Aurangabad and Ajanta

Right now, it's Sunday night and I'm sitting in the Ajanta Ambassador Hotel in Aurangabad, on a bed that actually has padding and came with two pillows. Although that won't be true when I get around to putting this up on the interwebs; despite the fact that we're staying in a fancy hotel, we have to pay extra for Internet. And it's not cheap. And there are no internet cafes near the hotel.

Fifteen out of the sixteen of us students are here on an IES field trip. (The last one is in Rome visiting his girlfriend, who's studying in Spain this semester...) This trip is a complete contrast to last weekend; I'm very glad that I get to see how traveling on a budget compares to traveling with money. Second AC sleeper class for the 22-hour train ride here was exponentially better than the absolute cheapest sleeper class to Jaipur. Only two beds on top of each other instead of three; air conditioning; sheets, blanket and pillow provided; dinner & breakfast included (not good, but included); and curtains to close for privacy. Oh, and no commuters. Surprisingly, I used the train ride to catch up on my sleep. We left at about 1:30 p.m. on Friday and arrived in Aurangabad around 11:45 a.m. on Saturday. I napped for a little while in the afternoon on Friday and managed to get a full night's sleep that night even though the man on the bunk next to me was snoring really loudly and I woke up a whole bunch of times because I wasn't all that comfortable. But it was nice to sleep without worrying about when I had to get up. The ride itself was pretty uneventful, since we were mostly grouped together. In my berth, three out of the four beds were occupied by IES students, but the fourth guy who had a bed there only came to sleep. So during waking hours, other IES students came and hung out with us. It was fun and didn't drag by as slowly as I would have imagined. In fact, it was a much more pleasant experience than the plane ride from Newark to Delhi...I could at least stretch out and stand up and all that. And there was pretty scenery to watch during the daylight hours.

Aurangabad is hot. Delhi's been warming up a bit since I arrived, but here in the Aurangabad-Ajanta-Ellora area (which is in the state of Maharashtra, most of the way to Mumbai/Bombay) it's been about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit during the day and very, very sunny. One of the greatest things about the fancy hotel? Big swimming pool! We swam yesterday and today, which was quite lovely...it's a really nice way to end a long, hot, sweaty day. I couldn't remember the last time I was swimming in a pool; it was probably two years ago. 

Yesterday we went to Dalautabad Fort (yes, there are forts ALL over India), which was quite different from any of the forts in Delhi or anywhere else I've been. It's built on a hill - it essentially is the hill - and it has all kinds of tricky false doors and tunnels and crazy things like that. We had a guide who took us in the pitch-black, bat-filled tunnels (which smelled terrible) and told us horror stories about how the inhabitants of the fort used to pour boiling water down shafts, place poison-laced spears on the floors of the dark tunnels, and sit crouched in these little niches in said dark passageways waiting to attack the intruders. And there was a moat with crocodiles and lots of cannons...all kinds of good stuff. It was great fun. The bats were kind of creepy, though. The view from the (almost) top was pretty cool. We didn't go up to the very top because they were doing restoration work and our guide said that aside from a slightly better view, it was needless climbing and that the actual building wasn't that impressive at the top. And it was quite hot, and there was a lot of climbing involved. So we traipsed back down the hill to the bus, discovered that the two museums we were scheduled to go to were both closed (hooray travel agent!), and went back to the hotel for a swim. :) We wandered off own our own for dinner, which turned into ten of us at a rooftop restaurant of a hotel down the street. I love rooftops. As I think I've stated before, I really wish that the States utilized rooftops for more than just protection from the elements. Though I suppose, if I have to be rational, that it makes sense neither in Massachusetts nor upstate New York for anybody to design a rooftop restaurant or terrace or garden or anything of the sort. It's too damn cold to use it most of the year.

Anyway. Today we spent most of the day at the Ajanta caves, which are about a 2-hour (100-ish kilometer) drive away from the hotel and aren't really caves. They're rock temples carved into a cliff, and they're stunning. There is so much intricate carving and sculpting and painting, and it's remarkable how intact they've remained. I took so many pictures, so those will be up soon. And my Nikon is wonderful in low-light conditions, which made me very happy because flash photography was not allowed inside the temples. 

I think I have a picture of the same Buddha statue that's on the cover of one of my Buddhism books. Which I think is pretty sweet.

