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!

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!