then an hour into intensive Hindi, I got hit with a dizzy-and-nauseous spell, and I was sick all Thursday afternoon and evening. So Thursday night I cancelled my plane tickets, since being ill in a place where I literally only know three people and don't speak the language is not something high on my list of things to do in India. I'm the only one at home this weekend (aside from the staff here at the residence), but the down time has been really nice. I did all of my laundry, cleaned my room, took naps, went to the grocery store, and read my book. Today I finally feel back to normal, and I'm glad I stayed here - I think traveling would have made my recovery time much more drawn out. Cate, the program director, said she's going to bake a cake tomorrow, so I'm probably going to her house for tea and cake in the afternoon. I'm also job searching and studying Hindi, so I'm fairly busy for being more or less home alone. Oh, and I watched Lost. I decided I couldn't wait until I was home to watch the whole season. Only bad part is that abc.com doesn't let people in other countries view their streaming episodes, so I had to watch it in lower quality elsewhere. But I found it, and it worked, and it made me happy. :)

I think that's all the important stuff I have for now.

Namaste.

I'm a celebrity?

Only three weeks in, and I'm already slacking on blog updates. I suppose that means I'm having fun, being busy, etc.

But I'm sitting on the terrace on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and I've got some time to bring you up to speed!

Starting with last Thursday (the 15th), when we went to yet another tomb (Delhi's full of them). This one is called Humayun's Tomb, and to be honest, I didn't get much of a chance to explore it and its gardens. Why? you ask. Well, apparently I as a white girl with curly hair have something like celebrity status here in India, especially with small and not-so-small children. Humayun's Tomb is a short walk from the IES Centre in New Delhi, though it turned into a rather long walk because the side closest to us was the back entrance, where we could not enter because there was no ticket stand. So we took a lovely scenic stroll through a relatively posh neighborhood on our way around this giant park/tomb/garden complex. As we reach the road where the main entrance is, we see maybe seven or eight giant buses and about two hundred nine- to thirteen-year-old boys milling about. As we're walking by them, several come up to a few of the other students and me, shaking our hands and asking our names or giving us high fives. Okay, cool. Kids are friendly everywhere, and we certainly do seem to be a novelty to them. I, with camera in hand, turn around after we've walked by all of them and want to take a picture of the crowd of kids being kids. 

Mistake number one.

Children start flocking to me, wanting their picture taken. Okay, cool. I can take pictures, right? Yes, but apparently not enough pictures, since they start following me when I try to continue walking towards the gate. They were cute, they were making goofy faces, and they all listened quite obediently when Cate started talking to them in Hindi, explaining that we were university students from the U.S. So she comes over to buy the tickets, and they stay a bit away from us, content with just laughing and waving.

For a minute. Then they come over and want their pictures taken with us. Fine - about five or six of us virtually always have a camera in hand, which should be plenty to keep them happy. Of the fifteen of us there, my friend Jon and I seem to be the ones attracting the most attention from the kids, who we later found out were all government (public) school kids on a field trip. I also found out later that apparently they thought Jon was some Bollywood actor whose name I forget. Which is funny because he has a not-so-secret-anymore obsession with Bollywood.

So we finally get our tickets and go through the turnstile, and the kids remain on 

the other side, pressed up against the giant (closed) gate, screaming and applauding as if we were rockstars exiting a concert. Again, kind of cool, but by then I was glad there was a large metal gate between us. It's really weird to get that much attention for reasons unknown to you.

So we start walking down the center walkway through some green space towards the tomb and some other buildings, and we stop to turn and look at the kids. Cate told us she was pretty sure they'd already visited the tomb and were waiting to leave. But then, all of a sudden, the gate swings open, and these kids start flat-out sprinting towards us. Have you ever see a stampede of elementary schoolers? It's a bit unsettling.

Anyway, they follow us around like little puppy dogs, and once again, I'm receiving the most attention. It got to the point where one of the teachers (of about two that we could identify) told them they weren't allowed to touch me (shake my hand, pull me over to take pictures, etc.) because they almost started rioting, and at one point I had at least two children tugging on each arm, trying to pull me in polar opposite directions.

