My photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28873916@N04/
Kelsey
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
hey everyone! so i've been back home for around a week and a half and i finally got my pictures uploaded and i put them on a flickr website. it would only let me put up 200 photos and it got a lot of them out of order so i will try to rearrange some of the photos later, and i might create another account so that i can upload the rest of my photos. enjoy!!
Kelsey
Kelsey
Saturday, July 12, 2008
I just spent the last 24 hours with Julia and Stephanie. Wondering why they haven't posted? It's because they haven't had internet for almost 2 weeks. Yep, the entire 17,000 person town of Mundgod doesn't have internet. The school has one computer with internet, but apparently it's a big deal for them to ask to use it.
Stephanie and Julia have done a GREAT job with what they have to work with. With a little less than $500, they (with Kenji and my help) have bought colorful carpets, pillows, bookshelves, books, games, and CD-ROMS. They have made posters saying "Quiet in the Library" and rules for the books/levels, and gotten the sisters in the hostel to translate all of the posters into Kannada so they are in both languages. They have labled all of the books in Kannada with stickers (reinforced with tape) corresponding to different levels of difficulty. They bought audio casette tapes and recorded themselves reading books in English, so the kids can check out the books and listen to them being read in English. I'm really proud of all that they have done, and really feel like with their hard work, they have made this Mundgod library a successful endeavor. You can find some of the pictures at the following website:
Besides doing a great job with the library, the girls have also made friends with many of the D. Ed (teacher in training) students, and have fallen into a really comfortable routine. Their beds are ROCK hard (I slept in it last night and woke up about 20 times) and they have pretty much the same thing every meal (rice, sambar, and maybe some vegetable), but the campus is beautiful, and I think this experience really allowed them to reflect on their time in India so far. They are definitely getting into the culture, eating with their hands, not wearing anything that shows their shoulders or knees, using an Indian toilet and filling up a bucket to pour on top as a flush, taking bucket showers with cold water, etc. They don't seem to be complaining or fighting or anything. Basically, they are doing a great job and enjoying themselves.
Kenji and I parted ways yesterday. He took a bus from Hubli to Goa, where he was supposed to meet Zach and Emily (Kelsey and Natasha have already left). Unfortunately, their train was an express train that PASSED the Goa station, and they ended up all the way north in Maharashtra! I talked to them this morning though and they had taken another train to meet up with Kenji. They will stay in Goa until tomorrow night, when Emily and Zach will go back to Mangalore, and Kenji will fly up to Delhi and then to Nepal. Julia and Stephanie are going to work on the library until Tuesday, and then take a bus to Hampi and then meet Emily and Zach in Mysore next weekend.
As for me, I'm about to fly to meet Chris (my old work buddy) in Chennai for 2 and a half days, then back to Mumbai and gone home!!! I can't believe this trip has gone soooo fast, I've been to over a dozen cities in 28 days, but it feels like it's gone by in a blur.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
More pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2133288&l=68743&id=208301
Kenji and I just met up with Julia and Stephanie, they have lots of stories and plan to stay in Mundgod at least through the weekend, at which point they may travel and try to meet up with the other group.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2133288&l=68743&id=208301
Kenji and I just met up with Julia and Stephanie, they have lots of stories and plan to stay in Mundgod at least through the weekend, at which point they may travel and try to meet up with the other group.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
from the mangalore site
Ok so we have been living in the Catholic orphanage. It's been pretty fun. We had an ice cream party with the nuns the other day. We really enjoy teaching English lessons to the housemoms because they are older (about 20) and so they understand all of our instructions and we have dialogues with them. We are going to start gearing our lessons toward teaching them how to maintain the cottage libraries we are putting in.
The lessons with the kids are a little more challenging because they hardly understand any English so it is hard to give them directions. But those have been fun too.
Right now we are waiting to hear back from some schools and some carpenters before we proceed with any library building.
And a side note, Mangalore has very famous ice cream, so we went with Natasha the other day and just bought hella ice cream dishes. And we found an amazing coffee shop that seems super trendy. They were playing Indian radio (and we really miss music) and they had a bunch of teenagers hanging out. It was just like Starbucks at home... We definitely plan on going back when we get a chance.
Tomorrow there is a special mass at 6:30 am and then the next day the kids are putting on a dance program they have been practicing hard for. It should be really fun.
The lessons with the kids are a little more challenging because they hardly understand any English so it is hard to give them directions. But those have been fun too.
Right now we are waiting to hear back from some schools and some carpenters before we proceed with any library building.
And a side note, Mangalore has very famous ice cream, so we went with Natasha the other day and just bought hella ice cream dishes. And we found an amazing coffee shop that seems super trendy. They were playing Indian radio (and we really miss music) and they had a bunch of teenagers hanging out. It was just like Starbucks at home... We definitely plan on going back when we get a chance.
Tomorrow there is a special mass at 6:30 am and then the next day the kids are putting on a dance program they have been practicing hard for. It should be really fun.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Before I go into details about the site, let me just say a word about our time in Goa:
Goa is the popular tourist destination for rich Indians wanting a luxurious vacation with no garbage on the road or beggars in the streets. However, we were there during the off season, so there was hardly anything open. It was still incredibly relaxing, and far different from anything we had experienced before; much lower noise level, less crowded, cleaner, etc. We laid on the beach, and the four of us (me, Julia, Stephanie, and Kenji) were essentially alone except for a pair of bulls lumbering over near us. We got caught in the monsoon a couple of times. During the worst bout we ducked into a roadside stand, where I bought a few pieces of clothing, and we talked to the lady trying to make a sale in the off-season. She asked us what we were doing here, and we told her "we're building a library"...she looked at us funny, and said, "what's a library?" I thought that was pretty shocking...
Anyway, so last night we took a 6 hour bus from Goa to Hubli, where we spent the night. This morning Fr. Pinto picked us up from Hubli (he drove several hours to come get us), and drove us all to the school. Kenji and I left our stuff in our room at the hotel, rightly assuming that we could come back to get it before the 10:30 p.m. checkout.
The school is in an incredibly rural area, about half an hours walk from Mundagod (which is about an hour and a half outside of Hubli, the next biggest city). It's a huge school, spread out over a large area, connected by dirt paths. The buildings are large, clean, but very simple. The school is for grades K-12, plus a 2 year teacher training program. The grounds house 600 out of the 800 students, who come from all over the state to attend this school. Most of the student sleep on mats on the floor in cottages scattered over the grounds. After the age of 10, boys and girls are on opposite sides of the campus.
The students have a very rigorous day- wake up at 5:30 a.m., go to mass, chores, breakfast, then school from 9-4 with an hour for lunch. From 4:15-5:30 they have a break, followed by study until 7:45. At 8 they have dinner, followed by more studying until about 10, when they go to sleep.
Julia and Stephanie are staying in a cottage with the D.Ed (Teacher training) students, who are about their age. We had a great conversation with Fr. Johnson, the principal of the 8-12 grades. He is young, and just moved into this position taking over from Fr. Melwyn. He seems to have a lot of enthusiasm, and will be a lot of help.
The biggest issue is going to be stretching $450 to create a decent library. Bookshelves are expensive, around $75 (Kenji and my task for tomorrow is to find out exactly how expensive), and books in kannada range from $1-3. The girls also don't have internet, and their phone doesn't recieve calls for some reason, so communication will be difficult, we have to have certain times of day when they will call me.
Kenji and I are probably going to go get good books in Kannada in Bangalore, where we will spend time with a family friend who can help us pick out good books for the children. We will then come back and help the girls in any way we can. It's hard for us to do much though, because there isn't room at the school for us to stay, and Hubli is an hour and a half away. Nonetheless, we will do the best we can. No matter what, these kids don't get that much exposure to the english language, and their current library is pretty shoddy- I think that Julia and Stephanie will make a postive impact, probably larger than they realize.
Goa is the popular tourist destination for rich Indians wanting a luxurious vacation with no garbage on the road or beggars in the streets. However, we were there during the off season, so there was hardly anything open. It was still incredibly relaxing, and far different from anything we had experienced before; much lower noise level, less crowded, cleaner, etc. We laid on the beach, and the four of us (me, Julia, Stephanie, and Kenji) were essentially alone except for a pair of bulls lumbering over near us. We got caught in the monsoon a couple of times. During the worst bout we ducked into a roadside stand, where I bought a few pieces of clothing, and we talked to the lady trying to make a sale in the off-season. She asked us what we were doing here, and we told her "we're building a library"...she looked at us funny, and said, "what's a library?" I thought that was pretty shocking...
Anyway, so last night we took a 6 hour bus from Goa to Hubli, where we spent the night. This morning Fr. Pinto picked us up from Hubli (he drove several hours to come get us), and drove us all to the school. Kenji and I left our stuff in our room at the hotel, rightly assuming that we could come back to get it before the 10:30 p.m. checkout.
The school is in an incredibly rural area, about half an hours walk from Mundagod (which is about an hour and a half outside of Hubli, the next biggest city). It's a huge school, spread out over a large area, connected by dirt paths. The buildings are large, clean, but very simple. The school is for grades K-12, plus a 2 year teacher training program. The grounds house 600 out of the 800 students, who come from all over the state to attend this school. Most of the student sleep on mats on the floor in cottages scattered over the grounds. After the age of 10, boys and girls are on opposite sides of the campus.
The students have a very rigorous day- wake up at 5:30 a.m., go to mass, chores, breakfast, then school from 9-4 with an hour for lunch. From 4:15-5:30 they have a break, followed by study until 7:45. At 8 they have dinner, followed by more studying until about 10, when they go to sleep.
Julia and Stephanie are staying in a cottage with the D.Ed (Teacher training) students, who are about their age. We had a great conversation with Fr. Johnson, the principal of the 8-12 grades. He is young, and just moved into this position taking over from Fr. Melwyn. He seems to have a lot of enthusiasm, and will be a lot of help.
The biggest issue is going to be stretching $450 to create a decent library. Bookshelves are expensive, around $75 (Kenji and my task for tomorrow is to find out exactly how expensive), and books in kannada range from $1-3. The girls also don't have internet, and their phone doesn't recieve calls for some reason, so communication will be difficult, we have to have certain times of day when they will call me.
Kenji and I are probably going to go get good books in Kannada in Bangalore, where we will spend time with a family friend who can help us pick out good books for the children. We will then come back and help the girls in any way we can. It's hard for us to do much though, because there isn't room at the school for us to stay, and Hubli is an hour and a half away. Nonetheless, we will do the best we can. No matter what, these kids don't get that much exposure to the english language, and their current library is pretty shoddy- I think that Julia and Stephanie will make a postive impact, probably larger than they realize.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Bad News
Ok so this morning we found out that the books are running even later and they will not be here until the 26th. That is really disappointing since that means that we will leave India before the books even arrive. We are just trying to roll with the punches though. We are going to spend most of our alloted money on books in both English and the local language Cannata. We can then use those books to start the programming with the kids and the nuns so that we can ensure sustainability when the other books come. And Natasha has family here so they will bring the rest of the books when they are shipped to India. So yeah that was definitely disappointing news.
But we got to the orphanage in Mangalore today. Mangalore is beautiful! It is less hot than the north and it is so green! The orphanage is also a lot nicer than I was anticipating. We have our own cottage with beds and a bathroom that has a flushing toilet! What a relief. And the nuns are SOOOO nice. We just had lunch with them. And we wanted to sit down and talk about plans but they said that Sunday is the day of rest so we must just rest today. Haha so different from our crazy Stanford kid lifestyle of constantly doing things.