After walking and climbing in the hot sun during the hottest part of the day, we ate lunch in the only restaurant anywhere near the caves and headed back to the hotel. Three bathroom stops and a bunch of traffic later, we arrived back at the hotel, at which point I decided to explore the hotel grounds for a bit. Took some pictures of the pretty flowers and pool and the building, then swimming time again. Dinner was at the hotel tonight, and now I'm off to bed because we're leaving at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning to go to the caves at Ellora.

Namaste.

Catching Up, Part 3: Jaipur!

Friday the 13th we went exploring in some urban villages. The first was Sultan Garhi, an abandoned village where we got to climb around the ruins and go into the underground durga, the oldest tomb in Delhi (from the 1100s). It was pretty neat.

In the afternoon, we attended a cooking class, which was fun, but I didn't stay for the whole thing because (as usual) we started late, and I had a train to catch. My roommate Rachel, Paula, Theresa, and my first roommate Marie (who's in a homestay) decided to go to Jaipur for the weekend. Our train was scheduled to leave at 5:40 p.m., and I had originally been planning on skipping the cooking class since it would be the beginning of rush hour when I was trying to get out of there, and I didn't want to cut it that close. But I was guilted into going because it was so expensive to hire this woman to cook for us, and I had wanted to go back in January when it was originally scheduled.

Anyway, I came away from the cooking class with some delicious recipes that I will certainly be trying out when I get bak to the States. But Rachel, Paula and I had to hustle to catch our train, even though we left the cooking class early. Cate had kindly told us that one of the taxis that brought us to the cooking school would take us to the train station, but when we walked outside, the taxi driver was nowhere in sight. Just an empty taxi sitting next to the building. Cate got on the phone and yelled at him, and then we see him jump out of the other taxi across the street, shoeless and sleepy-eyed and looking none too happy.

As I predicted, traffic was horrible. Our taxi driver was actually rushing, though, which doesn't seem to happen much in India. If people are late, they're late, but we didn't know when the next train to Jaipur was and didn't want to waste the tickets we already had. When it got to be 5:35 p.m. and we were passing Old Delhi railway station - not New Delhi, where we should have already been by then - I was pretty much giving up hope of catching the train. (Theresa and Marie were already at the train station because they had skipped the cooking class, and they said the train was on time.) But our taxi driver kept rushing as much as he could, and we finally see signs for New Delhi Station, even though it's after 5:40. At the last red light before the entrance to the station, we had an ironic moment. All three of us were freaking out thinking we were going to miss our train and pissed off that we were sitting at yet another red light, but we looked up and saw that someone had stencil-painted the word "RELAX" on the red light that was currently illuminated. It's funny in hindsight, but I don't think any of us appreciated it at the time.

We finally pull up to the front of the station, thank our taxi driver, and jump out practically before the car stopped moving. We literally run through the train station trying to figure out where our platform is (which is no easy task, since it's a big station, most of the signes are in Hindi, and it doesn't seem to be laid out according to what I would call common sense). So we are running through the station with all our stuff, Darjeeling Limited - style (watch that movie if you haven't seen it!), find our train (which hasn't left even though it's 6:00 at this point), and jump on the first car we see. Which is not ours, and it's VERY crowded, but a kind old gentlemen went up and down the car telling people to squish so that we each had a seat, just not all together. The train started moving within seconds of us getting on, so we were quite lucky to make it. We got off at the next station to try to find out proper place, which should have been two cars away from where we were, according to the multiple people we asked. But the train started moving again, and one of the conductor/ticket collectors told us to just get on the car we were next to, which happened to be the first car of the sleeper class section, which was good. The train guy told us he'd take us to our seats, after we went through the whole hassle of explaining to them that we bought tickets online but didn't have the print-out of the confirmation because the computers and printers at the residence were broken. They finally found our names on the list, and the guy took us to our seats. Which was approximately eight cars away from where we were. It was far. And the farther back we went, the more crowded it became, since apparently commuters are allowed to cram into sleeper class on that train. The train guy kindly made four of the guys crowded into our compartment get up so that the three of us could sit, joining the two girls already there. We were still sharing our two benches with four or five other men, plus all the guys standing right next to us staring and listening in on our conversations (which they may or may not have understood). 

Sleeper class, the cheapest way to travel long distances in India, is an interesting experience. The intense crowding was interesting, as was the fact that we had some hilarious conversations with people that barely spoke English. Several of them didn't even speak Hindi, only Punjabi, so that was even funnier. One of the girls had her book called "Hindi from Day One" with her, and the men who were near us were studying it carefully. It was rather comical.

