Train Trips and Palace Visits

I have now been in India for a month! It is hard to believe – it feels like I have been away from home forever but it has also been going by quickly!

3 AC section of the train

Last weekend (a week and a half ago now. We haven’t had internet in a while.) we went on a trip to Agra and Delhi. It was immediately clear why the Lonely Planet Guide to India lists the railway system as one of the most important things to see in the country!  The ride from Varanasi to Agra took about 14 hours so we left on Friday evening and arrived in Agra early Saturday morning. Once we got settled on the train it was actually fairly comfortable but the frequent bumps, yells of “Chai? Chai??” and people getting on and off made it hard to sleep.

Our first stop in Agra was the Taj Mahal which was so much more shockingly beautiful than I expected. We took lots of pictures before we even made it up to the building. At one place that we were taking pictures, a man came up and began shaking my hand and had his family member take a picture of him shaking my hand in front of the Taj. He then proceeded to line his entire family up and try to take pictures of each of them, one by one shaking my hand. This would make me feel like a celebrity if I had actually done anything to warrant this attention, but instead it made our whole group rather uncomfortable.

The inside of the Taj is equally as amazing as the outside, with the tombs of the commissioner and his wife whose tomb he had the palace built to hold. The walls are decorated with semi-precious stone inlaying and after our Taj visit we went to an emporium where they make similar marble art with semi-precious stone inlaying, employing exclusively ancestors of the builders of the Taj, of course.

In the afternoon we went to Agra Fort where we were most interested in the ancient form of air conditioning that we wished was still functioning and the beautiful view of the Taj down the river. That evening we took a much shorter train ride from Agra to Delhi where we were staying in the apartment of one of teachers here at Nirman.

We saw a lot in Delhi including the National Museum, Jantar Mantar, our personal favorite, Qutub Minar, and many markets and emporiums. Delhi is a completely different world from Varanasi. It has a very big city feeling. People somewhat obey normal traffic laws like driving in lanes and stopping at lights and there are no cows in the street! The streets are also much cleaner than in Varanasi and we were surprised to see so many big buildings and people wearing western style clothing. In the end, it was a very nice break from the craziness of Varanasi but I am overall happy that we are living in this hectic city. It is the most quintessential Indian experience there is!

Jantar Mantar

Qutub Minar

We came home from our exciting adventure for another week of classes and are now onto another week until this weekend when we will be traveling to Lucknow!

We had another funny interaction this weekend when we were preparing to make an American dinner and wanted to make chicken burgers. We told our friend who was helping us collect ingredients that we would need minced chicken meat. He tried to help to the best of his understanding and took two of the girls to a shop where they killed a chicken right in front of them, skinned it, and handed it to them. We had to explain to him that we would not be able to grind this up to make a burger, but in the end had to get mutton instead. We really enjoyed our American meal of mutton burgers and mac and cheese but our Indian friends found it somewhat bland... 

We are having another eventful week! Luckily it did not include anymore trips to the hospital.

On Sunday we went to Sarnath, the town where the Buddha is said to have preached for the first time, with our art history professor. The town is only about 15 km out of Varanasi but it took us almost an hour to get there in our professor’s car because of how slowly the roads move. It’s good though – if people drove any faster I don’t think anyone, animals or people, would survive! I think my favorite thing that we saw was a Japanese temple whose walls were painted to depict the story of the Buddha’s life. We also saw the exact tree that the Buddha sat under to give his first sermon. Ok, approximately the exact tree. Ok it was in the same vicinity as the exact tree… at least the same species? Everything here seems to be approximately exact.

We walked through the ruins of the place where the Buddha lived, the Stupa where he prayed and even the small temple on the way from his residence to the Stupa where he would stop to pray, even though the two buildings are about a 5 minute walk from one another. Finally, we went to the museum which houses the relics found in the ruins. This was very interesting because we saw many of the pieces that we have been looking at in class. Also because there were a lot of pilgrims there who wear exclusively bright orange. My favorite was a guy who was wearing bright orange board shorts as a part of his pilgrim uniform.