It was exhausting, my camera batteries finally died, and we didn't stay at the monument long. I'll have to go back another day because I never even saw the inside of the tomb.

Friday the 16th we went shopping and bought cute Indian clothes for not-a-lot of money, which was lots of fun.

Saturday morning we were up well before dawn to leave for our Agra-Bharatpur weekend trip. We left the residence by five a.m. and were on the train to see the sun rising through the fog. It was nice, aside from being REALLY early in the morning. The other nice thing was that they served us tea on the train in individual tea kits (see left). Thank goodness I'm in a country where everyone drinks tea. They served breakfast, too, but it was sketchier and unidentifiable, and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat it.

Riding on a train through the countryside is incredibly calming. India in the fog at sunrise is an absolutely stunning site. I got some interesting pictures from the train ride of blurry palm trees in a green and purple haze. Pretty nifty.

When we arrived in Agra, it was less than ten minutes before I saw my first monkey; we weren't even out of the parking lot yet. Then, on the bus ride to the hotel, we saw a whole lot of them:

In case you can't really see, every single monkey in that picture is holding a banana, and they were just kind of scurrying about and doing monkey gymnastics on the wall and side of the street. So that was pretty exciting.

More on Agra and Bharatpur after these messages. ::Insert your favorite pointless advertisement here::

Really, I just want to eat lunch. More on Agra and Bharatpur after that. :)

Also, I'm thinking of starting a Picasa account for my pictures. Flickr gives not a lot of uploads per month, and I don't want to have to pay for an upgrade. If I do end up creating one, I'll post the link for it here.

Lohri/My ticket to Bollywood...

Yesterday was the festival of Lohri. It's supposed to be a peasant holiday, but since even in India everything is commercialized, Delhi celebrates it in a pretty big way. (For more information about the origin of Lohri, you can go here.) It involves food, fire, and dancing, which means it's a lot of fun.

No one told us what we were supposed to wear to this festival, but our residence hall coordinator, Parul, really wanted us all to get dressed up in pretty Indian garb. We haven't been serious clothes shopping yet, especially not for Indian clothes, so all of the girls in the house (eight of us), ended up borrowing Parul's clothes. She magically had outfits that matched each person in terms of color and body type. I'm pretty sure her wardrobe has special powers.

After we got all dressed up, we took the taxis over to the India Habitat Centre, this really nifty complex that houses a bunch of NGOs and other people/things and hosts a lot of cultural and arts events. They had one of the big outdoor spaces decked out with lights and bonfires, with wicker chairs set up facing the stage and big round tables covered in white tablecloths in the back. They had food and drink tents set up along the side, where we helped ourselves to a buffet of Punjabi food (meal tickets courtesy of IES). They had some important people from the Habitat Centre do welcome speeches and whatnot, then a group of girls from Punjab performed on all kinds of crazy musical instruments. After their performance on stage, they came over to one of the bonfires and danced/played around that. It looked something like this:

(Side note: I love my Nikon. It takes wonderful low-light pictures. Perfect for nighttime bonfires. Also, more pictures from Lohri are on Flickr.)

We ate some food, hung out, listened to some more music, and then Parul decided we had to dance. Now, this was not a dance-y sort of event; there was a "dance floor" that the Punjabi girls had used as their performance space, in front of the stage. But Parul took a few of us out on the dancefloor and we started dancing anyway. The Punjabi girls joined us and taught us some bhangra moves. (Reema, one of the other Rochester girls, starting busting out fancy bhangra moves right away. I had no idea she was such a good dancer.) We danced for a bit, then ran away, only to be dragged back out. More of the IES girls came out the second time, and after a while, a bunch of other people came up. By the time the musicians were done, the dance floor was packed. We were dancing with some awkward white guys that looked like they were probably on a business trip, little kids who had better rhythm than the white guys, elderly Indian people, and a smattering of young-ish adults. It was fun.

