Thomas blew away our plans...

Hurricane Thomas hit the island of St. Lucia in early November and they are still putting everything back together. We were told that we could not check into our original hotel until 2 days after our reservation was supposed to begin. Trying to keep things positive, we booked a hotel in Soufriere, a local town along the west side of the island. We stayed at the Mago Hotel, where our rooms were basically outside. The hotel was built into the side of the mountain, so we had three walls and it opened up to the outside view of the ocean and Petit Piton (a mountain). It was almost like staying in a little cave.

Soufriere was neat because it was a very small town. By the end of our 2nd night we could walk down the streets and people would recognize us. We basically met some really nice, welcoming, short term friends :) That's the thing about St. Lucia, the people are really relaxed and friendly. For example, a souvenir shop owner from London saw us the evening after we went into her store. She said hello and we hung out with her two daughters during dinner. Our taxi driver, Christopher, was really cool too- I'd use his services again.

Today, Christopher, our Taxi driver took us back to the airport, where a shuttle was supposed to pick us up at 1 o' clock to take us to the Almond Morgan Bay Resort (The sister hotel of where we were originally supposed to stay but is still not ready). No one was there at 1 o' clock, so we called the hotel. They said we had to get to the original hotel first and then they would shuttle us to the Almond at 4 O' CLOCK. We didnt want to pay for another overpriced Taxi ride, so we walked from the airport rolling our 50lbs bag.... whew! (If I've learned anything from this trip it's to pack less. Actually I should not be complaining, Cheryl rolled it most of the way. That's what older siblings are for!) We are now waiting for our shuttle...

The Almond Morgan Bay Resort seems as though it is going to be nice for our last 3 nights. We've had a lot of irritating moments, but being in St. Lucia is still pretty awesome! I would recommend it to anyone, if you've ever been to Hawaii-it's very similar, just not as Americanized because it's well, not America. lol

Travel Blog

I have decided to keep this blog as a journal for all my travels (not that I travel that often).

I am flying out of LAX on Wednesday to go to the island of St. Lucia with my older sister Cheryl!

In May, my sister and I were looking into Costco's travel packages and we found a great deal for a 5 night stay in St. Lucia. It was a pretty random-spur of the moment kind of booking, but I guess that's what keeps my life a bit more interesting. We are staying at Coconut Bay Resort and Spa. This hotel has a water park, is right on the beach, and has fun adventure trips (like hiking and zip lining) for an extra cost. The package we got includes: to and from airport services, a 'welcome' drink on arrival, access to the water park, 20$ to spend at the resort each day, breakfast lunch and dinner each day, and free alcohol at all 3 bars, including the swim up pool bar (uh oh)! We are really looking forward to our adventure together. Hopefully there won't be any airline incidents like the one I had going to India.

Here is the link to the hotel we are going to if you want to check it out: http://www.cbayresort.com/

Back Home in Chico, CA

While in India, I couldn't wait to get back home! I've been back in California for almost one month now and I miss India & the people I met there so much more than I thought I would. The first week back was kind of difficult because everyday seemed so boring. In India, each day brought a new adventure! It was hard to come back home, possibly because it didn't change one bit while I was gone, it was not all that exciting. No one stared at me & no one wanted pictures with me anymore :( haha
Though adjusting back into my life and relationships here has been kind of difficult, I know I can't take my friends and family for granted. I didn't know a single soul when I got to India, which made me appreciate all the people who care about me so much.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
I just finished week one of my final and 4th year at Chico State. As I walk around the campus and community of Chico I begin to think of how I can make the most out of this last year. I want to embrace my friendships and take advantage of all our campus has to offer (like volunteer opportunities and free kickboxing classes)!
I'm currently researching Grad Schools and thinking about prepping for the GRE (like the SAT for Graduate Students). Right now, Im looking at applying to University of Southern California, Azusa Pacific University, University of Massachusetts- Amherst, and Oregon State University. There aren't many schools nationwide that I have found with the program I want (Higher Education or Student Affairs). I think it would be cool to go out of state (I always wanted to do that for Undergraduate). I made the big move from Southern CA to Northern CA, so maybe it's time for me to take it just one step further. But we'll see, Im very lost with my future plans right now... & I'm okay with that.