There are 120 boys here aged 5-18. We so far have met a few of the younger ones, as they'[ve shyly been hanging around us and giggling when we say hi. I really like it here and it is a lot nicer than I was expecting. Tomorrow we will sit down and start figuring out our library committee and maybe kids to be monitors. We don't have the books yet, but we can do logistics. And we also can do activities with the kids. Like we want them to help us decorate the library and we can do English lessons with them/ play with them. And then we will have all the books that Natasha picks up with our funds. Alright more to come.
But we got to the orphanage in Mangalore today. Mangalore is beautiful! It is less hot than the north and it is so green! The orphanage is also a lot nicer than I was anticipating. We have our own cottage with beds and a bathroom that has a flushing toilet! What a relief. And the nuns are SOOOO nice. We just had lunch with them. And we wanted to sit down and talk about plans but they said that Sunday is the day of rest so we must just rest today. Haha so different from our crazy Stanford kid lifestyle of constantly doing things.
There are 120 boys here aged 5-18. We so far have met a few of the younger ones, as they'[ve shyly been hanging around us and giggling when we say hi. I really like it here and it is a lot nicer than I was expecting. Tomorrow we will sit down and start figuring out our library committee and maybe kids to be monitors. We don't have the books yet, but we can do logistics. And we also can do activities with the kids. Like we want them to help us decorate the library and we can do English lessons with them/ play with them. And then we will have all the books that Natasha picks up with our funds. Alright more to come.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Post from Julia:
hi family!!
so im in new Dehli now but I fly to Goa today with the group. Everything has been amazing. We saw this beautiful temple yesterday of the Ba'hai religion, which is based on accepting people of all faiths and ethnicities, it is a religion for world peace. THe temple is gorgeous, a white lotus flower design made completely of marble, gardens are immaculate and the parks surrounding the area are the cleanest places ive seen so far, families and friends lie around chatting and taking strolls, it almost reminds me of europe, well almost. Anyways we've seen so much in the past week, we went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal which is as immaculate as it ever could be and the surrounding area of red buildings and shrines is just as astonishing. Surprisingly there were almost no other western toursits, just INdians in which case we whipped up quite a gathering. This woman grabbed my hand estatic to meet me and dragged me all around the temple trying to find enough light to take a picture with her and then in turn with each of her children. Then it got crazy groups of 15 men, women and kids would come up at a time to take pictures with the most white looking of our friends. After that every few minutes we would have a new family wanting to shake our hands and take "one shot" with us for a couple hours. It was really surreal, there are just so few white people here its crazy. Later we had dinner with the whole group of eight on a roof top restaurant overlooking the Taj Mahal.
We visted a small village called Pushkar before that where we finally didnt have to dodge traffic or here incessant honking, just cows and camels and pushcarts. We did some shopping and a lot of haggling, which we all are pro at by now. WE celebrated Zachs birthday although he was feeling a little ill so we brought him his chocolate cake with lit incense stick in bed. The next day they took a camel tour into the nearby desert villages and made a gigantic hike in the heat of the day to the top of this temple on top of mount savitri. THe view was breathtaking a small muslim influenced village surrounding a holy lake where God Brahma was said to drop down a lotus flower (the petals leaving the three lakes behind) all in the middle of a hazy desert.
Dehli was crazy with all the urban sprawl and consequences that an overpopulated developing country encounters. But with an alluring culture that still mesmorizes. ALthough the longer I stay here the more I feel like its home. THe routine sets in, the morning heat wakes us as we look around a dingy plain room with a small ceiling fan and sheetless beds, the cold shower if refreshing and quick, arraning our backpacks to start the day just as if we were searching through dresser drawers at home. The first haggle of the day with our rickshaw driver and then cramming into the the two-seater ride with 5 people, Indians staring left and right. The temples, the gardens, the animals and shops, beggars and sizzling food stands. Little kids peeing in the streets and sari wrapped women staring at our western clothes and anglo features. An afternoon nap to escape the extreme heat, scraping dirt from our legs and fingernails. Putting on the ever present hand sanitizer before we eat malai kofta, Dal Makhani, naan and all goobi with our hands oh and dont forget the glass bottled limca or sprite as a needed refresher. It all swings together, the day weve now become comfortable with, you just laugh at all the chaos and say "thats India" and we all nod with a smile.
love you all,
jules
P.S. Least favorite sayings in INdia that i never want to hear again: no no not possible (when it clearly is and they just want to cheat you out of your money), just look at my shop madam loooking is free, you from England?, I like your dress where that from (apparently knee-length dresses with no straps are head turners). oh the list goes on. haha
hi family!!
so im in new Dehli now but I fly to Goa today with the group. Everything has been amazing. We saw this beautiful temple yesterday of the Ba'hai religion, which is based on accepting people of all faiths and ethnicities, it is a religion for world peace. THe temple is gorgeous, a white lotus flower design made completely of marble, gardens are immaculate and the parks surrounding the area are the cleanest places ive seen so far, families and friends lie around chatting and taking strolls, it almost reminds me of europe, well almost. Anyways we've seen so much in the past week, we went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal which is as immaculate as it ever could be and the surrounding area of red buildings and shrines is just as astonishing. Surprisingly there were almost no other western toursits, just INdians in which case we whipped up quite a gathering. This woman grabbed my hand estatic to meet me and dragged me all around the temple trying to find enough light to take a picture with her and then in turn with each of her children. Then it got crazy groups of 15 men, women and kids would come up at a time to take pictures with the most white looking of our friends. After that every few minutes we would have a new family wanting to shake our hands and take "one shot" with us for a couple hours. It was really surreal, there are just so few white people here its crazy. Later we had dinner with the whole group of eight on a roof top restaurant overlooking the Taj Mahal.
We visted a small village called Pushkar before that where we finally didnt have to dodge traffic or here incessant honking, just cows and camels and pushcarts. We did some shopping and a lot of haggling, which we all are pro at by now. WE celebrated Zachs birthday although he was feeling a little ill so we brought him his chocolate cake with lit incense stick in bed. The next day they took a camel tour into the nearby desert villages and made a gigantic hike in the heat of the day to the top of this temple on top of mount savitri. THe view was breathtaking a small muslim influenced village surrounding a holy lake where God Brahma was said to drop down a lotus flower (the petals leaving the three lakes behind) all in the middle of a hazy desert.
Dehli was crazy with all the urban sprawl and consequences that an overpopulated developing country encounters. But with an alluring culture that still mesmorizes. ALthough the longer I stay here the more I feel like its home. THe routine sets in, the morning heat wakes us as we look around a dingy plain room with a small ceiling fan and sheetless beds, the cold shower if refreshing and quick, arraning our backpacks to start the day just as if we were searching through dresser drawers at home. The first haggle of the day with our rickshaw driver and then cramming into the the two-seater ride with 5 people, Indians staring left and right. The temples, the gardens, the animals and shops, beggars and sizzling food stands. Little kids peeing in the streets and sari wrapped women staring at our western clothes and anglo features. An afternoon nap to escape the extreme heat, scraping dirt from our legs and fingernails. Putting on the ever present hand sanitizer before we eat malai kofta, Dal Makhani, naan and all goobi with our hands oh and dont forget the glass bottled limca or sprite as a needed refresher. It all swings together, the day weve now become comfortable with, you just laugh at all the chaos and say "thats India" and we all nod with a smile.
love you all,
jules
P.S. Least favorite sayings in INdia that i never want to hear again: no no not possible (when it clearly is and they just want to cheat you out of your money), just look at my shop madam loooking is free, you from England?, I like your dress where that from (apparently knee-length dresses with no straps are head turners). oh the list goes on. haha
Post from Stephanie:
hi all,
so a few days ago, we left pushkar on an overnight bus to dehli. kelsey and i got the curtain side of the bed that kept blowing in our faces, so we didn't sleep tooo well. got a hotel in dehli, and watched hbo for the first time in forever. we met up w/ jackie, kenji, and natasha at our hotel, ran a bunch of errands that took forever, then finally to dinner on a rooftop restaurant and a pub for emily's birthday/zach's belated celebration cause he was sick on his real birthday and got incense birthday cake. it was super fun, and we heard music kinda from the bottom floor which is what we wanted, although def no room to dance like we wanted. emily we will do that before we leave india!! planned on watching hbo when we got back, but ended up talking for a while then passing out. next day took a morning train to agra, grabed a hotel then off to the taj mahal!! it was beautiful and a relatively sunny day for monsoon season. but it was deathly hot, and we all looked "jank." kelsey, kenji, and natasha left after our tour to see more sights and emily, me, zach, and julia stayed at the taj to take goofy pictures. if you position yourself right, it looks like you're bigger than the taj mahal so...i took a picture kissing the taj mahal, so did julia and emily. julia did a back bend over the taj mahal, and zach employed his dancer skills to jump over the taj mahal. then we left, and got ice cream and i showered for the second time cause i couldn't stand myself...we all met up for dinner at antoher roottop restaurant w/ a great view of the taj, which is supposed to look cool under the moon. but there was no moon cause either the pollution or clouds, who knows? but the silouhette was pretty cool. i went to the internet cafe to try to use skype, which is a free online phone system for international calls, but couldnt' get through for some reason. went back, packed my bags, said by to the mangalore group and passed out. our elecrticity in the htoel went out at four in the morning and it was deathly hot, so julia and i just woke up for our 6 am train back to dehli. intersting train ride...and super long. finally back in dehli. me julia jackie and kenji went to the bahi temple yesterday which is shaped like a lotus flower, which is one of the more peaceful things i've done on this trip. now we're getting ready to head to the airport to fly to goa, then to the site in mundgod!
-steph
hi all,
so a few days ago, we left pushkar on an overnight bus to dehli. kelsey and i got the curtain side of the bed that kept blowing in our faces, so we didn't sleep tooo well. got a hotel in dehli, and watched hbo for the first time in forever. we met up w/ jackie, kenji, and natasha at our hotel, ran a bunch of errands that took forever, then finally to dinner on a rooftop restaurant and a pub for emily's birthday/zach's belated celebration cause he was sick on his real birthday and got incense birthday cake. it was super fun, and we heard music kinda from the bottom floor which is what we wanted, although def no room to dance like we wanted. emily we will do that before we leave india!! planned on watching hbo when we got back, but ended up talking for a while then passing out. next day took a morning train to agra, grabed a hotel then off to the taj mahal!! it was beautiful and a relatively sunny day for monsoon season. but it was deathly hot, and we all looked "jank." kelsey, kenji, and natasha left after our tour to see more sights and emily, me, zach, and julia stayed at the taj to take goofy pictures. if you position yourself right, it looks like you're bigger than the taj mahal so...i took a picture kissing the taj mahal, so did julia and emily. julia did a back bend over the taj mahal, and zach employed his dancer skills to jump over the taj mahal. then we left, and got ice cream and i showered for the second time cause i couldn't stand myself...we all met up for dinner at antoher roottop restaurant w/ a great view of the taj, which is supposed to look cool under the moon. but there was no moon cause either the pollution or clouds, who knows? but the silouhette was pretty cool. i went to the internet cafe to try to use skype, which is a free online phone system for international calls, but couldnt' get through for some reason. went back, packed my bags, said by to the mangalore group and passed out. our elecrticity in the htoel went out at four in the morning and it was deathly hot, so julia and i just woke up for our 6 am train back to dehli. intersting train ride...and super long. finally back in dehli. me julia jackie and kenji went to the bahi temple yesterday which is shaped like a lotus flower, which is one of the more peaceful things i've done on this trip. now we're getting ready to head to the airport to fly to goa, then to the site in mundgod!
