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!
************************************************************************************


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!

United States vs. India

Nothing seems to be familiar to me in India... I decided to write about some of the things I am noticing here.

WATER?. As we drove over what looked like a river, our director announced, "There are no rivers in Bangalore!" One breathe later I realized that it was sewage. It's everywhere! and open for the eye to see, the nose to smell... and sometimes even for shoes to touch. Also, it is very rare to have a hot shower, due to the power shortages the water can't always be heated.

DIVERSITY. 99.9% Indians .1% Other. Bangalore is not diverse at all, apparently no one has immigrated here.

HOUSING ARRANGEMENTS. I was living in an apartment called National Games Village, which is about a 30 minute walk to campus. It looks like a very run down apartment building, but in India its pretty high end! Each apartment held 5 people. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, and living room area. It took 3 weeks, but we finally got the TV to turn on last night! My roommate was fantastic, but I just didn't really hang out with a lot of people there, so this morning I moved into Jonas Hall, which is an on campus all girls dorm. I have more friends here, so it will be better for me I hope.

WEATHER. It's currently monsoon season, so it does rain frequently. Not so much in Bangalore, but in other cities I have been to it rains at least once a day. If it does rain in Bangalore it passes pretty quickly. I don't go anywhere without my umbrella anymore.

COMMUNICATION. Everyone here speaks at least 3 languages. Hindi, English, and their Mother Tongue. There are tons of languages in India, approximately 1 per every 100km. So, according to where someone is from, that is their mother tongue they speak (in Bangalore it is called Kannada). Hindi is the national language so everyone can speak that. English is usually learned in school and so everyone can speak that as well, but the younger crowd seems to speak English a lot better.

SHOPPING. Every store here has a guard standing in the doorway. You can't go anywhere without having your bags checked (I don't even know what they are checking for). Once you get inside the store someone will usually breathe down your neck and follow you around trying to "help." I am just so used to having more personal space that it gets very frustrating sometimes. Also, people do not form lines to wait their turn when buying something. You have to aggressively fight people to the cashier to pay.

BLACKOUTS. There must be about 20 blackouts per day (no exaggeration). They usually only last about 30 seconds. They used to startle me, but now they don't phase me. Even in class, the teacher just continues talking through any power outages.

Sorry about the crazy fonts on this post. I can't figure out how to fix it.

MYSORE

I got back last night from a weekend in Mysore. It was really fun, except for the heat! It seems as though everywhere I have been in India so far has been much hotter and more humid than Bangalore, which makes me so happy to be living in Bangalore.

We left at 6am on Saturday for Mysore. We had 1 bus and 2 big vans for all of us. About half way we stopped to eat breakfast at this buffet, it was decent. There was this one food item they put on my plate that looked like a mini funnel cake, except it was hard-like and kind of crystallized. It tasted like deep fried sugar! I am beginning to realize that a lot of the food here is not that healthy!

After breakfast we drove into Mysore and went to our hotel. The hotel we stayed at was really nice and the showers had hot water (which seems to be rare). That evening we went to this huge garden. Just as we got there it started pouring rain.. of course only a few of us had umbrella's so we had to suck it up. There was thunder and lightning for the rest of the night.. but once the rain stopped we began to walk through the garden. It had a ton of fountains and was lit up in all different colors. It was really pretty! I thought we were finished after we walked through, but then we got in line for a boat ride! As we were waiting in line I noticed that bugs were surrounding me. There were moths EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many bugs.. when you looked towards the light it looked foggy, but really it was just a billion bugs. We finally got on the boat and drove away from the light (thank goodness) and then got off on the other side of the pond/lake thing. Once we got there we watched a water show with music. It was colorfully lit up fountains dancing to the beat of the music. After that we went back to the hotel and ate dinner on the roof. From there we could see in the distance a palace lit up! It was nice :)

The next day we drove around, saw some monuments, and went into a Hindu temple (we have been in about 3 trillion Hindu temples so far, and I think I'll be okay if I don't have to go into another one. They can be a pain in the butt because we have to take our shoes off, and I really don't like having dirty feet). For lunch our Director, Jacob, suprised us and we got to eat lunch inside an old palace (which is now a 5 Star Hotel). We got a tour of the palace/hotel and saw the inside of one of the hotel rooms (750 US$ per night) and then ate a wonderful meal in a beautiful room! Mmmm.. the best food I've had so far. Jacob said we got to eat like Princes and Princesses.

We then went to another very old palace and took a tour of it. After the tour we rode Elephants around the palace grounds. It was cool, but kind of scary, those things are huge!

The only thing annoying about going to Touristy areas are the Indian Tourists.. They love staring and white people and taking pictures with us. People wanting pictures of me was beginning to get annoying so I told the next man who asked me if he would pay me 100 Rupees for a picture, we laughed and took the picture anyway. Although, I think I really could make some money doing that...

गूद्ब्ये फॉर नो! <--- "Goodbye for now!" in Hindi

Namaste!