Delhi & Agra

This is a bench that Princess Diana sat on, at least that's what our guide said.
My friend Batya and I in front of the Taj Mahal!
This was the restaurant we ate dinner at with the view of the Taj (I talk about it later on)

Traveled to North India recently! I’ll try to keep everything to a minimum, but it was quite an adventure!

This past weekend 6 friends and I took a plane to Delhi (the capitol of India). We arrived in Delhi at 1am and we realized what everyone meant when they said, “it’s really hot in North India.” It was so humid and hot, I thought I would never adjust. The hotel picked us up in a little Sedan, which would only hold 4 out of the 7 of us… even though we emailed them a few days prior saying there was 7 of us. The driver ended up paying for another cab for the rest of us. As we were on our way to the hotel I noticed that we were in an extremely sketchy area… my friend, La and I looked at each other with hopes that we were just passing through this area and our hotel was far far away. The next thing we knew, there were several dogs chasing our car and barking at us (we still don’t know what that was all about). Sure enough our hotel was just around the corner in the bad area. The inside of our hotel was actually really nice, thank goodness. However, hot water was not available in the showers (no big surprise for us at this point). They had free breakfasts too, which was good… except for the fact that 6 of the employees just stood there watching us eat. (In India the population is so large that there are usually far too many people working at any given place and time.. which usually results in nothing getting done efficiently). The only man that could speak English would continuously come back to our table and say, “Excuse me ma’am, good food? Good food?” “…Yes… thank you.”

We traveled all around Delhi and realized that there were many nice areas in the city! We saw some great temples, museums, and memorials suchas; the Lotus Temple, India Gate, the big Government Capitol Building, a Hindu Temple (can’t go anywhere without taking our shoes off to go inside one of those!), and a Gandhi Museum. We ate dinner at the top of a 24 story building in a rotating restaurant so we were able to see the whole city. It was really great, especially after a day of sweating continuously in the North Indian heat.

On Friday we made our way to Agra to see the Taj Mahal! It was supposed to be a 5 hour drive, but it took 7 hours (of course, we weren’t surprised). We got to our hotel, where they had lost our reservations (again, no surprise) and finally checked in and got our keys. We went to dinner that night at another hotel, which was extremely close to the Taj Mahal so we sat on the roof terrace and viewed the Taj as we ate a very good cheap meal! In addition to being able to see the Taj Mahal we could also see the rooftops of all the homes, which were very run down. It was interesting to see the poor lifestyles the citizens live with a majestic tomb (Taj Mahal) directly behind them (see picture above). That night when we got back to the hotel we wanted to take showers, we had to tell the front desk of the hotel to turn on the hot water, but they said it would take an hour to heat up. The next thing we knew there was an older man at our door asking us something about the water… we couldn’t communicate very well with him because of our language barrier. This is how the conversation went:

Me: “Hi, Yes, we want the hot water turned on.”

Employee: “Hot water. 5:30am-10am.”

Sandy: “Well can we get it right now because we have to get up at 4 am for the sunrise viewing of the Taj Mahal and we wanted to shower before we went to bed.”

Employee: “Hot water. 5:30am-10am.”

Us: “Can you just turn it on now? The front desk told us they would.”

Employee: “Hot water, I can bring up in bucket?”

A bucket?! What in the world... only in India.

To make an even longer story short, we never got the hot water we needed. This hotel was a chaotic, there were phone calls at random times because they had questions for us and the water would just turn off while someone was showering. Boy, we were frustrated! Looking back at it, it was a great adventure though!

We left the hotel at 5am for the sunrise viewing of the Taj Mahal. It was amazing! It was so beautiful and big! There are no words to describe it. 20,000 people worked to build it, and it took 22 years to complete (finished in 1648). We spent about three hours there and got to go inside of it to see a replica of the tombs that were actually in the basement. The tombs are of Shah Jahan and his wife (who he built the Taj Mahal for after her death) Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is right on a river and on the other side of the river you can see the beginning construction of what was going to be a Black Taj Mahal for Shah Jahan, however black marble was 4 times more expensive than white marble during that time, so Shah Jahan was laid to rest with his favorite wife. (He had 3 wives, but was the most in love with this one) It was crazy to think that this amazing thing was build for one reason- LOVE.

Agra Fort was where we went next, and it was awesome! So interesting and huge. We saw only saw 25% of it in the 3 hours we were there.