-steph
Hey everybody, this is Jackie and Kenji doing a joint post again. We are in Delhi right now, and we are going to fly out to Goa tonight, which is a beach town. Unfortunately, it's monsoon season, so it will probably be raining. Tomorrow night there is supposed to be a festival which should be fun.
Since we last posted, a lot has happened. The first day we were in Delhi, we just walked around and enjoyed an air conditioned restaurant for at least 4 hours. Dellhi is a lot cleaner than pretty much every city we've seen so far, there are actually parks and grass, and traffic is less chaotic (a little). The next day, we met up with everyone. Kenji met them all for the first time, he thought they were really nice. We went to the train station where we proceeded to get scammed into going all the way across town to buy our train tickets at a tourist office. The tourist office was in our guidebook, which was why we trusted them, sort of. Eventually, after hours of sitting around trying to figure out what we were going to do, we finally headed back to the train station where we bought tickets on the second floor in a room a little bit hidden away. We bought three seperate train tickets, from Delhi to Jaipur to Agra and back to Delhi, for less than $12. After that, we debated on what to do. The girls wanted to go see the sex and the city movie, which Kenji was not happy about. But we ended up going out to a rooftop restaurant for dinner which was really nice, and then later a bar/pub. It was so smoky in there, Jackie's eyes were watering (I guess in California we aren't used to the smoke). Our train left at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, so we got up at 3 after going to bed at midnight. The train was 6 hours, and near the bathroom, so it smelled pretty gross. Natasha had these perfume wipes that helped a lot.
Once we arrived in Jaipur, we found a hotel. From there, we walked around for a long time. We went to lunch at this really authentic local place, where everyone else was Indian. The food was really good, we ate a lot. We didn't even have to order, everyone had the same thing, and they'd come around with trays of food and would refill it on your plate. You could get as many chapattis and as much rice and curry as you wanted for cheap, by Indian standards, which is basically free in the US.
We walked towards the old city after lunch. It is surrounded by walls, except for 4 entrances. We went to a few sites, including a minaret, which was basically a tower in the middle of the city. That was really cool, we got to walk up to the top where it was breezy and we had a birds eye view of the whole city. There aren't really tall buildings in most cities because it's hard to build water systems that can go up very high. This minaret was pretty much the talllest thing in Jaipur. We also walked through the bazaars, where they were selling everything from clothes to floor tiles.
After that, we headed outside the city to two different spots. The first was this huge fort, with walls off the side that looked like the great wall of China, because they stretch at least a mile in each direction. We walked in the heat up to the top, and got drinks at the top. Jackie was feeling pretty tired at this point, because she was running on low sleep (which, for those of you who know her, doesn't work well for her). She also wasn't drinking juice or soda like the rest of us, and was probably losing a lot of electrolytes from the heat.
We then went to the Monkey temple, or Galta as it's called. It was on the other side of a giant hill. At the top of the hill there was a sun temple, where we got little bracelets. The paths was rocks laid down like cobblestones but not shaped. We get to the other side of the hill, and there are a ton of people swimming in this pool thats carved into the side of the mountain. On our way down we were walking by this woman who pulled out a cobra out of a basket right near us. Natasha FREAKED out, and we kind of ran past her. Near the temple, there were 3 pools, one of them, where the people swam, looked a little cleaner, but there was a dirtier one where monkeys were swimming. This guy came up to us and wouldn't leave us alone, he called Kenji WWF guy, Jackie Jackie Chan, and Natasha the dancer. We went into the temple, where this holy man hit us a few times with a feather, gave us an orange dot on our forehead, and asked for a donation. By the way, this temple was really cool because it was in the middle of a little mountainous area, so the view was really nice. By the time we were making our way back, Jackie started to feel really sick, her head was hurting. We pretty much went right back to the hotel. On our way back, we were bargaining with several different guys, and we ended up picking one. The other two rickshaw drivers got really pissed and blocked us in. We reversed and got out of there, but the other two ran into each other and broke off the front headlight of one of the rickshaws. That driver got out and started savagely beating the other driver with one of his sandals. We got out of there in a hurry!
Jackie crashed at the hotel, while Natasha and Kenji went out to dinner. The room was really hot, and none of us got much sleep, although we were all really tired. The next morning we had to go to the train station at 5 a.m. for a 6:10 train. Needless to say, waking up was difficult. In Agra, we got an AC hotel, where Jackie stayed for the day. Kenji and Natasha met up with the rest of the group, and went to the Taj Mahal. The Taj was about what Kenji expected, it was beautiful. Afterwards, Natasha, Kelsey, and Kenji went to a few more sites, while the rest of the group stayed at the Taj, and then went back to their hotel. We went to the Agra Fort, which was a huge fort. On the outside, there was a jungle area, where they used to have lions, tigers, and elephants to protect the castle. It had a good view of the Taj Mahal, and the guy that owned it or built it had a harem of around 400 women. He used to play chess, sitting above a giant chess board where the concubines from his harem would move the pieces. From there we caught bike ricks to a mosque. One of the drivers let Kenji bike for a little while, which was surprisingly hard, considering the skinny frame of the guys who were biking us around. The mosque was beautiful from the outside, but once we got inside it wasn't anything special. There were tons of kids running around asking for money and trying to grab at our cameras. We were taking pictures, and there would be 40 kids swarming around during the pictures, I felt like a missionary.
That night we all went out to dinner, including Jackie, who felt slightly better, on a rooftop with a view of the Taj Mahal. The food took forever, but it was nice to have everyone together. The next morning we had another 4 hour non-AC train ride into Delhi. We got up at 5 for the third morning in a row (the first morning was 3 a.m.), and got settled in the train. About 20 minutes in, guys came with tickets that had the same seat as ours. We argued for about 10 minutes, then they realized that our ticket was actually for the following day. The train counter must have printed out the wrong day, and none of the 5 of us had checked that detail. As a result, we had to stand or sit on the edge of someone elses seat or on the floor for the next 3 hours. We sat, hugging our knees on the ground, for about 2 hours while 40 guys packed in the train, standing room only. Julia fell asleep on a potbellied man with a dirty green shirt. She also sat by a sink that was leaking chewing tobacco water and she had to get up and realighn the pipes. One of the guys was really friendly, and Kenji ended up talking with him for a while. He kept talking in Hindi to his friends, and we're sure he was making fun of us. There is a fine line between nice and creepy, which a lot of Indian dudes tend to flirt with.
Back at Delhi, Natasha left us, so it was just Kenji, Jackie, Stephanie, and Julia. We found a hotel, and went to lunch, then headed over to the Lotus temple. This temple was the cleanest, most beautiful area that we've seen in India. We stayed there for several hours just lying on the grass in a small park nearby. It was serene.
This morning we all woke up and got fruit from the fruit stand. Mangoes and Bananas are super good. We'll miss north Indian food, but have realized that we almost like the authentic places better than the fancy restaurants. From the outside of the authentic places, you feel hesitant to go in, but once you sit down in the restaurant it's fine, and the food is a lot better and less expensive.
That's about all of the interesting things that have happened so far- we'll post again later!
Since we last posted, a lot has happened. The first day we were in Delhi, we just walked around and enjoyed an air conditioned restaurant for at least 4 hours. Dellhi is a lot cleaner than pretty much every city we've seen so far, there are actually parks and grass, and traffic is less chaotic (a little). The next day, we met up with everyone. Kenji met them all for the first time, he thought they were really nice. We went to the train station where we proceeded to get scammed into going all the way across town to buy our train tickets at a tourist office. The tourist office was in our guidebook, which was why we trusted them, sort of. Eventually, after hours of sitting around trying to figure out what we were going to do, we finally headed back to the train station where we bought tickets on the second floor in a room a little bit hidden away. We bought three seperate train tickets, from Delhi to Jaipur to Agra and back to Delhi, for less than $12. After that, we debated on what to do. The girls wanted to go see the sex and the city movie, which Kenji was not happy about. But we ended up going out to a rooftop restaurant for dinner which was really nice, and then later a bar/pub. It was so smoky in there, Jackie's eyes were watering (I guess in California we aren't used to the smoke). Our train left at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, so we got up at 3 after going to bed at midnight. The train was 6 hours, and near the bathroom, so it smelled pretty gross. Natasha had these perfume wipes that helped a lot.
Once we arrived in Jaipur, we found a hotel. From there, we walked around for a long time. We went to lunch at this really authentic local place, where everyone else was Indian. The food was really good, we ate a lot. We didn't even have to order, everyone had the same thing, and they'd come around with trays of food and would refill it on your plate. You could get as many chapattis and as much rice and curry as you wanted for cheap, by Indian standards, which is basically free in the US.
We walked towards the old city after lunch. It is surrounded by walls, except for 4 entrances. We went to a few sites, including a minaret, which was basically a tower in the middle of the city. That was really cool, we got to walk up to the top where it was breezy and we had a birds eye view of the whole city. There aren't really tall buildings in most cities because it's hard to build water systems that can go up very high. This minaret was pretty much the talllest thing in Jaipur. We also walked through the bazaars, where they were selling everything from clothes to floor tiles.
After that, we headed outside the city to two different spots. The first was this huge fort, with walls off the side that looked like the great wall of China, because they stretch at least a mile in each direction. We walked in the heat up to the top, and got drinks at the top. Jackie was feeling pretty tired at this point, because she was running on low sleep (which, for those of you who know her, doesn't work well for her). She also wasn't drinking juice or soda like the rest of us, and was probably losing a lot of electrolytes from the heat.
We then went to the Monkey temple, or Galta as it's called. It was on the other side of a giant hill. At the top of the hill there was a sun temple, where we got little bracelets. The paths was rocks laid down like cobblestones but not shaped. We get to the other side of the hill, and there are a ton of people swimming in this pool thats carved into the side of the mountain. On our way down we were walking by this woman who pulled out a cobra out of a basket right near us. Natasha FREAKED out, and we kind of ran past her. Near the temple, there were 3 pools, one of them, where the people swam, looked a little cleaner, but there was a dirtier one where monkeys were swimming. This guy came up to us and wouldn't leave us alone, he called Kenji WWF guy, Jackie Jackie Chan, and Natasha the dancer. We went into the temple, where this holy man hit us a few times with a feather, gave us an orange dot on our forehead, and asked for a donation. By the way, this temple was really cool because it was in the middle of a little mountainous area, so the view was really nice. By the time we were making our way back, Jackie started to feel really sick, her head was hurting. We pretty much went right back to the hotel. On our way back, we were bargaining with several different guys, and we ended up picking one. The other two rickshaw drivers got really pissed and blocked us in. We reversed and got out of there, but the other two ran into each other and broke off the front headlight of one of the rickshaws. That driver got out and started savagely beating the other driver with one of his sandals. We got out of there in a hurry!
Jackie crashed at the hotel, while Natasha and Kenji went out to dinner. The room was really hot, and none of us got much sleep, although we were all really tired. The next morning we had to go to the train station at 5 a.m. for a 6:10 train. Needless to say, waking up was difficult. In Agra, we got an AC hotel, where Jackie stayed for the day. Kenji and Natasha met up with the rest of the group, and went to the Taj Mahal. The Taj was about what Kenji expected, it was beautiful. Afterwards, Natasha, Kelsey, and Kenji went to a few more sites, while the rest of the group stayed at the Taj, and then went back to their hotel. We went to the Agra Fort, which was a huge fort. On the outside, there was a jungle area, where they used to have lions, tigers, and elephants to protect the castle. It had a good view of the Taj Mahal, and the guy that owned it or built it had a harem of around 400 women. He used to play chess, sitting above a giant chess board where the concubines from his harem would move the pieces. From there we caught bike ricks to a mosque. One of the drivers let Kenji bike for a little while, which was surprisingly hard, considering the skinny frame of the guys who were biking us around. The mosque was beautiful from the outside, but once we got inside it wasn't anything special. There were tons of kids running around asking for money and trying to grab at our cameras. We were taking pictures, and there would be 40 kids swarming around during the pictures, I felt like a missionary.