While the history was all very exciting, I think our favorite part was when our professor told us we were going to stop for chai on the way home and then we pulled over at a small shack on the side of the road. They served us chai in the usual small disposable clay cups which we really enjoyed only after closely watching to make sure they boiled it.

Tuesday was one of the teacher’s birthdays which he first got to celebrate by catching a snake in one of the classrooms. After all of that excitement however he invited us all to his own surprise party which his fiancé had planned for him and then told him about just in time for him to clean his house and make dinner! The food was great and it was so nice to be in a home setting! We are also very happy to be making friends!

Yesterday was Indian Independence Day which is a big day for everyone. First the kids at the city campus where we live did a performance in the morning. They did adorable dances that one of the interns taught them and some groups sang songs. They all looked so cute with their face paint and flags! Then we went to the rural campus for the first time, which is in a village called Betawar, to see the kids there do their performances. It is so different there! It was great to see so much green and get some peace and a break from all the car horns and busy streets. It was so interesting to see an independence day celebration that is so different from our own because of how recently independence was attained. We have been picking up on a lot of lasting negative feelings about the British which has been interesting and the day was so much more about independence than our 4^th of July celebrations. The director of the school gave a speech about how people need to fight for a release from the trash as hard as they fought for release from the British. Can’t argue with that!

Everything is going very well but everyday is still a challenge. We have been trying to figure out what exactly is hard about being here. The power and water going out periodically and the intense humidity are inconvenient but not impossible to deal with. Instead, it is just the completely different culture, the inability to communicate effectively most of the time, the effect the heat, humidity, and pollution have on our bodies, and the knowledge of how long we are going to be here that seem to be causing us the most trouble. It is just starting to dawn on me that we are actually living here and that has actually been helpful. I no longer feel like we have to be doing something every minute and I am realizing that the classes we are taking actually count for credit at school. It is good to start feeling like we are on a normal schedule again. We’re doing it!

Tomorrow we are leaving for a weekend trip to Agra and Delhi! I am very excited but a little apprehensive for the overnight train ride… 

So much has happened in the short week and a half that we have been here – some planned and some surprises.

One of the women in our group spent last weekend in the hospital because she had had a fever for the whole first week we were here. After the doctor’s initial assessment at the hospital, they immediately diagnosed her with Meningitis. I was pretty angry that they scared us like that because after a CT scan and blood tests, she didn’t have any diseases and they changed their diagnosis to “viral fever,” meaning they didn’t really know what was wrong. The hospital was clean and comfortable (her room had air conditioning!) but it was still very different and frightening. The doctors did not take a medical history and they were treating her with a lot of meds that we did not recognize for symptoms that she wasn’t experiencing. One of us stayed with her each of the three nights she spent there and on the forth day she got to come home. It was a bit of a shock at first to come out into the dirty, hot city after the clean, cool hospital but she is adapting and starting to feel much better!

Yesterday was our friend who works in the shop, Sunil’s, birthday… or at least we think it was. He was having a little bit of trouble communicating this point but eventually we reached the consensus that yesterday was the day! We went out and got a couple of small cakes from a near by bakery and after dinner we surprised Sunil with the cakes, sang happy birthday, and gave him a U of M shirt as a birthday present. It seems that birthdays aren’t as big of a deal here as we make them at home but he really enjoyed the surprise and was so happy! And we’re so happy to be making friends already!

After leaving the bakery I had the very haunting experience of having a child follow me all the way back down the street begging. He followed pretty close behind us and would periodically come up and touch my arm. We have not experienced a lot of this yet because beggars often have more luck with tourists so they are more common in the big cities where they are many more foreigners. Begging is very different in India than in the US where it is usually people who cannot work for whatever reason – drug use, injury, mental illness, etc. In India, it is much more common for people to take on begging as a profession instead of working. It is much easier to get work here or self-employ, but some people find begging to be easier. Most of the children who are begging are put up to it by their parents and giving them money only encourages their parents to keep them out of school to continue the practice. This is definitely something that is going to be hard for me to get used to.