I was sitting by a window, thankfully, bars and all, but at least it provided me with some much-needed fresh air. That many people crammed together gets smelly, regardless of whether you showered that day. A mouse ran over my foot, which was cute after I wasn't startled anymore, but not so cute when you stop and think about it. I didn't see any cockroaches, but I was trying not to look and it was too crowded anyway. After about two hours, most of the commuters were gone and we had a reasonable amount of breathing space.

We got into Jaipur around 12:30 a.m., later than expected (which we should have expected) and got in an auto to go to the guest house where I had booked us rooms earlier that day. (Thank goodness for kind people who will allow check-ins in the middle of the night!) The autorickshaws in Jaipur are different from Delhi; they're much bigger, they're black instead of yellow and green, and they're generally in much better condition. I realized, though, that they run on diesel fuel, whereas all the ones in Delhi are required to run on compressed natural gas, which is probably why they're so different.

The guest house was adorable and brightly colored and much nicer than what I expected rs. 300 per room per night would get us. It's called Vinayak Guest House, and the family that runs it treats all of the guests like family. It was awesome. When we got through the whole process of digging out our passports and visas and filling out the guest register and everything, the man I'm guessing is the owner of the place told us that they served breakfast in the guest house for good prices. It's 1:15 a.m. at this point, so I ask him what time breakfast is, thinking that if it's at seven like back in Neeti Bagh, we are not getting up. His reply was so sweet; he said,"It doesn't matter...nine o'clock, ten o'clock, we can do any time. You sleep first. Then we worry about breakfast."

We didn't end up eating breakfast in the guest house because we were eager to get out and explore. So we went to the edge of the Old City, which is where Jaipur got the nickname of the Pink City, though it's actually terra cotta, not pink. We wandered around for a while, at lunch in this tiny hole-in-the-wall place shown to us by a friendly Rajasthani art student who clearly got commission from bringing us there, and then set off to find some touristy things to do. We went to the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace) and then to City Palace. The City Palace is huge and it's essentially a city within a city, but we couldn't figure out how to get to most of it. After a while, we realized that the door that was mostly closed and guarded by three police officers was not normally closed. Turns out that Salman Khan, a famous Bollywood star, was filming a movie there that day! I heard later that they did a ridiculous amount of damage to the buildings during the filming and were completely disrespectful of the fact that they were in a famous, historical place of high interest to tourists. But anyway. We were milling around trying to see if there was some way we could get into the part of the palace where they were filming, and this random guy comes up and starts talking to us (which happens most places we go). But he told me that I looked like Katrina Kaif, a famous Bollywood actress, and didn't quite believe me when I said I wasn't...I thought he was joking since I think I look like the whitest person in India, but then he asked if any of us had a pen. We said no, and he walked away. Moments later, a large Indian family asked us all to pose with them for a family photo, which we did because they were nice about it and had cute little kids. As soon as they left, the guy came back with a pen and business card in hand, and asked for my autograph! So I signed my name as Katrina Kaif, and he walked away a happy little Indian man. I was thoroughly entertained, and for the rest of the weekend, I introduced myself as Katrina to any shopkeeper or random passerby who inquired. I think it's a good strategy to use from now on.

One of the greatest things about Jaipur was the fact that we convinced every place we went to give us the Indian prices for tickets! This is a major accomplishment, because the difference is usually something along the lines of rs. 10 for Indian visitors, rs. 120-200 for foreign visitors. Because we had i.d. cards with our Delhi address on them and that identified us as students, we succeeded in arguing that we were Indian visitors. One thing that IES did right: give us i.d. cards that say we live and study in Delhi.

After City Palace we went to this large observatory full of crazy structures that one of the kings decided Jaipur absolutely needed. If you have the money, why not built a park with crazy, giant astronomy and astrology tools? That was really fun, and we also lounged around in the actual green grass for a while, which was nice. We were too cheap to pay the couple hundred rupees for a guide, so we didn't know exactly what all the crazy stuff was for, but the signs told us the basics. I think we got the general idea.

After that, we just walked, did some shopping, ate dinner, and did some more shopping. We saw at least three different wedding parades in the streets, which was great fun. It's definitely the start of shaadi season in India...Valentine's Day was apparently a very auspicious day for a wedding (Indians seem to love the word "auspicious" for some reason), and every day since then I've seen or heard at least one wedding. It's utter madness, but they certainly know how to party for these weddings. If you have money, your wedding parade includes camels and elephants. Which is nuts.