That night we all went out to dinner, including Jackie, who felt slightly better, on a rooftop with a view of the Taj Mahal. The food took forever, but it was nice to have everyone together. The next morning we had another 4 hour non-AC train ride into Delhi. We got up at 5 for the third morning in a row (the first morning was 3 a.m.), and got settled in the train. About 20 minutes in, guys came with tickets that had the same seat as ours. We argued for about 10 minutes, then they realized that our ticket was actually for the following day. The train counter must have printed out the wrong day, and none of the 5 of us had checked that detail. As a result, we had to stand or sit on the edge of someone elses seat or on the floor for the next 3 hours. We sat, hugging our knees on the ground, for about 2 hours while 40 guys packed in the train, standing room only. Julia fell asleep on a potbellied man with a dirty green shirt. She also sat by a sink that was leaking chewing tobacco water and she had to get up and realighn the pipes. One of the guys was really friendly, and Kenji ended up talking with him for a while. He kept talking in Hindi to his friends, and we're sure he was making fun of us. There is a fine line between nice and creepy, which a lot of Indian dudes tend to flirt with.
Back at Delhi, Natasha left us, so it was just Kenji, Jackie, Stephanie, and Julia. We found a hotel, and went to lunch, then headed over to the Lotus temple. This temple was the cleanest, most beautiful area that we've seen in India. We stayed there for several hours just lying on the grass in a small park nearby. It was serene.
This morning we all woke up and got fruit from the fruit stand. Mangoes and Bananas are super good. We'll miss north Indian food, but have realized that we almost like the authentic places better than the fancy restaurants. From the outside of the authentic places, you feel hesitant to go in, but once you sit down in the restaurant it's fine, and the food is a lot better and less expensive.
That's about all of the interesting things that have happened so far- we'll post again later!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
SO...
India has been a really interesting experience so far. I've found that I like the smaller village areas a lot more than the big cities. Arriving in Mumbai was pretty overwhelming. But then we went and spent time in Jaipur, Pushkar, Delhi, and today Agra. We saw some interesting temples and forts between Pushkar and Jaipur. And in Jaipur, we even rode an elephant! But there has been some down sides to the trip too. For example, people are constantly trying to rip us off when we buy things. Sometimes that can get really frustrating.
My birthday was two days ago and it was really fun. We went out to dinner with the whole entire group and then went out to listen to some Indian music. I was glad the whole group was together for it. But today is our last day all together. I am sad to split up because we have had so many incredible experiences together over the past week and a half, but it will also be good to get to Mangalore. We are taking a day and a half long train... And unfortunately Indian train food is not edible so we have to do some grocery shopping. Natasha also told us a few things to look forward to in Mangalore beyond the library project. She says she is taking us to a coffee estate and a good ice cream parlor. It'll be nice to get oriented down there. Alright, well we have had a lot of crazy adventures so far and I am a little sad to split up, but Mangalore will be amazing.
My birthday was two days ago and it was really fun. We went out to dinner with the whole entire group and then went out to listen to some Indian music. I was glad the whole group was together for it. But today is our last day all together. I am sad to split up because we have had so many incredible experiences together over the past week and a half, but it will also be good to get to Mangalore. We are taking a day and a half long train... And unfortunately Indian train food is not edible so we have to do some grocery shopping. Natasha also told us a few things to look forward to in Mangalore beyond the library project. She says she is taking us to a coffee estate and a good ice cream parlor. It'll be nice to get oriented down there. Alright, well we have had a lot of crazy adventures so far and I am a little sad to split up, but Mangalore will be amazing.
In case of an emergency, we now all have cell phones:
Zach, Emily, and Kelsey:+91 9811450661.
Stephanie and Julia: +91 9920438935.
Everyone is enjoying the Taj Mahal today, while I hang out in the room in our AC hotel. The consensus among me, Natasha, and Kenji is that I got a mild heat stroke from the malaria meds and being out in the sun for 5 hours yesterday in Jaipur. Hopefully with rest I'll get better, if not I'll find a doctor in Delhi.
Two days ago the 8 of us met up together. I'm so amazed by everyone's ability to handle this new environment, they seemed to be doing fine. I think a few of them were pretty shocked by the living conditions and the harsh weather/food in the beginning, but by the time I saw them they were happy as clams, although tired.
I've tried to get people to post to the blog (thanks, Kelsey!) but it's really difficult to find time when you are constantly travelling, and everyone is also watching the amount of money they spend, so are reluctant to spend hours and hours at internet cafes. Hopefully when everyone gets to the sites they will have more time to record their experiences, whether in this blog or in journals.
Tomorrow, Zach, Emily, and Kelsey are taking a 36 hour train ride down to Mangalore. It's going to be REALLY long, but at least they got AC sleeper cars...it will be an experience. Meanwhile, Julia, Stephanie, Kenji and I are taking a train back to Delhi, where we have 2 days before flying to Goa Saturday afternoon. From there, we may or may not split up-Kenji and I have plans to take a train to Bangalore and then to Chennai. Everyone will hopefully meet up in Mundgod on July 4 or 5, and will spend the next three weeks at the site.
I noticed the post about pictures. Unfortunately, you can't post pictures to this website. I put up about 8 pictures of Kenji and I in Bombay on a facebook site, but I think everyone else is waiting to get more reliable internet and they will add pictures to a flickr site. This means that there aren't any pictures for now, sorry! If you want to see the few pictures I've put up, go to this site:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2130476&l=3c4e3&id=208301
Zach, Emily, and Kelsey:+91 9811450661.
Stephanie and Julia: +91 9920438935.
Everyone is enjoying the Taj Mahal today, while I hang out in the room in our AC hotel. The consensus among me, Natasha, and Kenji is that I got a mild heat stroke from the malaria meds and being out in the sun for 5 hours yesterday in Jaipur. Hopefully with rest I'll get better, if not I'll find a doctor in Delhi.
Two days ago the 8 of us met up together. I'm so amazed by everyone's ability to handle this new environment, they seemed to be doing fine. I think a few of them were pretty shocked by the living conditions and the harsh weather/food in the beginning, but by the time I saw them they were happy as clams, although tired.
I've tried to get people to post to the blog (thanks, Kelsey!) but it's really difficult to find time when you are constantly travelling, and everyone is also watching the amount of money they spend, so are reluctant to spend hours and hours at internet cafes. Hopefully when everyone gets to the sites they will have more time to record their experiences, whether in this blog or in journals.
Tomorrow, Zach, Emily, and Kelsey are taking a 36 hour train ride down to Mangalore. It's going to be REALLY long, but at least they got AC sleeper cars...it will be an experience. Meanwhile, Julia, Stephanie, Kenji and I are taking a train back to Delhi, where we have 2 days before flying to Goa Saturday afternoon. From there, we may or may not split up-Kenji and I have plans to take a train to Bangalore and then to Chennai. Everyone will hopefully meet up in Mundgod on July 4 or 5, and will spend the next three weeks at the site.
I noticed the post about pictures. Unfortunately, you can't post pictures to this website. I put up about 8 pictures of Kenji and I in Bombay on a facebook site, but I think everyone else is waiting to get more reliable internet and they will add pictures to a flickr site. This means that there aren't any pictures for now, sorry! If you want to see the few pictures I've put up, go to this site:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2130476&l=3c4e3&id=208301
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Dehli
hey! so we have been in Delhi the past two days. Yesterday we met up with Jackie, Kenji, and Natasha and we all went out to eat at a restaurant for a joint birthday party for Emily and Zach. It was really nice seeing some familiar faces in India. Today was a slower day because I think we just needed some time to rest and prepare ourselves for our big day tomorrow (Taj Mahal!!). We went into Old Delhi and saw the oldest Muslim mosque in India, but I can't recall the name of it right now. Then we saw the fort, which was huge. Afterwards, we just walked on the main street lined with shops and went to the spice market. We were all pretty tired so we just came back to the hotel and we just got done eating dinner. We're thinking about just staying in the hotel tonight and watching some tv and playing cards. Well I have to go because my internet time is up but we are all having a great time and are all really excited for our trip to Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Ugh today was pretty bad. Delhi is HOT, the place we are staying is on this road that is tiny and extremely crowded and dirty and disgusting. I feel like I've gotten over the shock and awe, gotten over the newness of it all, and instead just am focusing on how tired and disgusting and HOT HOT HOT I feel.
It's also different for me from the first time I was here. I'm much more of a tourist, spending more money and travelling more and not having a purpose except to see and experience everything with Kenji. I want to go somewhere new- I've kind of already experienced Delhi and Bombay and instead of feeling like it's new I'm left to just focus on the dust and sweat and tiredness. I get stressed out when cars are constantly almost running me over in the street, when people come up to me and beg and pull at my clothes, when you can't even take breathing for granted because every other breath you get a whiff of garbage or urine or rotting. I miss home, miss clean and cool. Maybe that's because I've gotten more spolied, maybe because I don't feel like I'm experiencing it the way I used to.
I also am much more realistic about my place in this world. Two years ago, what kept me going was the thought that "oh, this makes me want to dedicate my life to medicine to help make a difference and save the world." No. The truth is that any medicine I practice here will be at most a token to make myself feel better (maybe heal a few hundred people, but in the scheme of things that's nothing). In fact, if i come and practice medicine here, especially if I'm the "best" (which I hope to be), there's no way I'm going to actually help the poorest of the poor, the beggar woman with a dying baby or the woman scooping water out of a puddle to clean her pots. Most likely, I would be flocked by the middle class, by people who hear of me or who think "maybe i can go to her". To a beggar or an extremely low class person, coming to me would probably never even cross their mind as an option- just because of the color of my skin, I'm too foreign, someone they ask for money but not someone they could really go to for help.
I feel like there are two ways to get around this. The first is to go to rural areas, areas where no one can escape me even if they tried, and really try to get the word out there (kind of like the way that farmer does). The urban population seems impractical to reach, and individual health care is much less of a pressing issue than sanitation and housing.
The second way to deal with this issue is to work with policy makers to attack the larger problems. For example, try to get the world bank to lend india's government enough money to turn the Bombay slums of 1,000,000+ people into housing projects with regular sanitation facilities, and access to clinics. Help form education programs to get women to cover their kids up so they don't run naked in the streets, and provide them with clothes to do so. Work with the government and WHO or CDC to hire people to regularly clean the roads and set up a trash collection system that works (somehow they manage to do it in some parts of Delhi). Does this sound like the job of a doctor? Perhaps not, but that doesn't mean that being a doctor isn't useful to all of this. Say you turn those slums into housing projects and actually manage to get regular clinics- what medicines do you stock those clinics with? Someone with the skills of a doctor needs to be able to diagnose the most common ailments among this class of people and provide information for public health workers. Someone with the skills of a physician needs to research how ethnicity, class, caste, education, etc. affects health outcomes and which medications are most effective. These are partially public health issues, but they are also issues which can use the expertise of a physician.
It's also different for me from the first time I was here. I'm much more of a tourist, spending more money and travelling more and not having a purpose except to see and experience everything with Kenji. I want to go somewhere new- I've kind of already experienced Delhi and Bombay and instead of feeling like it's new I'm left to just focus on the dust and sweat and tiredness. I get stressed out when cars are constantly almost running me over in the street, when people come up to me and beg and pull at my clothes, when you can't even take breathing for granted because every other breath you get a whiff of garbage or urine or rotting. I miss home, miss clean and cool. Maybe that's because I've gotten more spolied, maybe because I don't feel like I'm experiencing it the way I used to.
