Desert Winds and Spreading Dirt

Weather conditions at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night, April 19th: 90ºF and "widespread dust". This is when it becomes quite apparent that Delhi is, in fact, remarkably close to the desert.

I have had mini-adventures almost every day for the last week, as I planned to. Here's a brief summary:

Wednesday: Shopping at Lajpat Nagar for more light-weight summer clothes so I can attempt to be comfortable in this heat.

Thursday: Community Potluck dinner at the Residence. Not going somewhere new, but I was in class all day, and it was a special event. We had 40-50 people squished onto our terrace in Neeti Bagh, which was decorated prettily. Teachers, board members, the guys who led our rural excursion (Harpreet the awesome Sikh guy and Captain Karma...I mean, Sharma...), and homestay families all showed up. It was a grand old time filled with delicious food. Cate made apple pie to die for.

Friday: In the morning, I went to Akshardham Temple, a Swami Narayan temple complex designed by amusement park people. (It was an optional Cities of Delhi field trip, with one other girl in the class, Harini, and two students not in the class.) One of the stranger places I've been. Ever. Similar to the ISKCON temple I went to during orientation but on a much larger and more ridiculous scale. Unfortunately, I do not have photos because they have crazy security and essentially don't let you bring anything other than money inside, but the website I linked you to above has pictures and descriptions, including the "exhibitions." We saw the animatronic light and sound show of Swami Narayan's life, which was...something. Due to misinformation and unyielding temple workers, we didn't get to do the boat ride and we weren't interested in the movie. We got there at nine, but the temple didn't open until ten and the exhibitions didn't start until eleven. But we walked around the whole place, and it was definitely an experience.

On Friday afternoon, Rachel and I went up to Chandni Chowk in North Delhi because I was sick the day that our Cities of Delhi class went there. Chandni Chowk is a chaotic maze of tiny little alleys you don't even know exist until you stumble upon them, and they are impossible to navigate, and it was all very exciting. Every galii (alley) sells something different. Furthermore, there is a jalebi-wallah on the main road, and the place has apparently been around forever and is really famous. Those jalebis were amazing.

On the way up to Chandni Chowk, we took the metro. I stopped at Patel Chowk (one station away from where I got on) to meander through the metro museum there. Geeky as it sounds, I actually enjoyed it. The layout of the information is funny, and it's fascinating...like how yoga and meditation are part of every training session for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation employees, and the fact that the uniforms for DMRC employees were designed by the National Institute of Fashion Technology. (I actually went here to get some information for my Cities of Delhi project, which is about various modes of transportation in Delhi, but it was kind of fun, too. Rachel even liked it, and she had no reason for being there other than the fact that she was going shopping with me afterward.) Unfortunately, no pictures of this visit, either; also due to angry security man who was already following me around because I guess I looked suspicious taking notes on the information...in a functioning metro station, open to the public, designed to be looked at. Oh well. I stayed out of trouble.

Saturday: Sari shopping! We have a fancy farewell dinner on Thursday, and almost all of the other girls had already bought saris, so I got Kashika to agree to go back to Lajpat Nagar for sari shopping with me (since I had no idea what I was doing and couldn't go by myself). I meant to buy one, but I got two because they were just too pretty! I dropped them off at the tailor's when we got home, so hopefully the blouses he makes will fit me. Sometimes tailors here don't do a very good job.

Sunday: Spent the whole day doing homework. On Saturday night, it took Sam, Sydney, and I about four hours to do one question for our microeconomics assignment...and there were three of them due on Monday. So Sunday was largely spent doing econ, along with some other homeworks. This week = 8-10 page econ assignment, 40 minute econ presentation, 20 minute Cities of Delhi presentation, and 8-10 page Cities of Delhi paper. Sounds fun, right?

Sunday didn't bring new adventures, but I figured that's okay since I went to two new places on Friday.

Monday: More homework, though I got to take a post-breakfast and post-emailing econ assignment nap, which was fantastic. After Hindi class I went back to Dilli Haat, where I did more shopping. Also, I spoke to lots of Indian people, some of whom thought I was British, some of whom thought I was Kashmiri, and nearly all of whom asked how old I was and if I was married. I walked away with a bunch of gifts and three phone numbers. It's sad when the quickest way to get away from unwanted conversation is to just take down some stranger's phone number and say you'll call soon. I'm looking forward to going home and being able to buy things without being interrogated or hit on. I did find an Indian guy who spoke a tiny bit of German, though, which was fun.

Today is Tuesday (again, it has taken me two days to write a blog post), and I did not adventure to a new place because I wasted a large portion of my day attempting to have meetings with my Ramjas teachers. To make a long story short, I left my house just after 10:30 this morning after my first teacher pushed back our meeting by an hour and a half, didn't go to Hindi because my other teacher didn't show up even though I waited a long time for him, and didn't get back to Neeti Bagh until after 3:00 p.m. (without either of my meetings really taking place). Oh, and there was a giant traffic jam, so the ride home from the metro station was really long. It's about 105ºF right now, and after sitting in traffic so long, our auto-wallah decided to stop and get gas about a half a mile from our house. When I finally got home, I took a shower to cool off, and when I got out, the power was off. 

In short, I've had better days here, but the day's not over, so hopefully it will end better than it's been going so far.

As to the second part of the title of this post, there have been mysterious piles of dirt sitting in the park across the street for a couple weeks now. The other day, I realized that they had, in fact, spread the dirt out over the grass, which is what our guard told me they were going to do when I asked if he knew why the dirt was there. I have no idea what the purpose was; they didn't need to level out the ground and they're not re-seeding the grass. It's one of India's unexplained mysteries.

Anyway, I'm off to prepare my presentations now that the power's back on and I can plug my computer back in.