As we were collecting the group to leave, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and this forty-something Indian guy introduces himself to me, says he saw me dancing and wanted to use me in a film. Turns out he's a talent scout and does stuff for tv, movies, theater, and advertisements. He gave me his card and told me to email him so he could send me clips from movies he's done and talk to me about if I'd like to work with him. (I've never danced bhangra before in my life, though I've wanted to learn since the first time I saw the bhangra group on campus perform.) One of the other girls had the same thing happen to her. Kind of sketchy, but immensely entertaining. Parul told me that it couldn't hurt to email the guy and see what he was to say - one of the girls last semester did some modeling for some local company's advertisements (?!) - but to tell him that from then on, he had to go through my manager (Parul)...she wants to make sure that if (for some strange reason) I decide to be in this guy's movie, I'll get paid a decent amount! I guess the girl who modeled before got paid far less than she should have but was happy just for the publicity. So that was a funny way to end the evening. Parul kept saying that Sydney and I got our tickets to Bollywood. :)

Tourism and beginning Hindi

Let's see...on Saturday we did some sightseeing in Delhi. The first place we went was the Red Fort, a giant walled fortress in Old Delhi built by Shah Jahan (same dude that built the Taj) and occupied by the Mughal emperors. There were some guys on top of the wall at the front of the fort mowing the grass that was growing on some soil at about a 75- or 80-degree incline. They had the lawn mower on a rope. It was pretty crazy.

The architecture is beautiful and inside are gigantic gardens and (now empty) pools and channels and such. I had heard that sometimes monkeys hang out at the fort, but sadly, I didn't see any.

After the Red Fort, we went to lunch at a delectable all-you-can-eat restaurant called Rajdhani, where you start off with a giant round plate, on top of which are seven little bowls. The waiters come and scoop a different dish into each bowl, plus rice and bread and chutneys that go on the plate. And they keep refilling the food, sometimes even when you say you don't want anymore. It was awesome. When we were in the taxis on the way to the restaurant, we were driving through Old Delhi, and I discovered that it has a much greater animal population than New Delhi. In addition to lots of cows (more than the area where I live), the old part of the city has horses, donkeys, and goats walking down the street or hanging out on sidewalks. I tried to get some pictures, but there was too much traffic.

After lunch we went to the Indira Gandhi Museum, which is in the house she lived (and died) in. They have some rooms walled off behind glass that are still decorated and furnished as they were when she lived there. (And apparently India went through the same terrible late 1970s/early 1980s style that the U.S. did...browns and plaids and some generally aesthetically displeasing color schemes and decorations. All of the books and pretty wood furniture made up for that. Oh, and the diamond encrusted sword and dagger that were given as gifts from Saudi Arabia. Sparkly.) Other rooms are just walls plastered with newspaper articles about her and photos from her and her family's collections, or ones that people have donated. Inside the house they have her wedding sari and all the objects used in her wedding ceremony, as well as the blood-stained sari she was wearing when she was shot. Outside are lovely gardens and the sidewalk where her bodyguards shot her. The last 20 yards or so are covered with ripply glass, which the signs said was supposed to symbolize a river (or time? life? tears? who knows), and the spot where she fell has its own plaque and is covered with a sheet of clear glass. It also has a full-time guard stationed right beside it.

So those were our fun cultural things for the day. Saturday night, the homestay families came to pick up their students, so six people moved out of the house, my roommate among them. IES apparently has a policy that if doubles can be filled, they must be, so on Sunday morning I moved upstairs to live with another girl whose roommate is now in a homestay. There are three empty rooms on the first floor now, the last one being occupied by the two boys who decided to stay here, and the second floor has four doubles that are all fully occupied. My new roommate's name is Rachel, and she's from Illinois...the room looks the same, only slightly bigger and with a tiny little balcony thing (which is better than my last one, which gave me a stunning view of concrete and barbed wire). The outlets are wired properly, though, which is a huge plus. Hooray electricity.

Speaking of electricity, we've had a bunch of power outages in the last few days, several at night when it's dark and therefore nothing to do. However, they must have our computers and Internet running on generators because the computers in the basement and the wireless internet both work when the power is out. I was really confused at first, but I'm very glad to be able to sit in a dark room with the little glow of my computer screen when the power's out at 9 p.m. and I don't want to go to bed.