I also am much more realistic about my place in this world. Two years ago, what kept me going was the thought that "oh, this makes me want to dedicate my life to medicine to help make a difference and save the world." No. The truth is that any medicine I practice here will be at most a token to make myself feel better (maybe heal a few hundred people, but in the scheme of things that's nothing). In fact, if i come and practice medicine here, especially if I'm the "best" (which I hope to be), there's no way I'm going to actually help the poorest of the poor, the beggar woman with a dying baby or the woman scooping water out of a puddle to clean her pots. Most likely, I would be flocked by the middle class, by people who hear of me or who think "maybe i can go to her". To a beggar or an extremely low class person, coming to me would probably never even cross their mind as an option- just because of the color of my skin, I'm too foreign, someone they ask for money but not someone they could really go to for help.
I feel like there are two ways to get around this. The first is to go to rural areas, areas where no one can escape me even if they tried, and really try to get the word out there (kind of like the way that farmer does). The urban population seems impractical to reach, and individual health care is much less of a pressing issue than sanitation and housing.
The second way to deal with this issue is to work with policy makers to attack the larger problems. For example, try to get the world bank to lend india's government enough money to turn the Bombay slums of 1,000,000+ people into housing projects with regular sanitation facilities, and access to clinics. Help form education programs to get women to cover their kids up so they don't run naked in the streets, and provide them with clothes to do so. Work with the government and WHO or CDC to hire people to regularly clean the roads and set up a trash collection system that works (somehow they manage to do it in some parts of Delhi). Does this sound like the job of a doctor? Perhaps not, but that doesn't mean that being a doctor isn't useful to all of this. Say you turn those slums into housing projects and actually manage to get regular clinics- what medicines do you stock those clinics with? Someone with the skills of a doctor needs to be able to diagnose the most common ailments among this class of people and provide information for public health workers. Someone with the skills of a physician needs to research how ethnicity, class, caste, education, etc. affects health outcomes and which medications are most effective. These are partially public health issues, but they are also issues which can use the expertise of a physician.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Hey this is Kenji and Jackie- we are going to write a joint post. Before we begin, just want to make a comment about the discussion that was provoked by the prior post. I think it was taken a little bit out of context, and I didn't quite word it right in reference to women's options and responsibilities in society thing. Hopefully no one was offended, and if you were, then deal with it because I didn't mean anything offensive.
Anyway, we are in Delhi right now. We just got off a 15 hour train ride from Bombay to Delhi. Jackie fell asleep at 5:30 p.m., and slept for about 13 hours of the ride. I talked to this Indian woman for a few hours of the time, and she had bed bugs in her train fold down bed. It was gross. It was air conditioned so the ride wasn't so bad, but there weren't closed compartments, the whole train car was open with four beds on one side, an aisle, and two beds on the other, bunked. We took second class- I don't know how Zach and them are going to ride all the way from Delhi to Goa, especially in third, which will be something like 25 hours- that will be painful.
Yesterday (I can't believe it was only yesterday) we woke up and went to Elephanta Island. It was a little over an hour ferry ride to this island which had a bunch of caves that were hand carved out of the side of the mountain. On the ferry we met these students from Purdue, who were travelling all over South East Asia through school. They were staying in every single Taj Hotel (the nicest hotels in each city). They were definitely there as tourists, they were wearing western clothes and chewing gum and were very interested in buying souveniers. At the caves, there were a bunch of monkeys just running around- they'd walk by you from a foot away like you weren't even there. At one point we went into a little museum and the monkeys started running around and wrestling each other inside...needless to say, we left immediately. The island was really tropical, there was a nice view and it looked like we were in a jungle. It was also a lot cooler and cleaner than Bombay, although we sweated so badly that the sweat went through our shirts.
So anyway, today we got into Delhi, and this guy lead us off the train and to the India Tourism office. I thought he was going to scam us, so I was a little skeptical, but it actually turned out o.k. At the tourist office, a man booked a hotel for us, and told us that a rickshaw was waiting to take us to the hotel. At first, we thought he meant auto-rickshaw, and Kenji asked, "are you sure we can fit all of our bags onto the car?" The guy said, "oh yes, Indians are great at making adjustments". We get outside and it's not a motorized auto-rickshaw, it's just a rickshaw! One guy on a bicycle with a tiny little bench in back. Somehow, we managed to load on a suitcase, a hiking backpack, a regular backpack, another small duffell bag, and the two of us. The bench was probably a foot and a half wide. Driving down the road we couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous we felt- probably the most laughable experience ever.
The hotel we are staying at is pretty nice, it was only about $7 per person per night. The only downside- only one bed. It's going to be as hot as balls tonight in one bed with no airconditioning. The hotel we stayed at 2 nights ago was less than $5 per person, but it also didn't have a bathroom and a cockroach on the ground. About an hour ago, Kenji got his first experience with no toilet paper- he said it was the most disgusting experience he'd ever had.
Anyway, we'll post pictures in a second if we can figure it out.
Jackie and Kenji
Anyway, we are in Delhi right now. We just got off a 15 hour train ride from Bombay to Delhi. Jackie fell asleep at 5:30 p.m., and slept for about 13 hours of the ride. I talked to this Indian woman for a few hours of the time, and she had bed bugs in her train fold down bed. It was gross. It was air conditioned so the ride wasn't so bad, but there weren't closed compartments, the whole train car was open with four beds on one side, an aisle, and two beds on the other, bunked. We took second class- I don't know how Zach and them are going to ride all the way from Delhi to Goa, especially in third, which will be something like 25 hours- that will be painful.
Yesterday (I can't believe it was only yesterday) we woke up and went to Elephanta Island. It was a little over an hour ferry ride to this island which had a bunch of caves that were hand carved out of the side of the mountain. On the ferry we met these students from Purdue, who were travelling all over South East Asia through school. They were staying in every single Taj Hotel (the nicest hotels in each city). They were definitely there as tourists, they were wearing western clothes and chewing gum and were very interested in buying souveniers. At the caves, there were a bunch of monkeys just running around- they'd walk by you from a foot away like you weren't even there. At one point we went into a little museum and the monkeys started running around and wrestling each other inside...needless to say, we left immediately. The island was really tropical, there was a nice view and it looked like we were in a jungle. It was also a lot cooler and cleaner than Bombay, although we sweated so badly that the sweat went through our shirts.
So anyway, today we got into Delhi, and this guy lead us off the train and to the India Tourism office. I thought he was going to scam us, so I was a little skeptical, but it actually turned out o.k. At the tourist office, a man booked a hotel for us, and told us that a rickshaw was waiting to take us to the hotel. At first, we thought he meant auto-rickshaw, and Kenji asked, "are you sure we can fit all of our bags onto the car?" The guy said, "oh yes, Indians are great at making adjustments". We get outside and it's not a motorized auto-rickshaw, it's just a rickshaw! One guy on a bicycle with a tiny little bench in back. Somehow, we managed to load on a suitcase, a hiking backpack, a regular backpack, another small duffell bag, and the two of us. The bench was probably a foot and a half wide. Driving down the road we couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous we felt- probably the most laughable experience ever.
The hotel we are staying at is pretty nice, it was only about $7 per person per night. The only downside- only one bed. It's going to be as hot as balls tonight in one bed with no airconditioning. The hotel we stayed at 2 nights ago was less than $5 per person, but it also didn't have a bathroom and a cockroach on the ground. About an hour ago, Kenji got his first experience with no toilet paper- he said it was the most disgusting experience he'd ever had.
Anyway, we'll post pictures in a second if we can figure it out.
Jackie and Kenji
My trip so far
This is an e-mail I sent to my parents a few days ago that I figured I'd share with you.
Wow. India is unbelievable. It is impossible to capture the experience
into words but hopefully my national geographic status pictures will
help when I get home. The journey here was super long (30 hours total)
but bearable. Even though my dang personal screen on the plane was
broken (I was seriously worried this meant I was going to have to
read), I was able to look at Emily's for some of it and sleep for
chunks of the trip as well. And guess what??? I saw clips of Indian So
You Think You Can Dance!!! I didn't even know that existed but was so
excited to see it on the plane. Anyways, after meeting up with Kelsey
at the Bombay airport, we found ourselves a hotel and got their at 5
am. We met up that night with Julia and Stephanie. The five of us have
been together since then and it's been so much fun but some definite
culture shock. Even though I was "expecting" to see everything I've
seen (beggars, poverty, etc.), it's still hard to swallow. I think the
most difficult thing to accept is turning down begging children, who
are only 3 or 4 years old, emaciated and have flies all over them.
I've gained a tougher skin in the past few days to touts and scam
artists but have also met some wonderfully nice people here. We got to
Jaipur today after a 19 hour train ride (which wasn't actually as bad
as we expected) and went to Galta, the monkey temple. It was SO cool.
There were monkeys everywhere swarming around us and climbing and
playing all over these ancient hindu temples as if they were jungle
gyms. We had to walk a ways up to the shrine at the top (the whole
thing is kinda wedged in a mountain) but it was worth it. We went in
and spoke with a young Hindu (priest? guru? monk? guide? not sure...)
and he dotted each of our forheads with orange paint and tied red and
yellow bracelets on our wrists. I was SO spiritual you don't even know
(but seriously, it was really cool). We're going to stay in Jaipur all
day tomorrow and then hopefully go further in the desert. We all
really want to go on a camel trek and that would be an AWESOME
birthday activity. Around the 24th we'll meet up with the rest of the
group in Delhi. I feel like I've been typing for days but this is only
the shortened version, maybe because I'm super tired. I'm definitely
taking a lot of cool pictures. By the way, I forgot, we were ALMOST
extras in a Bollywood movie (apparantly that's typical for tourists)
but it would of taken 14 hours so we nixed it. I would have been
stoked, though. Anyways, hopefully I'll get a chance to write again
soon.
Love,
Zach
P.S. Driving in India is OUT OF CONTROL!!! And you freaked out when I
had my permit, Mom. This is crazy!
Wow. India is unbelievable. It is impossible to capture the experience
into words but hopefully my national geographic status pictures will
help when I get home. The journey here was super long (30 hours total)
but bearable. Even though my dang personal screen on the plane was
broken (I was seriously worried this meant I was going to have to
read), I was able to look at Emily's for some of it and sleep for
chunks of the trip as well. And guess what??? I saw clips of Indian So
You Think You Can Dance!!! I didn't even know that existed but was so
excited to see it on the plane. Anyways, after meeting up with Kelsey
at the Bombay airport, we found ourselves a hotel and got their at 5
am. We met up that night with Julia and Stephanie. The five of us have
been together since then and it's been so much fun but some definite
culture shock. Even though I was "expecting" to see everything I've
seen (beggars, poverty, etc.), it's still hard to swallow. I think the
most difficult thing to accept is turning down begging children, who
are only 3 or 4 years old, emaciated and have flies all over them.
I've gained a tougher skin in the past few days to touts and scam
artists but have also met some wonderfully nice people here. We got to
Jaipur today after a 19 hour train ride (which wasn't actually as bad
as we expected) and went to Galta, the monkey temple. It was SO cool.