On Sunday we ate a delicious breakfast at the guest house and one of the guys who worked there called a taxi to take us up to the Amber Fort, which was too far away to go by rickshaw. The taxi driver was interesting. A terrible taxi driver because he kept taking us to places we didn't want to go, and a kind of sketchy human being since he told us he has two girlfriends in addition to his wife, but he knew the city well and eventually got us where we wanted to go. We stopped by the Water Palace on the way to the Amber Fort, but sadly had to look at it from land. It's very pretty, all nestled in the middle of the water in between the hills. I want a house like that some day. :) The Amber Fort is up in the hills on the outskirt of the current city of Jaipur, and it's amazing. Full of tourists, but those places usually are. They had elephant rides up the hill to the fort, but we didn't do it because they didn't look like they treated the elephants nicely and we didn't want to encourage that kind of behavior.

The Amber Fort is gigantic and pretty and has all kinds of passageways and stairwells and niches to explore. The Hall of Mirrors was literally this series of chambers completely covered in shiny things, which was really cool. We also stumbled across the ruins of an ancient Cafe Coffee Day...it was funny seeing them convert part of the fort into a coffee shop. And kind of strange. We were happy to have cold, yummy caffeinated beverages, but an India-wide chain cafe was sort of out-of-place. Oh well. Smart move on their part; I'm sure they rake in tons of money.

Some more shopping and back to the guest house to collect our things, then taxi'd to the train station, where we ate scrumptious street food. (Don't tell. I eat the street food, and it's spectacular. Bread omelettes and momos are two of my favorites.) We were plenty early for our train this time, and we had no trouble finding our seats. The journey back was completely different from the way there; sleeper class was fully booked when we bought our tickets, so we were in second chair AC. Meaning there was, yes, an actual chair for each person, and the increase in ticket price apparently went entirely towards food, since we got fed at least three times. Decent enough for train food, though certainly not the best food I've eaten here. We got home to Neeti Bagh - on time! - and as we were making the last turn to come to our part of the neighborhood, we saw a house all lit up and music playing...it was a shaadi! So it's shaadi season in Delhi as well as Jaipur. We considered crashing the party, but given the circumstances (we were dirty, had all of our luggage, and had to get up for class the next day), we decided against it. If we looked pretty, they probably would have let us in. :)

Classes were pretty normal during the last week: Ramjas classes starting late and finishing late, cancelled on Thursday because the teachers were on strike, IES classes also typically ending late...the usual. Hindi class is surprisingly fun because our teacher allows us to go off on 20-minute tangents to ask her about things we actually need to know to use in everyday conversation. We also had a lengthy discussion of different fruits the other day...

Nothing like a 22-hour train ride for catching up on blogging. As soon as I find internet, I can post this and I'll be up-to-date!

A Day in Delhi

* Wake at 7:00 a.m. and realize you caught a cold from being crammed in a sleeper class compartment with approximately a zillion people and twice that many germs on the train to Jaipur last weekend.

* Go downstairs to the hot breakfast prepared by your fantastic, adorable cook Louis.

* Drink tea and take Sudafed + multivitamin + vitamin C + ibuprofen.

* Take a bucket bath and get dressed

* Check email

* Shove books in bag, check to see you've got coins for the bus, walk out the door

* Walk out of the neighborhood to the bus stop, wait for the 500, jump on the moving vehicle because bus "stop" is a figurative term

* Perform contortionist maneuvers to squeeze your way into a seat when one becomes free, look to see whether the windows have glass

* If it's Tuesday, accept the sweets that one of the conductor/ticket guys hands out as an offering to one of the nameless gods - because those offerings are probably the only reason the bus is still running

* Push your way to the front of the bus as you're going past the Parliament buildings, then jump of the not-quite-stopped bus outside the metro station

* Get patted down, have your bag x-rayed, get on the clean and pretty metro - yellow line to Vishwavidyala

* Walk to Ramjas College because it saves you ten rupees on the cycle rickshaw and class won't start on time anyway

* Hang around the college, where you may or may not have classes

* Walk back to the metro, stopping to buy momos for ten rupees from the lady by the metro station

* Take the metro to Patel Chowk, where you walk upstairs and find an auto-wallah to take you to Nizamuddin for no more than rs. 40

* Attend IES classes, where you'll most likely be kept late, just to balance out the fact that the professor at Ramjas probably showed up 15 minutes late