Sunday we had a free day to explore Delhi on our own, so we went out to lunch and did a bunch of shopping. I'm fairly certain that most people in Delhi spend most of their time eating and shopping. It seems like there's a market on every block and restaurants squeezed in every corner. It's pretty cool.

Yesterday morning we began intensive Hindi (at 8:30 a.m....ew). It's pretty fun trying to learn a new alphabet at the same time you're learning grammar and vocabulary...I don't really understand how that's supposed to work. The more logical way, in my opinion, would be to learn the alphabet first, but that's just me. We're learning a little bit of everything all at the same time.

We had a session after lunch with a hippy therapist lady named Dhyan, who's from Southern California and now counsels ex-pats in India in order to make money to send her adopted Tibetan daughter to college in a couple years. She's quite a character. In theory, this little group meeting was a good idea, but it ended up being a waste of time. She has a very odd attitude for someone who's supposed to be giving advice.

After that, we went to Jawaharlal Nehru University, partly because three of us hadn't heard anything about whether we'd been admitted or not. After crazy Indian bureaucracy and stupidity, turns out that it's up to each department to decide whether casual students are allowed. Cate informed me and the people we spoke to at JNU that there were three IES students last semester that took sociology classes there without any problems, but the head of the department said I had been rejected because I didn't have my bachelor's degree. We explained that I'm in my third year of a four-year program at a competitive school, and that the American university system is different from the Indian one, in which a bachelor's degree only takes three years. I was informed that the faculty panel that makes these decisions had reviewed my case twice (though they didn't ask me or IES for any additional information between the first and second times...), and that they had agreed I wasn't qualified. More talking and more frustration and she told me that if I wanted, I could reapply and give them the additional information they had needed (like what classes I would want to take, even though that office couldn't give me the class schedule or listing or descriptions and it's not available online!). The problem with that is she couldn't tell me when the panel would be able to review it yet again and make another decision, and JNU classes already started. So...yeah. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about that...I may end up just taking classes at Ramjas College (part of Delhi University) for fun. I can have two of my IES classes transfer towards my anthropology degree, so it's not an issue of getting credit; it's just incredibly annoying. Though bureaucracy and inefficiency seems to be a way of life here. One of the few aspects of India I don't love.

Today was more Hindi and another lunch (this one an all-you-can-eat buffet), and we have the afternoon free. There's a preschool at the YMCA (where the IES center is), and we were hanging out on the grass waiting to go to lunch watching the little kids. Today is Lohri, the festival to worship fire, and most of the kids had costumes or special Lohri clothes on, and one little girl was coming around wishing us a happy Lohri and offering us popcorn (which apparently is a treat mostly reserved for the holidays here). So adorable. We're going to a Lohri celebration this evening, and it looks like they're setting up for a big bonfire/party in the park across the street from the house, too. It'll be a fun evening.

I'll be posting pictures from the Red Fort/Indira Gandhi museum/randoms on my Flickr page soon, but right now I'm going to go enjoy the sunshine. :)

City as Text

Yesterday we got out and explored different parts of Delhi in small groups as an orientation assignment called City as Text (an idea they apparently stole from some urban geographer). We were in groups of 2-3, each led by a university student here who had either grown up in Delhi or had spent the past several years here. They gave us assignment sheets with questions/directions, but we mostly just did our own thing at the places they had picked out for us.

I was with another girl from my group, Theresa, and a Bengali girl named Sriparna, who is working on her masters in English Literature at Delhi University. The first place we went to was the Baha'i House of Worship, more commonly known as the Lotus Temple, since the design was inspired by the lotus flower. It was absolutely gorgeous. It's set on 26.6 acres of land, and they have a beautiful information center that tells the story of the Baha'i faith with lots of pictures and information about contemporary Baha'i movements and humanitarian initiatives around the world. Here's a picture of the temple itself: 

There are 27 petals made of concrete and white marble, and there are nine giant pools surrounding the base of it. Inside is all one floor, so there's an enormously high ceiling, and it's so quiet you can hear people walking around in their bare feet. Very cool. I can't imagine what the space looks like when all of the flowers are in bloom as the rainy season is ending.