There were monkeys everywhere swarming around us and climbing and
playing all over these ancient hindu temples as if they were jungle
gyms. We had to walk a ways up to the shrine at the top (the whole
thing is kinda wedged in a mountain) but it was worth it. We went in
and spoke with a young Hindu (priest? guru? monk? guide? not sure...)
and he dotted each of our forheads with orange paint and tied red and
yellow bracelets on our wrists. I was SO spiritual you don't even know
(but seriously, it was really cool). We're going to stay in Jaipur all
day tomorrow and then hopefully go further in the desert. We all
really want to go on a camel trek and that would be an AWESOME
birthday activity. Around the 24th we'll meet up with the rest of the
group in Delhi. I feel like I've been typing for days but this is only
the shortened version, maybe because I'm super tired. I'm definitely
taking a lot of cool pictures. By the way, I forgot, we were ALMOST
extras in a Bollywood movie (apparantly that's typical for tourists)
but it would of taken 14 hours so we nixed it. I would have been
stoked, though. Anyways, hopefully I'll get a chance to write again
soon.
Love,
Zach
P.S. Driving in India is OUT OF CONTROL!!! And you freaked out when I
had my permit, Mom. This is crazy!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Hey everyone, my name is Kenji, and this is my first post. I was too lazy to set up my own account, so I'm writing through Jackie's.
A lot has happened since I first arrived here in bombay, I arrived 2 nights ago at 10 PM. On the flight over, I had to kind of mentally prepare myself, because I hadn't been expecting to arrive in India by myself- I expected Jackie to be there with me, which she wasn't. I got all my stuff off of baggage claim and walk out the airport to find a dirt road with trash and rubble lining the side of the road. I get into a taxi which is REALLY sketchy, because there are like 30 dirty dudes waiting there in the general viscinity of their cars. So I sit in the cab fo 5 minuets in the back seat until finally the cab driver and this other dude sitting next to him start taking me to the hotel. Now my mom told me that the hotel was only 2 minutes away from the airport. After about 10 minutes in the taxi I started getting scared and asked how much longer it would be. He pulls over because he thinks I'm trying to buy cigarettes on the side of the street. He kept giving hand signals like he was smoking something, and I kept saying, "no, no." It's really scary because you are sitting in the taxi with all of your luggage and the driver doesn't speak a word of english, and your fate is resting in his hands.
He finally delivered me to the hotel, and I check in and everything was alright. The hotel was kind of expensive, but it was fairly nice. That night I went to bed at about 11, and woke up at about 3:30 a.m. with nothing to do. I started doing pushups and listening to music, and doing anything to pass the time. The next morning I woke up, ate breakfast, and attempted to go to the ATM. I stood there, trying to cross the highway for about 5 minutes, until finally I just followed some of the Indian people across. I don't know if you know, but the traffic here is crazy. I have a few pictures that I'll upload later.
After going to the ATM, this random taxi driver gives me his card, and tells me to find him if I want to go somewhere. Note that there are stray dogs and cows and dirty sheep on the side of the road, along with poor people just sitting there. As I was going back to my room, Jackie called right while I was still in the lobby, and told me I should go and explore Bombay. So I went and the taxi driver ended up being a really nice guy and showed me the sites all around Bombay. I went to a place where they handwash all of these clothes in these cement wells (kind of). I went to gateway of India, which is kind of like the Arc d'Triomphe, but right on the edge of the water, I don't know how else to describe it. I went along this promenade which they call the Queens Necklace, because at night time the street lights look like a necklace, lighting up the harbor. Yesterday evening I took it easy because I was jetlagged, and Jackie came at 2:30 in the morning, smelling like a horse's ass. She looked like she had been in a hippie festival for three weeks without showering, wearing these tie dye pajama pants. I never got back to bed after she came, so I woke her up early this morning.
After getting hustled out of 10 bucks for breakfast, we went off to find a cheaper hotel. The hotel was hard to find, because it was on the second floor of this not so clean street, with a little tiny doorway which led to the stairs. The hotel room is reasonable for the price, but when the price is $5 per person a night, that's not saying much. The shower doesn't really work, and is quite grimy, and the beds are alright...I guess.
Once we got settled in the hotel, Jackie got a phone from this little vendor on the side of the street who kept trying to force feed us coffee, which I would not have drank for 50 bucks, but which Jackie sipped and complemented. Next we went and bought some Indian clothes. They kept giving me shirts that were too small, and I felt like I was going to tear them just by putting them on. After about 4 or 5 shirts they finally gave me one the right size, and I bought a shirt and two bottoms. Next we went to lunch, passing a market place that lined the street with all of these little stands, selling sunglasses, watches, clothes, drums (which was kind of weird), and leather stuff. I bought a watch because there aren't any clocks around. We went to lunch which was nice, and went to this dirty train station place where I almost lost my lunch. We bought tickets for Delhi tomorrow. Then we went to this Muslim temple thing, which is a five minute walk out off the shore. The dirty water kept splashing us on our way there, battering us with water that was full of grime and brown murk. The temple was pretty cool, although girls had to go in a separate entrance and weren't allowed to go into the temple, because they are considered inferior. On the way back, Jackie and I had a big debate about how educated women in our society don't have as many responsibilities in our culture. After about 10 minutes she finally conceded the point.
From there we walked along the water for about 10 minutes, and made it back to this internet cafe which is about 2 minutes away from our place. We are both sweaty, grimy, and disgusting, and are about to go take showers.
Tomorrow we are going on a 19 hour train ride to Delhi, leaving at 4:40 p.m. Our plan is to wake up early, take a ferry to this place called Elephant Island which is supposed to be really cool, come back, and go on the train. Hopefully this train ride will be better than my last train ride with other Indian people (I'm referencing my Euro trip).
Hope you are all well, check in later, and please write about the happenings back home.
A lot has happened since I first arrived here in bombay, I arrived 2 nights ago at 10 PM. On the flight over, I had to kind of mentally prepare myself, because I hadn't been expecting to arrive in India by myself- I expected Jackie to be there with me, which she wasn't. I got all my stuff off of baggage claim and walk out the airport to find a dirt road with trash and rubble lining the side of the road. I get into a taxi which is REALLY sketchy, because there are like 30 dirty dudes waiting there in the general viscinity of their cars. So I sit in the cab fo 5 minuets in the back seat until finally the cab driver and this other dude sitting next to him start taking me to the hotel. Now my mom told me that the hotel was only 2 minutes away from the airport. After about 10 minutes in the taxi I started getting scared and asked how much longer it would be. He pulls over because he thinks I'm trying to buy cigarettes on the side of the street. He kept giving hand signals like he was smoking something, and I kept saying, "no, no." It's really scary because you are sitting in the taxi with all of your luggage and the driver doesn't speak a word of english, and your fate is resting in his hands.
He finally delivered me to the hotel, and I check in and everything was alright. The hotel was kind of expensive, but it was fairly nice. That night I went to bed at about 11, and woke up at about 3:30 a.m. with nothing to do. I started doing pushups and listening to music, and doing anything to pass the time. The next morning I woke up, ate breakfast, and attempted to go to the ATM. I stood there, trying to cross the highway for about 5 minutes, until finally I just followed some of the Indian people across. I don't know if you know, but the traffic here is crazy. I have a few pictures that I'll upload later.
After going to the ATM, this random taxi driver gives me his card, and tells me to find him if I want to go somewhere. Note that there are stray dogs and cows and dirty sheep on the side of the road, along with poor people just sitting there. As I was going back to my room, Jackie called right while I was still in the lobby, and told me I should go and explore Bombay. So I went and the taxi driver ended up being a really nice guy and showed me the sites all around Bombay. I went to a place where they handwash all of these clothes in these cement wells (kind of). I went to gateway of India, which is kind of like the Arc d'Triomphe, but right on the edge of the water, I don't know how else to describe it. I went along this promenade which they call the Queens Necklace, because at night time the street lights look like a necklace, lighting up the harbor. Yesterday evening I took it easy because I was jetlagged, and Jackie came at 2:30 in the morning, smelling like a horse's ass. She looked like she had been in a hippie festival for three weeks without showering, wearing these tie dye pajama pants. I never got back to bed after she came, so I woke her up early this morning.
After getting hustled out of 10 bucks for breakfast, we went off to find a cheaper hotel. The hotel was hard to find, because it was on the second floor of this not so clean street, with a little tiny doorway which led to the stairs. The hotel room is reasonable for the price, but when the price is $5 per person a night, that's not saying much. The shower doesn't really work, and is quite grimy, and the beds are alright...I guess.
Once we got settled in the hotel, Jackie got a phone from this little vendor on the side of the street who kept trying to force feed us coffee, which I would not have drank for 50 bucks, but which Jackie sipped and complemented. Next we went and bought some Indian clothes. They kept giving me shirts that were too small, and I felt like I was going to tear them just by putting them on. After about 4 or 5 shirts they finally gave me one the right size, and I bought a shirt and two bottoms. Next we went to lunch, passing a market place that lined the street with all of these little stands, selling sunglasses, watches, clothes, drums (which was kind of weird), and leather stuff. I bought a watch because there aren't any clocks around. We went to lunch which was nice, and went to this dirty train station place where I almost lost my lunch. We bought tickets for Delhi tomorrow. Then we went to this Muslim temple thing, which is a five minute walk out off the shore. The dirty water kept splashing us on our way there, battering us with water that was full of grime and brown murk. The temple was pretty cool, although girls had to go in a separate entrance and weren't allowed to go into the temple, because they are considered inferior. On the way back, Jackie and I had a big debate about how educated women in our society don't have as many responsibilities in our culture. After about 10 minutes she finally conceded the point.
From there we walked along the water for about 10 minutes, and made it back to this internet cafe which is about 2 minutes away from our place. We are both sweaty, grimy, and disgusting, and are about to go take showers.
Tomorrow we are going on a 19 hour train ride to Delhi, leaving at 4:40 p.m. Our plan is to wake up early, take a ferry to this place called Elephant Island which is supposed to be really cool, come back, and go on the train. Hopefully this train ride will be better than my last train ride with other Indian people (I'm referencing my Euro trip).
Hope you are all well, check in later, and please write about the happenings back home.
Friday, June 20, 2008
I didn't realize how much it is possible to forget in two years. As I've had other experiences, become preoccupied with my career and med school and everything else that life rolls over me, I didn't realize that my idea of India had become more and more of an abstraction, more and more just bits of random snapshots that would enter my head and then leave fleetingly, without a chance to convey the detail and the emotion I feel when I'm here. They say memories "come flooding back", and it's funny, that's just how it feels, like after years of staying out of the pool you dive back in, and everything tastes and feels exactly how you remembered it, and you realize how much of the detail you forgot while you were dry.
The first thing I forgot was the smell. It's different every time I inhale, one breath full of spice and the next something more unpleasant, like faint urine or sweat. I forgot how the humidity sticks to your face, leaving a layer that never quite goes away, or how the wind slaps the little pieces of hair against your forehead when you are in a car, sticking to the layer of sweat and stinging ever so slightly. I forgot how you can instantly tell the caste or social standing of someone on the side of the road, how there are dozens of worlds living in the same place simultaneously that only mingle in the most formal of ways. I forgot how exhilarating and scary it is to be driving in a car that swerves in and out of lanes, a car that uses the horn as a traffic lane instead of a last resort.
I realize that going to a place like this once is not enough- it's too easy to forget. I'm glad I'm here again, a seasoned traveler this time, aware enough to know I'm getting ripped off at every turn but powerless to do anything against it. Kenji and I (it was so nice to see him, by the way), had to pay 300 Rs. for breakfast, because the hotel conveniently forgot to tell us that breakfast was free for 1 person, but for a double both people had to pay for meals. In some ways I don't mind paying the high prices, but in some ways it angers me that even though I lived here, I still don't know how much things should cost, and everyone still assumes that they can rip me off (and they can!)