There is a lot of history behind these places and I would love to type it all out, but I don’t want to bore anyone… if I haven’t already. I learned so much and loved every second of this trip! It was worth every frustration we came across. Such as people wanting billions of pictures with us and being swarmed by Indian men trying to sell us things thinking they can over charge us because we were tourists… and many many more frustrating funny things!

Henna Party

^ This is a picture of me a few minutes after I had the henna finished. We had to wait 1-1.5 hours to let it dry. Then we washed it off with sugar and water (this is supposed to make it last longer)!

^The final product of my henna!


Last night we had a Henna Party, which ended up being really awesome. Three Indian women came to one of the apartments and did Henna for us. I got one hand and one foot done(as you can see in my pictures). Our director brought us a bunch of amazing Indian food and we all just hung out as we waited for the henna to dry.
The 3 women who came to do it for us were so nice! One thing I've noticed about Indian women is that they are all very nice. One was 22 years old, one was 25, and one was 29. I wish I could remember their names... I was asking them questions to get to know them and learn about their traditions. We've been learning about the Indian marriage traditions in my Womens Issues class I was curious to see if it applied to them. In India, 60% of marriages are arranged & 40% are "love marriages." The 29 year old was married and has two kids, one 10 and the other 7 years old... she said she got married at age 18 (which is average for an Indian woman). I didn't get to ask her if her marriage was arranged or not, because she didn't speak very good English. The 22 year old was not married yet, and when I asked her if she had a boyfriend it seemed as though I had offended her, woops! Maybe that question was too personal. The 25 year old was married. I asked the 25 year old if her parents had chosen her groom for her and she replied, "No, it was a love marriage. My parents did not approve and have not talked to me for the 3 years that I've been married. I have a 4 month year old son, and they still wont talk to me, even to see their Grandson." It's amazing how real these issues are. The Indian traditions are very hard for people to break, especially when followed by so many past generations.

Trying to understand the Indian ways!

Above is a picture of my first day in Bangalore. Indian students welcomed us with flowers and a red bindi on our forehead.

The Indian kids at the village loved getting their pictures taken and then getting to see themselves on the digital camera's! (read more about the village below)

Me and some cute Indian girls who live in the rural village we visited. ^^ They were a little afraid of me at first.

A Monkey at the Village ^^^


So. There are some pictures for you all to get a better idea of what's going on here in India!
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Wow, I went to the Indian Post Office this morning & that was an adventure in itself! I had about 20 postcards to send and so I went to buy stamps. I got to the counter and was redirected to another counter where it said, "stamps" above the mans head... i guess i should have read the signs. I was buying a bunch of stamps while another customer was standing next to me buying stamps, from the same man at the same counter... this lack of queue's is very weird to me, can't everyone just wait their turn? Once I was handed the stamps I began licking them and sticking them on the postcards. The man behind the counter stopped me, pointed to a table behind me and said, "paste." I turned around and saw a little blue "paste" jar with a stick coming out of the top. I thought, I'm supposed to use a STICK to put glue on my stamps? I'd rather use my tongue. But, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I sat down at the table and began using that little stick to put paste on each little stamp. I don't even know how well they are going to stick to the postcards, so if you asked for a postcard I really hope you get it! If not, my apologies ahead of time! I really tried my best!

This past weekend I went to a rural village to observe the lifestyle for a night. I felt bad because we don't really have time to help them out in any big way, but it was beneficial to get to see what a 3rd world country can really look like. When we first pulled up in our huge bus the kids were jumping up and down with grins on their face. They were very excited to see us, but as we got out of the bus and tried to talk to them they were intimidated and scared. It took them a while before they actually got close to us. The kids were darling, they were so happy all the time and probably had no idea what kind of life they had to live. This village only has electricity for 1 hour each day and there is one main water pump where they all have to collect their water each morning. There were cows and goats walking around and we saw tons of wild monkeys! We took a ride to another nearby village also. We had to pile into the back of a truck that had this canopy type thing covering it. We all stood inside and one guy from our group said, "Tell me when we get to the border!" We felt like hostages of some sort. That night we had to sleep on a cement floor in one big room, smooshed together. We didn't get much sleep, but we made it fun. It was a very humbling experience.

Picture Testing

I just wanted to try to upload a picture to see if it would work.

This is a picture of the whole group at the Palace we got to eat lunch at in Mysore, India. It was so beautiful.. and if you look in the front row you can see our new Indian friend dressed in red! :)


I will try to have a few more by next week!