Next we went across the street to a tiny market and small temple to a local goddess (Kalka Devi). There were lots of small children working at the stalls, and they drive a hard bargain - they didn't want to lower prices at all. We talked to an 18-year-old boy (with the help of Sriparna's translation skills) at a jewelry stall since one of our "assignments" was to interview at least one person. He was operating an extension of a jewelry shop his father owned inside the market closer to the temple. Lots of beggar women were following us around the market place (hooray for sticking out like a sore thumb), and Sriparna told us later that they were cursing us in Hindi because we didn't give them anything.  On our way out we got a snack called chikki, which is shaped like a rice cake but made out of peanuts and jaggery (unrefined sugar cane). It's really sweet and tastes kind of like Crackerjax.

While we were standing in line waiting to get into the little temple, there were some kids walking towards us, having just come out of the temple. Theresa and I kind of smiled at them, and I waved, and they were all giggly and waved as they walked by. Barely five seconds later, they turned around and came running back towards us again, smiling and posing and laughing and jumping - they had seen Theresa's and my cameras, which we each had in our hands. I got a fantastic picture of them when they weren't squirming:

They came over, I showed them the picture, they waved and ran away. It was pretty adorable.

Our next destination was the ISKCON temple, which is fairly close by (ISKCON = International Society for Krishna Consciousness). They patted us down, made us go through metal detectors, and took my gum at the entrance. (Not sure why the gum was a problem, other than perhaps they didn't want me chewing it and then spitting it on the ground.) The security was a bit more intense than I had been expecting, and tighter than any other place we'd been so far. Sriparna informed us that they were overly cautious. 

(Side note: The whole notion of metal detectors or metal detecting wands here is an enigma. When they beep, you keep walking, and when they don't beep, you keep walking. I don't really understand the point of it all. Many, many places have guards either watching you walk through metal detectors or wanding your bags, but I've never seen them stop anyone, regardless of the noise [or lack thereof] of their little devices. Native Delhiites don't seem to be able to explain it, either.)

We sat in during the prayer/chanting session (which was interesting...very enthusiastic people, very lively, instrumental accompaniment for the chanting, and only a little cult-like). Then we went to the "Vedic Expo" part of ISKCON, which is where things got weird. We went to a sound and light show of the Bhavagad Gita, which was terrifying at first. You start in a small, pitch-black room, and then the guy presses a button and a narrator with a voice like Mufasa starts talking and they do all kinds of crazy things with lights over a life-size diorama depicting a scene from the Gita. You move through a series of rooms, each with a different diorama, and some of them are downright trippy and/or frightening. Although, to be fair, one of the last ones was all beautiful and glittery and colorful and calm. But these rooms were designed by people who make roller coasters and amusement parks, and one room had a fog machine, most of the floors were wavy and curvy, one room was all mirrors, and so on and so forth. Really weird, but also fun (I think).

After a relatively late lunch, we took a cycle rickshaw(!) to a market called Greater Kailash I. It was a mixture of Western stores and Indian stores, roadside vendors and traditional stores in real buildings. They have both really cheap and really expensive items there; scarves for approximately 2 USD and ridiculously ornate and absolutely exquisite diamond jewelry that would put just about all American jewelers to shame. That was great fun.

Today we just met at the Center, and each group gave a "report" - ie. a slideshow of all the pictures they took the day before, explaining where they went and the crazy things they did. Some of the IES teachers were there, as well as all of the peer guides (the Delhi University students). We had some of this afternoon and evening free, so most of us decided to go on an adventure since we had been cooped up inside on a beautiful day. So we decided to go to Dilli Haat, a market that has craftsmen from all over India coming and selling everything from pashminas to furniture to ceramics to food to jewelry. All kinds of lovely things I wanted to buy but had to resist (mostly). I did buy myself a tea cup since I get really frustrated with the miniature ones they have here in the residence hall. For a country so serious about tea, the tea cups we have are kind of a joke. So I bought a normal-sized, hand-painted one for Rs. 40...I'll let you figure out how much that is in USD. :-D

So we went to this market, haggling with the auto-rickshaw drivers who took us there and cramming five people into an auto (which is quite cozy). We survived the crazy traffic and found our way to the proper place and home without adult supervision, and everyone came away with pretty souvenirs.

