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! :)