 Another thing that has been hard for us is the realization that we will never be able to totally fit in (or even fake it) here. We have been having clothing made and we are starting to pick up a little bit of the language but that doesn’t stop people from starring at us in the street or ripping us off at the shops. I can’t blame them though – I even have the urge to stare at foreigners whenever we see them, wondering where they are from and what they are doing here! We will keep trying to integrate into the society but mostly I am just concentrating on absorbing the culture and customs and becoming a part of it that way.

It has also been interesting to see what things I really miss when I am without most things that I am used to. While I would love a milkshake and French-fries or a warm shower these are definitely things I can live without. I have already started to realize that the only aspect of my life at home that I truly cannot live without are the people that I am close to, and along with that, who really is important. This makes my family happy, knowing that I could never move away too far forever… So stay in touch! If you’re reading this that probably means I am missing you!

Trying to entertain Amy at the hospital by wrapping their scarves
like the Indian women do, but instead looking like ninjas.

Happy Birthday Sunil!

The boys got frosting everywhere of course

Madee and I in our Indian clothing
strait from the tailor!

Monsooning

It finally rained last night for the first time since we arrived on Monday! A long dry spell for what is supposed to be the rainy season... It started to feel cooler immediately when the rain started and then it stormed much harder in the middle of the night and it is actually a comfortable temperature now!
It has stopped raining now but the kids do not have school today and we are fairly certain it is because of the rain...

The only problem is that rain + dirt roads = mud... and that makes it harder to cross the street to get away from things like the mean bull that lives by the dumpster outside of NIRMAN. But hey - normal daily struggles right? :) 

Mango Faux Pas's and New Traditions

One of our professors here at NIRMAN, Naval-sir, insists that because it is the mango season, and specifically the local mango season for the next couple of weeks, we must eat several mangos at every meal. Each. He tells us that mangos are the cure for everything and he bought us our first bag the other day in order to "get us addicted" and motivate us to go out and buy more on our own.
Since he wanted us to eat a whole mango each, we decided that we could just peel the fruit a little bit and eat it out of the skin with a spoon. This worked for a little while until we started having to peel away more and more skin and the juice and pulp was getting all over our hands and faces. In addition, hacking away at the mango with spoons was proving pretty ineffective. One of the men who works in the shop told us that we were doing it wrong and we told him we would work on it. He just laughed at us but unfortunately, one of the Didis who works in the kitchen had been watching us and brought out a knife shaking her head. She told our friend that we looked like little children but that she blames herself for not putting out knifes with the meal. Needless to say we made sure to cut up our mangos at the next meal...

Before things got messy...

Today, we went to one of the teacher's homes to celebrate Raksha Bandhan, the Hindu festival to celebrate brothers and sisters. There is no school on this day and instead everyone gathers with their family to perform a ceremony. Before the ceremony, sisters go out and buy sweets and rakhi for their brothers, which are small bracelets, some very simple and others more ornamental. During the ceremony, the sisters take turns coming up to their brothers and applying red powder and rice to their foreheads, tying on the rakhi that they bought for them, and feeding them sweets. In the family that we visited there were 4 sisters and 1 brother so all of the sisters took turns applying these things to their brother and also to his "new" wife whom he married in December. If one does not have siblings, they are give rakhi to cousins or very close friends but it is important that if you start, you must continue the tradition every year. Many people send their rakhi through the mail. 

 The ceremony was great but my favorite part of the visit was our trip to the roof. The teacher, Vandana, told us this is her favorite part of the house and she goes up there often, even sometimes sleeping there in the summer. We sat and talked there for a long time about the benefits and downfalls of arranged marriages, which are still very common in Varanasi and still being practiced in Vandana's family today. Then she showed us her beautiful sarees and frock suits and pictures from her brothers wedding, all of which she is very proud of. It was so great to be in a home with a family and to feel among friends! We all decided then and there that we wanted to do our homestays at their house! (We wish)

         

Stands selling rakhi have been all over the city

Sweets, rakhi, and powder ready for the ceremony

Tying her rakhi on her brother's wrist

The Kalamazoo girls with Vandana on the roof!