* Jump in an auto to go home to Neeti Bagh, stressing that it's NEE-ti Bagh, NOT Moti Bagh, which is approximately four kilometers in the exact opposite direction

* Arrive home in time for dinner and realize that you're too tired to write long blog posts

My auto-wallah today confused me. First he told me he was charging double what I wanted to pay, but he ended up driving alongside me when I started walking towards another auto-wallah parked on the side of the street. He took me where I wanted for the price I told him. However, he went a different way, and was going to the actual railroad station, not "YMCA, Railway station ke pas" (YMCA, near the railway station). I yelled "Bhaiya!" to get his attention - it means "brother" but is a vocative term used to address auto-wallahs, shopkeepers, etc. - and he looks at me through his rearview mirrors and says "No bhaiya." Not really sure why he said that, but I tell him to go left instead of right and he does. Then I told him to go right at the next traffic light, and as we're approaching the intersection, he says, "No right." I said, "Yes, right. That's where I need to go." And he smiles and says, "No right." And I said, "Yes. Turn. Right. Right!" And he does. When we finally get to the Y, I say "Bus, tik hai," which means, "That's it, that's fine," and he slows down, has this big grin on his face, looks at me and asks, "Hindi? Hindi bol?" (You speak Hindi?) I reply, "Thori-thori Hindi" ("Just a little Hindi...") as I'm getting out, and I hand him my money. He gives me correct change without trying to tell me he doesn't have any smaller bills, then shakes my hand and says, "Goodbye, friend. Good day."

I was confused. The whole time he was acting like I was this crazy stupid white girl who didn't know anything (even though I spoke to him in Hindi when I first asked if he's go where I needed to go), and then by the end of the trip I was his friend. I don't get it. But I finally got where I was supposed to be for a fair price and was riding in a brand new, clean autorickshaw, and my Hindi's getting better, no matter how amused the auto-wallahs act. Yesterday my auto-wallah was laughing at me and repeating everything I said whenever I said something in Hindi. I guess it's just that funny.

Tomorrow I'll write about Jaipur. I swear. Because on Friday we're leaving for Ajanta and Ellora, so I have to be caught up by then. (And it was awesome.)

Blogging's hard.

Catching Up, Part 2: Urban Villages

I'm a day late with round two. I blame Lost because I remembered I had to watch last week's episode. :)

Last week was fairly uneventful for Delhi. Had some classes cancelled, some classes that ran 20 minutes longer than they should have, sometimes learned, sometimes not so much. The weather's slowly been getting warmer, which is nice. When I did laundry last week, it only took a few hours to dry instead of the whole day.

Friday came and there was yet another Cities of Delhi field trip. This one was to explore some urban villages in Delhi. The village of Nizamuddin near the IES Centre is also an urban village, but the two we visited last Friday were vastly different in just about every way.

The taxi that took us there had heart-shaped smiley faces stuck all over. The way vehicles are decorated here cracks me up.

The first village was Sultan Garhi, which is abandoned. It is also the home of the oldest tomb in Delhi, and we got to walk down into it. It was dark and eery and peaceful. There was a homemade oil lamp lit and incense burning, and a woman had just finished washing the floor. Very different feeling from the other tombs I've been to. The village itself was interesting, also; a lot of walls and partial buildings are still there, just overgrown, so you can see the layout of the village and get a sense for what it was like when it was inhabited. 

A boy who had ditched school that day was following us around and showed us an open well that was really, really deep. There was also a group of army men doing some sort of training exercise involving clipboards and pencils. Some of them were in the structure where the tomb is located, so there was a pile of army boots at the bottom of the stairs there. Army guys don't look as tough when they're padding around an ancient tomb in socks and waving to American students.

The next village was Hauz Khas, which is quite close to Neeti Bagh, where I live. I had been by the main market, but I didn't even know the village part existed. It was like stepping through a portal to a different world: There's actual green grass, a pond, lots of trees, and very few people, comparatively speaking. On the drive there, we passed a petroleum truck. Petroleum in India is A-OK:

Hauz Khas was amazing. From my anthropological point of view, it's fascinating because of the way people have left the structures intact and fairly well preserved but have still kept it a usable space. The way people occupy and make use of public space is intriguing to me. And Hauz Khas is a good example of how India operates in general, I think: it's a place where stark differences combine and coexist as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It's old and of some historical significance, but it doesn't feel dead or distant or forcibly preserved as many historical locations do. Instead, it feels alive and contemporary while retaining the charm and essence of its own era.