I think I've covered everything from the past few days, perhaps in greater detail than anyone actually cares to read, but at any rate, it is time for bed, methinks.

Namaste.

Things that will take a while to get used to:

1. Men pissing in the street and on the sidewalk. All the time. Everywhere.

2. Policemen (and private security guards for homes and businesses) carrying rifles.

3. Cows hanging out on the street/sidewalk.

4. The most insane traffic I've ever seen. The streets of Delhi acquire 30,000-40,000 new cars per month, which is totally ridiculous. Rush hour is unbelievable, and normal traffic is hectic and VERY noisy. Apparently horns are used as the expression of every emotion a driver has.

5. Waking up with dust coating the inside of my nostrils. Yuck.

More later, I'm sure. Dinner time. :)

Arrival.

I met all of the other students on my flight as we got off the plane...we more or less congregated in a slightly-scared-and-out-of-place group. The IES people were late, but we were waiting for another flight with two more students, so we just hung out near customs. Delhi was orange and foggy/smoggy (we're not entirely sure how much of each) last night, so it was kind of strange. We took two cars back to the residence, and the drivers were huddled around us begging for U.S. dollars: "Please, just one US dollar! Please, dollars!" "Please, ma'am, I carried your bags and I have a bad back, your friend gave him money, please ma'am, any money you have..." and on and on. No, sir, I carried my bags, and you lifted them 18 inches off the ground to put them in the back of the car. Oy. 

Reeta, one of the IES people, yelled at them and they stopped asking for money.

The house here in Neeti Bagh is pretty (but DUSTY!), and we have a park across the street, though we have to walk around to the other side to enter through the gate. There's a guard right outside our building as well as at all three gates to the neighborhood, and two out of the three gates are closed and locked at night. There are four floors to the house. The basement is a rec room/lounge area, the first floor has the dining room plus four bedrooms (one of which is mine), along with the kitchen we do not have access to (there's a full time cook). The second floor has a center room with a big table for work or whatever, with four additional bedrooms. The third floor is the terrace, as well as the bedroom and office of Parul, the residence coordinator who lives here with us. 

I woke up this morning to much noise from lots of strange-sounding birds. It's beautiful and sunny here, and the fog cleared up quite a bit this morning. Apparently today was the sunniest day Delhi's seen in over a month. 

My roommate's name is Marie, and somehow her luggage ended up in France even though her travel route was the same as mine (Boston-Newark-Delhi). She's from New Hampshire.

Reeta told us last night that nothing was planned for today and that we could sleep in late, but not too late....breakfast was at 8 a.m. Sorry, but that is not sleeping in. Breakfast was toast and fruit and hardboiled eggs. And, of course, tea. We have the tiniest tea cups I've ever seen. I may have to see if I can find a large one I can buy sometime in the next couple days.

We went on a grand adventure today to find cell phones, which was only partially successful. Apparently in order to activate a SIM card and get a number, one must have a copy of one's passport and visa and a passport-sized picture. Cate, the director of the program, said that everyone always wants pictures when you're doing anything. It's kind of strange. Anyway. After the half-failed adventure we came back for lunch (a delicious spicy-ish veggie soup, grilled cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, fruit, and guava juice!) and had a mini group meeting. The guy who was supposed to bring over our booklets with our schedules and stuff never showed up, so we didn't actually do much. Reeta negotiated a deal with the guy she buys her cell phone minutes from, and he's coming over in a little while with our SIM cards and contracts.

We walked around Neeti Bagh and the surrounding neighborhood for a while this afternoon, and I got a delicious iced mocha for 57 rupees. It was wonderful. Tonight we have a big Indian welcome dinner at the Neeti Bagh Club on the other side of the park, which they won't really tell us about. I guess it's a surprise.

IES classes don't start until January 26th, so we've got a pretty long orientation and a couple field trips before all the work starts. It seems like we've got a good group here, and the people who signed up for homestays are going to be here in the group residence for the next ten days, which will be nice. Everyone's really excited to be here.