I'll post more later- Kenji and I are going to spend the day in Bombay :)
The first thing I forgot was the smell. It's different every time I inhale, one breath full of spice and the next something more unpleasant, like faint urine or sweat. I forgot how the humidity sticks to your face, leaving a layer that never quite goes away, or how the wind slaps the little pieces of hair against your forehead when you are in a car, sticking to the layer of sweat and stinging ever so slightly. I forgot how you can instantly tell the caste or social standing of someone on the side of the road, how there are dozens of worlds living in the same place simultaneously that only mingle in the most formal of ways. I forgot how exhilarating and scary it is to be driving in a car that swerves in and out of lanes, a car that uses the horn as a traffic lane instead of a last resort.
I realize that going to a place like this once is not enough- it's too easy to forget. I'm glad I'm here again, a seasoned traveler this time, aware enough to know I'm getting ripped off at every turn but powerless to do anything against it. Kenji and I (it was so nice to see him, by the way), had to pay 300 Rs. for breakfast, because the hotel conveniently forgot to tell us that breakfast was free for 1 person, but for a double both people had to pay for meals. In some ways I don't mind paying the high prices, but in some ways it angers me that even though I lived here, I still don't know how much things should cost, and everyone still assumes that they can rip me off (and they can!)
I'll post more later- Kenji and I are going to spend the day in Bombay :)
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Email from Zach:
The five of us are at a cool hotel in Jaipur right now (the night of the 19th). We had a fun and eventful day but we'll tell stories later, I'm sure. I'm sorry you missed your flight, but I think it'll all work out. We want to explore a few more places in Rajastan and are really hoping to go on a camel trek (I'd love to be on a camel on my birthday the 21st!), but we have to find out if they have them in Bikandur this time of year. We also want to go to Pushkar. So, we're thinking we will get to Delhi on the 23rd or 24th. I know this is a little later than we thought but it should still give us 3 or 4 solid days in Delhi. The general consensus on this end has been that we like the more rural relgious and cultural things more than just walking down city streets so hopefully 4 days is enough for Delhi. Also, Emily, Kelsey and I are really penny pinching so we decided not to fly to Mangalore and just take trains. The 19 hour train to Jaipur was SO not as bad as we expected because we slept for half of it and chatted with interesting people in our cars for the rest. In terms of where to meet up in Delhi, we're flexible. We've just being calling hotels from our guide books upon arrival and going to the best one. Since it's hard to know where you'll be able to find room, I think you should email us with your hotel once you know. Natasha, it might be a good idea if we could set a restaurant to meet at for lunch on the 24th (this is what the five of us did in Mumbai) so regardless of availability issues we may run into with hotels, we can be sure we'll be together by lunch on the 24th. Let us know where you all end up in Delhi. Good luck with your travels!!!
The five of us are at a cool hotel in Jaipur right now (the night of the 19th). We had a fun and eventful day but we'll tell stories later, I'm sure. I'm sorry you missed your flight, but I think it'll all work out. We want to explore a few more places in Rajastan and are really hoping to go on a camel trek (I'd love to be on a camel on my birthday the 21st!), but we have to find out if they have them in Bikandur this time of year. We also want to go to Pushkar. So, we're thinking we will get to Delhi on the 23rd or 24th. I know this is a little later than we thought but it should still give us 3 or 4 solid days in Delhi. The general consensus on this end has been that we like the more rural relgious and cultural things more than just walking down city streets so hopefully 4 days is enough for Delhi. Also, Emily, Kelsey and I are really penny pinching so we decided not to fly to Mangalore and just take trains. The 19 hour train to Jaipur was SO not as bad as we expected because we slept for half of it and chatted with interesting people in our cars for the rest. In terms of where to meet up in Delhi, we're flexible. We've just being calling hotels from our guide books upon arrival and going to the best one. Since it's hard to know where you'll be able to find room, I think you should email us with your hotel once you know. Natasha, it might be a good idea if we could set a restaurant to meet at for lunch on the 24th (this is what the five of us did in Mumbai) so regardless of availability issues we may run into with hotels, we can be sure we'll be together by lunch on the 24th. Let us know where you all end up in Delhi. Good luck with your travels!!!
Ahhh most stressful day ever yesterday. I woke up at 4:30 a.m., hopped on a supershuttle over to SFO, took a plane ALL day to Newark airport, was told that Newark was closed, was rerouted to Buffalo, stayed in Buffalo for about an hour until Newark opened up again, flew back to Newark, and hopped off the plane just in time to hear that my flight to Bombay had left without me, and with my cousin on it. Kenji and I, luckily, had a backup plan to meet at a hotel in Bombay, but we don't have any phones, and this has been the most stressful start to the trip ever.
Luckily the freshmen seem to be doing fine- Natasha forwarded me an email from Kelsey that said that all 5 of them were heading to Jaipur for a few days and then to Delhi, and that they were talking to a travel agent about a flight from Delhi to Goa. I'm so proud of them, they are doing such a great job on their own! Hopefully we'll be able to meet up in Delhi, and the timing will be right (and Kenji and I will just miss Jaipur). I also can't wait until we all get phones, I think it will make everything a LOT less stressful.
My plan is to arrive at the hotel in Bombay at 9 p.m. tomorrow night (about 24 hours from now), fall asleep, wake up super early and head into the city, where we will get a train ticket to Delhi, get phones, and maybe get a couple of outfits for Kenji. Then we will either head over to Delhi on an overnight train that night (which might not be enough time in Mumbai) or the next night, arriving in Delhi on the morning of the 23rd, which would only give us about 5 days in Delhi/the north. That's fine, and basically means that our travel in the north will be predominately in Delhi and seeing the Taj Mahal. Today, I'm going to see if I can convince the airline to get me a ticket coming back August 1 instead of July 15 because of all the hassle they put me through. It might not work, but if it does I'll be really happy.
Luckily the freshmen seem to be doing fine- Natasha forwarded me an email from Kelsey that said that all 5 of them were heading to Jaipur for a few days and then to Delhi, and that they were talking to a travel agent about a flight from Delhi to Goa. I'm so proud of them, they are doing such a great job on their own! Hopefully we'll be able to meet up in Delhi, and the timing will be right (and Kenji and I will just miss Jaipur). I also can't wait until we all get phones, I think it will make everything a LOT less stressful.
My plan is to arrive at the hotel in Bombay at 9 p.m. tomorrow night (about 24 hours from now), fall asleep, wake up super early and head into the city, where we will get a train ticket to Delhi, get phones, and maybe get a couple of outfits for Kenji. Then we will either head over to Delhi on an overnight train that night (which might not be enough time in Mumbai) or the next night, arriving in Delhi on the morning of the 23rd, which would only give us about 5 days in Delhi/the north. That's fine, and basically means that our travel in the north will be predominately in Delhi and seeing the Taj Mahal. Today, I'm going to see if I can convince the airline to get me a ticket coming back August 1 instead of July 15 because of all the hassle they put me through. It might not work, but if it does I'll be really happy.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Message from Julia:
HI!!!
So im here in India, have finally showered after two straight days of traveling and just had the most amazing/strange breakfast in Mumbai. Me and steph got in last night and our hotel is soo funny, were on the fourth floor of this seriously decrepit building, with no bathroom and stained sheets, but the guys working there are nice and its in the center of the best part of town (and it only costs $5). I had a layover in Hong Kong for 10 hours so I got to see the whole city, which is pretty much like New York only with alot of Asian people and some really funny looking meat stuff. lol Lets just say im really thankful im a vegetarian and that India is a Hindu country where most meat-eating is sacreligious. Im meeting up with the rest of our crew tonight, probably will go clubbing and then jump on a very questionalbe train tomorrow to go somewhere, anywhere up north, Agra, Dheli, Jaipur, who knows?
But I love you all and don't worry Im totally fine, am comfortable and have to go explore!! he he love you all and i hope home is treating you fabulously.
Jules
HI!!!
So im here in India, have finally showered after two straight days of traveling and just had the most amazing/strange breakfast in Mumbai. Me and steph got in last night and our hotel is soo funny, were on the fourth floor of this seriously decrepit building, with no bathroom and stained sheets, but the guys working there are nice and its in the center of the best part of town (and it only costs $5). I had a layover in Hong Kong for 10 hours so I got to see the whole city, which is pretty much like New York only with alot of Asian people and some really funny looking meat stuff. lol Lets just say im really thankful im a vegetarian and that India is a Hindu country where most meat-eating is sacreligious. Im meeting up with the rest of our crew tonight, probably will go clubbing and then jump on a very questionalbe train tomorrow to go somewhere, anywhere up north, Agra, Dheli, Jaipur, who knows?
But I love you all and don't worry Im totally fine, am comfortable and have to go explore!! he he love you all and i hope home is treating you fabulously.
Jules
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Here's an email I just got from Kelsey:
Hey! so we are in India right now. we just wanted let you guys know that we are alive and in Mumbai right now. We haven't met up with Julia abd stephanie yet but we plan to tonight. we are still not sure about our train siutation yet either but we were thinking of leaving with natasha on the 27th to go to mangalore. right now we are a litlte overwhelmed but i think it will be ok. k just letting you guys know what was going on.
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I'm so happy that they actually met up! I am most worried about these first few days before we arrive...I know that they are smart and resourceful, but Bombay is overwhelming under any circumstances. It sounds like they are doing fine though, and that makes me look forward to the reset of the trip going off without too many major problems.
Hey! so we are in India right now. we just wanted let you guys know that we are alive and in Mumbai right now. We haven't met up with Julia abd stephanie yet but we plan to tonight. we are still not sure about our train siutation yet either but we were thinking of leaving with natasha on the 27th to go to mangalore. right now we are a litlte overwhelmed but i think it will be ok. k just letting you guys know what was going on.
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I'm so happy that they actually met up! I am most worried about these first few days before we arrive...I know that they are smart and resourceful, but Bombay is overwhelming under any circumstances. It sounds like they are doing fine though, and that makes me look forward to the reset of the trip going off without too many major problems.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
About to leave!
hi! So this is my first post to the blog. I'm just waiting for my Super Shuttle to arrive in an hour and a half and then I will be off to the airport! The past few weeks have been really stressful with finals then packing and saying goodbye to all my friends. I'm really excited about India though and I think it will definitely be quite the adventure. I'll write more later but I need to finish packing up some things!!
Friday, June 13, 2008
And it's almost time to go...
So... I didn't really write much in the last post. Things were pretty hectic the last few weeks of school. But tomorrow is our last full day in the U.S.! After that me and Zach are flying out on the same flight together on Sunday to Mumbai. I saw that Zach had wanted to get a chance to write about his goals. I am not really sure who is reading this blog so I will address it as though the reader hasn't been to our meetings. I am really looking forward to getting the community invested in our libraries. We want to stress the importance of reading for fun rather than just reading for technical skill. In order to do this, we know we have to get the community really invested in our libraries.
We have a committee to work on the maintenance of the libraries. When we get there we want to have dinner with them and stress to them how reading leads to success - in order to gain their investment in the library. To get the kids involved, we are hoping they may want to help us decorate the room, have reading competitions, have English classes, have a library opening celebration, etc. The principal did express interest in having us also teach English classes while we are there.
We also had one meeting with a woman in charge of a program called Africa Library Project. She gave us a lot of invaluable advice on setting up libraries based upon her own experience with setting up libraries in Africa. There was one library she set up that had a 100% pass rate after the opening of her library! She talked a lot about trying to turn the library into a community project rather than something strictly involving the school.