And it's such a relief from the chaos that seems to define Delhi, like most big cities. First of all, I haven't seen a natural body of water in Delhi yet. There's supposedly this river called the Yamuna that runs along the eastern border of the city, but I'm not sure I believe that. I haven't seen it. And from what I hear, it's more of a sewer than a river. But this is pretty!

Also, I would like to make note of the fact that the fountain in the lower left-hand corner is made from a boat split in half. Badass.

Inside this urban village is also a pretty extensive though seemingly small shopping area. Lots of art stores and clothing boutiques and books stores and furniture stores. We were walking down an alleyway and out of the door of an art gallery came two tall, skinny, white European dudes lighting up cigarettes. Good to know those can be found everywhere in the world.

This sequel will have to turn into a series. Part tin (hindi for 3) of the catching-up series will commence once I have accomplished some reading for class. 

Catching Up, Part 1: Tughlakabad and Abheypur.

Okay. Lots to tell.

Friday, February 6th was a Cities of Delhi field trip to Tughlakabad Fort (of which there are a bunch of pictures on the flickr site). That was one of the cooler places we've been so far. Lots of ruins to climb around on, the first actual sunset I've seen, some sweet underground rooms and a secret passage underneath the walls of the fort, and a great view from on top of the wall. Gorgeous. It was really interesting to see the whole layout of how the citadel must have looked, and we were virtually the only ones there (aside from the three Indian men who felt the need to skulk around behind us the whole time. Which was fine. Pramod, the office assistant guy, is our bodyguard on these field trips.). The pictures mostly speak for themselves on that one.

Early in the morning on Saturday the 6th we jumped on this weird van/bus thing and drove out to the village of Abheypur in Haryana for a "rural excursion." This was an unusual weekend that didn't quite go as expected.  There was more miscommunication, misunderstanding, and difference of opinion than there should have been, but it was still a good experience. As soon as we arrived (maybe around 9 a.m., when it was still foggy and cold), we were fed biscuits and juice boxes, then sent to scramble up the rocks to the top of the hill we were currently at the bottom of. When everyone was back, we squished ourselves into the one classroom at the Abheypur vocational training school run by the Vision of India, the group who also organized our trip. We were then lectured by Captain Sharma, an Indian guy who lived in the U.S. for twenty years (in New York City and Ohio), is a journalist, has gotten a few minutes alone with Bill Gates, is an Air Force captain, and yes, wanted to be called Captain Sharma and wore his air force baseball cap the whole weekend. Oh, and he's a yoga guru? More on that later.

What I learned from Captain Sharma's first lecture: There are ten steps to success, and success is monetary, having nothing to do with love or emotional support or happiness. If you follow his ten steps, you are guaranteed to be successful. Also, you can't be successful unless you have failed, which includes experiencing the death of a loved one. Sitting through his little speech (which he pretended was a discussion but he shot down every idea put forth by one of us and told us we were wrong) was incredibly frustrating and more than a little infuriating to me, but I understood it more once I looked back on it later in the day. I realized later that the purpose of that session was probably to show us what they teach the village boys that go to that school. These are boys who drop out before or during middle school and whose families bluntly tell them that they're worthless. So these "ten steps to success" aren't really that; rather, they're a method of instilling values and hope in these kids who don't really find that support elsewhere and would probably give up on being any sort of successful. Which makes a lot of sense. It was just presented in such a way that it felt like we were being lectured at and put down and told that we were wrong and that there was a very clear-cut way that things should be. That's one of the best examples of what I meant earlier when I said there was too much miscommunication and misunderstanding. We weren't told what the purpose of this exercise was; we were just thrown into it without any context or explanation and then were expected to sit through it obediently. I also think that a lot was lost in translation. Particularly when he was talking about failure because he didn't actually give an example of failure. I think the point was perseverance through hardship and not losing sight of your goals, even when there are obstacles and distractions. So again, valid point and legitimate lessons, but poorly presented and not well explained.

After that, we went to the elementary school in the village (which again, I have pictures of up on flickr). Those kids were so adorable. They sang the Indian national anthem and made us sing the American one (luckily, the Spanish national anthem has no lyrics, so Paula didn't have to sing it), and then we exchanged nursery rhymes/children's songs with them. We taught them the Itsy Bitsy Spider and a few tongue twisters. They were pretty cute.