I have been here for a week and a half now! I'm starting to become really comfortable in the city of Bangalore and at school (Christ University). Today was the second day of classes and they went really well. Yoga is a blast! The Guru (teacher) is great and it feels so good to stretch and just forget about the world around me for a few hours. I even fell asleep today when we were in the "dead man's" position (which is when you are just lying on the floor and concentrating on relaxing all your muscles). It's really neat to say that I am taking traditional yoga in India! The class is really similar to the yoga class I took at Chico State, therefore the instructor at Chico State knows what he's doing! After Yoga, me and a few girls went to find lunch... we ended up at a little stand by the basketball court on campus. This place was great!! We had biscuits that you dip in a type of curry (everything we eat here is some type of bread that you dip in some kind of curry), I think it was called Pav Banjiv or something. Then I got a fruit smoothie.. mm good! The fruit here is very delicious. I'm so happy that I finally enjoy eating the food, regardless of the digestive problems :/ The spices here are hard to get used to.

Today we met a bunch of guys from Arkansas. They are part of the same program as we are, and they live at our apartment complex. It's nice to have more people around that we can talk to without an accent barrier.

This week we are planning our trip to see the Taj Mahal! Its about 160$ for a round trip flight to New Dehli... sweet! I am going to have to miss 2 days of school, which I'm normally not comfortable with, but I'm sure I wont regret it this time. This weekend I am going to Mysore on our group trip. Mysore has a bunch of beautiful palaces and a lot of great shopping :) They specialize in Silk and Sandalwood Carvings.

I am hoping to be able to upload pictures soon.. its just hard because I can only come to this internet cafe to get online. Hopefully soon though!

Goa

The "12 hour" bus ride from Bangalore to the Coast in Goa ended up being 17 hours! oh what a ride, the bus driver kept stopping for various reasons too, we werent sure what was going on half the time because we couldn't really understand them. We all just tried to sleep as much as we could. When we had to go to the bathroom we would go in a bush on the side of the road. I cut my heel pretty bad at one stop... eww, its gross. It's healing okay though, Im sure it will be fine in a week or two.

When we first got to Goa I was regreting that I had come. It was raining and it was extremely humid! (I am now appreciating the fact that I live in California) On saturday, me and 4 other girls took the bus to a museum, an old church, and the capitol city to have dinner. Dinner was 35$ for all 5 of us and this was at a fancy restraunt! We had a lot of fun and saw a lot of cool things. All the Indian people were thrilled to see White people so they were constantly asking to take pictures of us, or with us. The hotel we stayed at wasn't bad, but I dont think I will ever get used to the bathrooms in India. I left a magazine on my bed for the day and by that night it was soggy from the humidity!! Overall, it ended up being a good time and now I can say I've touched the Arabian Sea :)

There is a huge strike going on in Bangalore today (something to do with oil). Everything is closed until 6pm. Today was supposed to be our first day of classes, but they got cancelled!

I am beginning to adjust pretty nicely now.. Im sleeping better and getting all around more comfortable with India. Still missing home a bit, but I guess that is a blessing in disquise. At least I have people and a place to miss!

I will try to start adding pictures.. but I didnt bring my camera cord. Im going to try to borrow someone elses!

First Days in Bangalore

I finally made it here! It's really cool, everything is so different. I landed at the airport at 4am and took a cab (BY MYSELF!) to the campus. I was so scared, but the cab driver was nice and even waited with me until I was let into my room. The traffic is NUTS here. No one stays in thier lane, they just do as they please, and honk the entire time. When you are walking, there are hardly any intersections to cross the street, the cars don't stop and you have to run FAST in order to not get hit by someone. I doubt they would actually hit you, but they get very close!

My roommates are awesome and have really helped when it comes to me being homesick. We are all going to Goa this weekend (there are beautiful beaches there), its a 12 hours bus ride!! ahhh..... oh well, I'm only going to be here once.

We start class on monday and I am taking "Womens Issues in Indian Soceity," "Yoga," and "Service Learning." The service learning class is like community service and we are going to go to a very rural village in a few weeks to help there. It should be very very interesting. Im looking forward to the next month and hope that I climb out of this homesickness soon :)

Getting Ready to Head to India!

1st, a short history lesson:

The city name, "Bangalore" comes from the native name "Bengaluru," which is an adaptation of the earlier name (in the language Kannada [sounds like Canada to me]), "Benda Kaale Uru".... which in English means "The Town of the Boiled Beans."

There are 5 days left until I leave for "The Town of the Boiled Beans" and I have yet to hear that they serve boiled beans there... would this be a form of curry? I guess I'll be finding out soon enough.

During this last week I have been running around (with the assistance of MOM, of course) buying various things that I will need to take with me on this trip, such as; immodium, band-aids, heavy duty bug spray, and tampons (they don't sell tampons in India!). I'm a little stressed out and it's making me a bit nervous for the trip... I'm not sure what to expect when I get there. However, I was taught by my old boss, Pamella, that you can always turn nerves into positive excitement! So that's what I will be trying to do over the next few days.

I have talked with some of the girls who are also on the program via facebook! They all seem really nice and it sounds like they are just as nervous and/or excited as I am. I will be meeting up with a few of them at the San Francisco Airport and we will be traveling the rest of the way together, which helps to ease a lot of my worries.

I will write again once I get to Bangalore and have the internet set up! :)