Anyway, I am getting really excited, but it probably won't feel quite real until we are on the plane! Getting everyone to have a long term investment in the library and having some interesting experiences with the kids are my goals. I can't wait to see what happens.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Hi, my name is Stephanie. I'm a freshman at Stanford this year but I'm originally from Chicago. We just had a meeting on Tuesday to kind of finalize our plans and I'm getting more and more excited as we closer to June 15th, which is when Julia and I will be arriving in Mumbai. Wow, thats it ten days...I'm staying in Inida for five weeks--I'll be traveling for the first part and be stationed in Mundgod with Julia for the remainder of the time setting up the library and doing community outreach projects. Anyway, right now I'm getting ready for my last finals and starting to pack up my room for the summer which so crazy, but I'll be living in Theta will Julia and Emily next year which will be super fun. Is this completely irrelevant? Sorry, I'm kinda sleep deprived...
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Passage to India
By way of introduction,
My name is Natasha Pereira-Kamath and I am the co-president of Project Read and will be co-leading this trip to India. I cannot be more excited and am looking forward to seeing you all in Delhi!
~Natasha
My name is Natasha Pereira-Kamath and I am the co-president of Project Read and will be co-leading this trip to India. I cannot be more excited and am looking forward to seeing you all in Delhi!
~Natasha
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Hello, my name is...
Hi, this is Zach writing for the first time. My friends and family all give me a hard time for being bad at correspondence (don't forget, just because I don't call doesn't mean I don't love you), though I really hope to update the blog regularly. By telling myself that the blog is actually more like Facebook than it is like correspondence I think I'll prove to be the blog's greatest contributor. Seriously, though, I'm really excited about the blog. I never keep a journal and rarely take notes in class (uh, whoops) because I ALWAYS come to the conclusion that "this is so obvious, there's no way I'll forget it." Alas, I forget it without fail. Soooooo, as long as I keep up with the blog I think I will treasure the stories and whatnot that I post (though I may still keep a journal, we'll see).
I definitely want to post my goals for the trip but I'll have to do it another time because i need to finish a project for my design class that's due tomorrow!
I definitely want to post my goals for the trip but I'll have to do it another time because i need to finish a project for my design class that's due tomorrow!
first post
Ok this is my first post. Today was exhausting but I am so excited for India in a few weeks.
We had a really productive meeting today- everyone shared their last minute ideas about discretionary funds, travel insurance, etc. I had everyone finally sign a liability form, which makes me feel a little more secure. Also, we sorted all of the books for next year (which took us about 2.5 hours) into adult vs. kids books, and donated all of the books that we didn't need.
I guess the plan is the following: everyone (all the freshmen) will get into Bombay around June 16-17. On the morning of the 18th they will take a train to Delhi, perhaps stopping in interesting places in the north. Kenji and I will arrive in Bombay on the evening of the 19th, spend one night in Bombay, and then follow everyone else to Delhi. We will stay in Delhi/take day trips for about a week to a week and a half. Natasha will arrive in Delhi on June 20 and stay with her grandparents for 6 days. She will then fly down to Mangalore with Kelsey, and they will look for contractors, buy books in the local language, etc. Emily and Zach will follow on July 1. Also on July 1, Julia, Stephanie, Kenji, and I will fly down to the closest airport to Mundgod (probably Hydrabad). We will go to Mundgod on the first, and help Julia and Stephanie get settled in. We will then either travel to Mangalore, or travel around South India.
Julia and Stephanie still have to solidify their plans for travel in the south. What I think is best is if they take day trips out of Mundgod when they have time, perhaps on the weekend.
Kelsey will travel back up to Bombay on June 10 (perhaps with me and Kenji, or perhaps by herself). Kenji will fly back to Delhi on the 14th, so that he can fly to Nepal on the 15th. I will somehow get back to Bombay by June 15. Zach and Emily will stay in Mangalore until July 15, and Stephanie and Julia will stay in Mundgod until July 26.
Whew! that was confusing! It took us a while to figure out, but now we have a plan for travel that make sense.
I guess the plan is the following: everyone (all the freshmen) will get into Bombay around June 16-17. On the morning of the 18th they will take a train to Delhi, perhaps stopping in interesting places in the north. Kenji and I will arrive in Bombay on the evening of the 19th, spend one night in Bombay, and then follow everyone else to Delhi. We will stay in Delhi/take day trips for about a week to a week and a half. Natasha will arrive in Delhi on June 20 and stay with her grandparents for 6 days. She will then fly down to Mangalore with Kelsey, and they will look for contractors, buy books in the local language, etc. Emily and Zach will follow on July 1. Also on July 1, Julia, Stephanie, Kenji, and I will fly down to the closest airport to Mundgod (probably Hydrabad). We will go to Mundgod on the first, and help Julia and Stephanie get settled in. We will then either travel to Mangalore, or travel around South India.
Julia and Stephanie still have to solidify their plans for travel in the south. What I think is best is if they take day trips out of Mundgod when they have time, perhaps on the weekend.
Kelsey will travel back up to Bombay on June 10 (perhaps with me and Kenji, or perhaps by herself). Kenji will fly back to Delhi on the 14th, so that he can fly to Nepal on the 15th. I will somehow get back to Bombay by June 15. Zach and Emily will stay in Mangalore until July 15, and Stephanie and Julia will stay in Mundgod until July 26.
Whew! that was confusing! It took us a while to figure out, but now we have a plan for travel that make sense.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Introductions
I went on a bunch of last-minute errands today, tying down all the loose threads before embarking on this exciting adventure. First, I got an ISIC card, which will supplement the health insurance provided by my insurance company (I’d only recommend this if you have other health insurance, otherwise, STA has a great travel insurance package). Next, I went to get Malaria pills. They were less than $5.00, although I’m a little worried because they cause upset stomachs, and because they are antibiotics you can’t stop taking them in the middle. They also make you more sensitive to the sun, which will be a problem in India. I guess it’s better than the other kind, that gives you hallucinations and bad dreams…
Finally, I got everyone in the group a present- hand sanitizer! I feel like this will be a much needed and desired gift J.
For those of you who are meeting Project Read for the first time, let me introduce the cast of characters going to India this summer:
Jackie Weiss- that’s me, I’ve graduated and am planning on going to UCSF next year. I started Project Read with Natasha last May. I spent the summer of 2006 in India, wearing saris and jasmine in my hair and living in dirty downtown Chennai. My goal for this summer is to write in this blog a lot, and make sure everyone is safe and happy.
Natasha Pereira- Natasha’s parents are from India, and we may be staying with her grandparents in Mangalore at some point during the trip. Natasha will graduate on June 15, and just finished her 160-page thesis yesterday, I’m sure with much relief.
Zach D’Angelo- Zach is a freshman, majoring in Product Design (potentially). He has international experience, having lead a trip with Julia Sebastian (see below) to Costa Rica. Zach is incredibly responsible, and will be one of the leaders of the group next year.
Emily Rains- Emily is a freshman, and along with Zach and Kelsey have been working with Project Read since the beginning of the year. Emily helped to arrange many of the book drives, and is getting excited about going to India, even though she knows she will stick out like a sore thumb with her pale complexion and blonde hair.
Kelsey King- Kelsey is also a freshman, and will be traveling to a developing country for the first time this summer. She has the most experience of anyone working with libraries, and has done a lot of the publicity for Project Read. Kelsey has a lot to look forward to, and will definitely grow a lot this summer.
Julia Sebastian- Julia and Stephanie will be going to Mundgod, a rural village near Hubli. Julia is outgoing, and responsible. She and Zach organized a trip to Costa Rica last year, and Julia knows how to be flexible in uncertain circumstances. She will be traveling after the program around India and potentially Nepal.
Stephanie Caro- Stephanie is very insightful and resourceful, and will work well on a team with Julia. She is currently in San Francisco picking up everyone’s visas from the Indian Embassy. Stephanie and Julia are room mates here at Stanford.
Kenji Kurosaki- Kenji is Jackie’s cousin, and will be traveling with her, doubling as a tourist/volunteer and a bodyguard (just kidding, although I do feel safer having him around). This will be Kenji’s first time in a developing country, though he has spent a considerable amount of time in Japan, where his father is from.
Even though I’ve already been to India, I definitely feel a little apprehensive being responsible for this many people. I’ve done the best I can to make sure that everyone is prepared, but inevitably something will happen that I haven’t prepared for, in which case I’ll need to be as flexible and responsible as possible. I want to make sure that everyone’s parents are connected and able to contact me- having that communication is essential for parent’s well being (at least according to my mom). On the whole, I’m super excited, and feel like this will be a big time of growth for everyone involved.
Finally, I got everyone in the group a present- hand sanitizer! I feel like this will be a much needed and desired gift J.
For those of you who are meeting Project Read for the first time, let me introduce the cast of characters going to India this summer:
Jackie Weiss- that’s me, I’ve graduated and am planning on going to UCSF next year. I started Project Read with Natasha last May. I spent the summer of 2006 in India, wearing saris and jasmine in my hair and living in dirty downtown Chennai. My goal for this summer is to write in this blog a lot, and make sure everyone is safe and happy.
Natasha Pereira- Natasha’s parents are from India, and we may be staying with her grandparents in Mangalore at some point during the trip. Natasha will graduate on June 15, and just finished her 160-page thesis yesterday, I’m sure with much relief.
Zach D’Angelo- Zach is a freshman, majoring in Product Design (potentially). He has international experience, having lead a trip with Julia Sebastian (see below) to Costa Rica. Zach is incredibly responsible, and will be one of the leaders of the group next year.
Emily Rains- Emily is a freshman, and along with Zach and Kelsey have been working with Project Read since the beginning of the year. Emily helped to arrange many of the book drives, and is getting excited about going to India, even though she knows she will stick out like a sore thumb with her pale complexion and blonde hair.
Kelsey King- Kelsey is also a freshman, and will be traveling to a developing country for the first time this summer. She has the most experience of anyone working with libraries, and has done a lot of the publicity for Project Read. Kelsey has a lot to look forward to, and will definitely grow a lot this summer.
Julia Sebastian- Julia and Stephanie will be going to Mundgod, a rural village near Hubli. Julia is outgoing, and responsible. She and Zach organized a trip to Costa Rica last year, and Julia knows how to be flexible in uncertain circumstances. She will be traveling after the program around India and potentially Nepal.
Stephanie Caro- Stephanie is very insightful and resourceful, and will work well on a team with Julia. She is currently in San Francisco picking up everyone’s visas from the Indian Embassy. Stephanie and Julia are room mates here at Stanford.
Kenji Kurosaki- Kenji is Jackie’s cousin, and will be traveling with her, doubling as a tourist/volunteer and a bodyguard (just kidding, although I do feel safer having him around). This will be Kenji’s first time in a developing country, though he has spent a considerable amount of time in Japan, where his father is from.
Even though I’ve already been to India, I definitely feel a little apprehensive being responsible for this many people. I’ve done the best I can to make sure that everyone is prepared, but inevitably something will happen that I haven’t prepared for, in which case I’ll need to be as flexible and responsible as possible. I want to make sure that everyone’s parents are connected and able to contact me- having that communication is essential for parent’s well being (at least according to my mom). On the whole, I’m super excited, and feel like this will be a big time of growth for everyone involved.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Welcome post!
Hello everyone!
This will be our blog, where everyone from Project Read can post. Parents, feel free to make comments and ask questions. I will try to post as many pictures as I can, and I encourage everyone to write in this blog at least a few times a week.
I, for one, am getting incredibly excited! Stephanie is currently in the city picking up our visas, and I really feel so close to being on that plane and in a new country!
This will be our blog, where everyone from Project Read can post. Parents, feel free to make comments and ask questions. I will try to post as many pictures as I can, and I encourage everyone to write in this blog at least a few times a week.
I, for one, am getting incredibly excited! Stephanie is currently in the city picking up our visas, and I really feel so close to being on that plane and in a new country!
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