Following the school visit, we went to the village proper and just kind of looked around. We got fed delicious food, napped in the sun, and learned about village occupations. I got to try weaving cloth on a hand loom (which is REALLY HARD) and we saw a potter and a woman spinning thread and people cutting up food for their cows. It was colorful and dirty and wonderful, and the people were really friendly even though hardly any of them spoke English and my Hindi is nowhere near good enough to carry on a real conversation. Captain Sharma demonstrated to us the kinds of questions that are asked by matchmakers when arranging marriages and determining dowries and such, and my poor roommate Rachel got picked to be married on her 20th birthday in a rural village in India to a stranger. Our friend Mark also was chosen to be married off to a village girl. We didn't think his girlfriend would be very happy, but Captain Sharma assured us that having a girlfriend in addition to a wife was quite alright. So my roommate was caked in makeup and clothed in a wedding sari and completely embarassed, and Mark was also given his costume. They each had sort-of wedding ceremonies, which actually weren't very ceremonious and not legally binding. It was a strange kind of evening.

That night I slept in the home of a local family with three other IES students. We were with a family of 21 split between two houses, and the people on our side probably spoke about 20 words of English between them. We sat outside in our pajamas on our string beds miming and using broken Hindi and English trying to get to know each other, which, despite the awkwardness, was great fun. They insisted on making us chai at 11 p.m., which they didn't drink because they made it specially for us, and the grandma/matriarch-type woman of the family smoked her hookah nonstop. It was crazy. Sleeping outside in the cold air under thick blankets in the moonlight was probably the best experience of the weekend. Waking up at 5:15 a.m. (unnecessarily, as it turns out, because of even more miscommunication, since apparently all of the adults had different itineraries...) was not. We eventually walked out the middle of the wilderness around 7 a.m. to do yoga. Led by Captain Sharma. Who may have been trained in the postures but absolutely does not have the personality to teach yoga. Again with the telling people they're wrong and making fun of people and just generally having a rather harsh personality. And it was really frickin' cold, and instead of mats we had astroturf set on the ground. Still, it was nice to be outside at sunrise in the relative peace and quiet.

We spent almost the whole morning just sitting around doing nothing, then jumped back in our vehicles supposedly to go to the fields, which turned into going the lake, which turned into about a 2-minute stretch break because of all the miscommunication. We never ended up seeing the fields, and simply drove back to Delhi. Promptly upon our arrival, my roommate and I showered and went shopping in market we hadn't been to at before, which turned out to be my favorite place to shop in Delhi. It was quite a weekend. It was fun and interesting and definitely a learning experience, even if that learning differed from the intended effect of the program...

Now it is time for me to go inside away from the sun :( and learn some Hindi. This evening shall bring tales of university, cooking, sleeper class on Indian Railways, and the Pink City. Stay tuned.

Another important thing!

Sarah Rogers was right; the best mango ice cream in the world is in India. It is unbelievable. The ice cream is, in general, so smooth and creamy and thick and delicious, and the mango variety made by Mother Dairy is nothing short of divine.

Vishvavydyala.

That's the Hindi word for university.

I'm almost getting into a routine here, which is nice. My political theory teacher showed up to class on time today (first time for everything!), and he even managed to let us out relatively on time. Alas, yin and yang are always together, and the microeconomics teacher (whose class is two hours at the end of an already long day) kept us twenty minutes past when class was supposed to end. IST truly is more than Indian Standard Time; the common phrase "Indian Stretchable Time" is far more apt than I would have thought. India is an exercise in patience, most certainly.

One of the bright parts of my day, however, occurred in the middle of my commute from morning Ramjas College classes to afternoon IES classes. My roommate and I were hailing autorickshaws from the metro station to take us the rest of the way, and we stumbled upon a dream come true. First of all, the auto-wallah agreed to take us to Nizamuddin, which the previous two did not. Then, he VOLUNTEERed to have us pay by the meter (required by law but never enforced and rarely encountered). So far, this is just luck. The miracle was that additionally, his rickshaw was clean and not falling apart. He took us to our destination quickly AND directly. Auto-wallahs will often agree to price by meter and proceed to double the distance to your destination by driving around in circles so they make more money. This one, however, was a genuine, honest guy who was just doing his job the way it should be done. And he made my day. So we tipped him enough so that I hope we made his day, too.

Backtracking to what's happened since the last post.

I made it to my first day of classes by myself with no major catastrophes, successfully negotiating the various modes of transportation necessary to get me from A to B to C to A. 

The students are friendly at Ramjas, and one boy in particular, Anshul, has been talkative, informative, and inquisitive. He introduced me to all of the other people in my class and asked approximately 88 questions about universities in the U.S.

Classes at Ramjas don't start or end on time.

We went to the Qutb Minar last Friday as the first field trip for the Cities of Delhi class I'm taking (which is a wonderful class that teaches me more about Delhi than I could possibly learn on my own). The place is aesthetically and architecturally interesting: a conglomeration of various rulers and styles and materials. It's a mosque that stole different color sandstone from earlier Hindu temples along with the Hindu images of people and animals, and it has a big iron pillar randomly in the middle. Read the information on the link above - I don't feel like writing out all the history, but it's a really cool place.

Saturday morning was a service learning workshop in which we actually obtained information about volunteering opportunities. Only problem is between a lot of actual class time and my silly commutes, I'm not sure logistically how volunteering will work. Some places accept ad hoc volunteers, but a lot of them require big time commitments. And some of the ones I'm most interested in are just too far away. I'll work something out, but that's one part of my schedule I haven't nailed down yet.

On Sunday I did my laundry again. In a bucket. By hand. I still have mixed feelings about laundry here; I love having clean clothes, and I like that this hand-wash-air-dry style of laundry is eco-friendly, but there are some major drawbacks. First of all, it's time-consuming. My clothes get so dirty they don't get clean if I soak them in a bucket of water and then rinse; I have to soak them twice to feel like I'm getting all the dirt and dust out (particularly jeans and socks). Also, if they're not in direct sunlight, they take a REALLY long time to dry. Though I guess the heat that's already started to come will eliminate that problem soon. However, there's so much dust and dirt flying around in the air that I feel like by the time my clothes are dry, they're dirty again! It's a vicious cycle I'm sure I won't win. I can't wait to return to washing machines and much clearer air.

On Monday, Ramjas classes were cancelled due to the death of a faculty member. (As previously stated, nothing goes as planned.) So a few of us slept in a little, then went to Connaught Place to hunt for book stores. We ended up in the English Book Shop, which had books priced in USD, pounds, and rupees. It took a while to figure out how much things cost, and I may have been cheated since I have no idea what the pound-to-rupee exchange rate is. But regardless, it's much cheaper than what I would have paid in the States, and they're beautiful brand-new books.

Tuesday morning was back to Ramjas classes, where I encountered police barricades and the main road to Ramjas blocked off. From afar I couldn't figure out what was going on, but when I got close enough to determine whether I could get through or not, I discovered that it was a Peace and Harmony Run. I like India. It was really cool. I hope my commute continues to be exciting.

The political theory professor was 40 minutes late to class, so I had a lot of time to talk to other students. And some of the girls were having a photo shoot of each other on their camera phones, and inevitably, I ended up having my picture taken. They were nice about it though, not creepy or rude, and since they are people I'll be seeing on a daily basis, I didn't really mind. Also, one girl (who turned out not to actually be in the class...she was just hanging out?) began a conversation with me in this way: 

GIRL: Are you from the U.S.?

ME: Yes.

GIRL: Do you speak Spanish?

ME: I took it in high school, but haven't spoken it in a few years.

GIRL: ¿Como te llamas? ¿Dónde vives? [lots of babbling]

Turns out she has a certificate in Spanish and is studying for some sort of advanced/higher level degree or certificate. She wanted me to teach her about when to use reflexive verbs. That was an interesting time. She desperately wanted to chat with me in Spanish, and while I managed some of it, I couldn't remember a lot. Between not using Spanish often at all anymore, learning and becoming proficient in German since studying Spanish, and being in India learning Hindi, my Spanish skills were nowhere near where she apparently thought they were. But it was good fun nonetheless.

Later in the afternoon, I figured out how to buy stamps at the post office, which is literally next door to the YMCA. Convenient, since no one seems to know how often the public mailboxes on the street are emptied of their contents, or how safe they are from petty thieves.

Daily life is exhausting here. But we now have a coffee maker the student kitchenette in the residence (instead of relying on nasty NesCafé from the YMCA), and I've been trying to go to bed early and be outside during my few breaks in the day. All in all, life's pretty good, though I certainly miss home and all of you.

I'll make a conscious effort to record something here more often than once a week so I don't have to keep doing these long posts and forgetting half of what's happened.

Namaste.