April Fools and Amritsar

The week of April Fools Day was a great week! I continued to bond with the daycare kids, make progress with the girls in English class, learn more Hindi (and a little Pahari) and play a few pranks on April Fools Day! The daycare kids are so cute! They are very energetic and they love to dance and sing! One little boy in particular really loves dancing! He's got all of the moves down from probably every Bollywood movie out there! In the English class the girls are improving a lot and I can definitely see a difference in their English and computer skills from the beginning of the class. I've come to appreciate every one of them for their individual personalities and I realized that I will miss them so much when I leave! I was so happy to hear that India has April Fools Day! I love April Fools Day I had been thinking that I was going to miss it because I would be in India! They may not get as crazy with it as my brothers, Josh, and I have in the past, but I managed to get everyone in the joking spirit that day! We had been talking about April Fools Day about a week and a half before but I think I was the only person who remembered when the day came! Of course, I had to plan ahead for some things so I got up in the middle of the night a few times the night before to dip Aoife's toothbrush in a cup of water and then put it back in the freezer. By morning time there was a block of ice frozen around it but by the time Aoife woke up it was just a little bit icy! Another classic April Fools Day prank was the "balloon in the door" trick! I inflated a balloon but didn't knot the end and shut it in the door with the balloon on the outside and when Vineet went outside, he opened the door and the balloon flew up in the air zoomed right in front of him. I was sitting on the couch when it happened and I couldn't stop myself from laughing a little and making it obvious that it was me who set it up but once he realized what day it was, he was laughing too! I had more things planned for that day that were a bit delayed because of one problem. Ramesh. Just kidding! He's not that bad but just when I was about to start setting up a new prank, he insisted that I watch him and Vineet fix the water pipe. Then when I need glue for the coin trick, I asked Ramesh if he had any glue and after what seemed like an hour he finally came back out with... toothpaste! And that wasn't supposed to be an April Fools joke! But then I found some double-sided tape that worked well to stick a coin and a 10 rupee note to the floor. Varun helped me with that one and we were planning on tricking Ravi with it, thinking that he would see the money on the floor when he got out of the shower but he just walked right past it several times! Ramesh didn't fall for it and then tried to help us but made it completely obvious by going out of his way to make Ravi walk over to the money. After that there was no one else to fall for it. I still don't know what happened to my 2 rupee coin though! That morning I had the worst chai ever! I usually don't like sugar with tea so when Ravi gave me a cup of chai with breakfast, I thought that the little white crystals on the rim of the cup was sugar and they put sugar in it as an April fools joke. But then I took a sip, thinking that a little bit of sugar wouldn't be the end of the world, but it wasn't sugar! It was salt! It tasted like ocean water with milk! I couldn't drink chai again for a while after that! Then I did a few other pranks throughout the day, like taping paper over the bottom of the computer mouse. Varun was the victim of that one and restarted the computer twice before finding the "April Fools!" note under the mouse! Then I made my own Uno cards that fit into the deck and when we were playing Uno that night, I slyly slid the "draw 20" card and the "automatic win" card into my cards and tried to use them but they wouldn't let me! On Saturday morning we boarded the taxi for the four hour drive into Amritsar in the state of Punjab. When I first got in the taxi, seat belts didn't even cross my mind. I found here that even when the seat belts are intact with the car, nobody ever wears them or even waits for you to put on yours before driving off. So when the driver made an attempt to fix the seat belts in the back seat of the car, I was a little bit shocked, but not shocked to see that they were not even in one piece. So we drove four hours, on some of the craziest roads in the world, with no seat belts. It would have seemed completely insane before I came here but now, somehow it seems normal. The car ride wasn't terrible. We stopped a couple times along the way at smoke filled rest areas with dirt floors to go up to the roof to use the non-flushing toilet surrounded by walls made of bamboo strips and the door that didn't shut completely. Once we were in Punjab, there were few traffic jams in the cities. Traffic jams are a great opportunity to buy some fresh coconut from your car window! I didn't know until we bought some that the brown skin of the coconut is edible! The car ride was nice for a while with the windows open but then once we drove a little further into Punjab, I was getting very bored and it was too hot to close the windows but the dust, dirt, and smog blew right into our faces. It wasn't too hard to get used to and ignore most of the time, but when we arrived in Amritsar, I noticed that my hair was really dry and dusty and a layer of dirt had built up on my face. Once we were checked into the hotel I was able to wash my face and use a little bit of baby powder to freshen up my hair. Then we took an auto-rickshaw to the Crystal Palace restaurant and then took another rickshaw back to the hotel. Aoife and I took the taxi for an hour to go see the Wagha Border closing at the India-Pakistan border. Varun didn't come with us though because the final world cup cricket match between India and Sri Lanka was that day and he wanted to see it. The border closing was really fun and crazy and I was thrilled that I actually got to see Pakistan from about 70 meters away! They started getting ready for the border closing by getting the audience enthusiastic. The Indian side and the Pakistni side both try to play music louder than each other and on the Indian side people from the audience get in line to run the Indian flag up to the Pakistani border and run back. Then they play really bouncy music and people get up to dance and some people sing along to it! It gets really crazy and exciting on the Indian side but then when you look over at the Pakistani side, you see the men and women sitting on separate sides, just sitting there with no enthusiasm at all. When the border closing starts, India and Pakistani border guards start their goofy-looking marches (trying to kick their legs much higher than they are really capable of) and they do yelling contests where they yell into a microphone and see who can yell the longest without running out of breath! It's kind of silly but it's definitely a lot of fun! Before Amritsar, the only people that really annoyed me were the sellers that tried to sell me everything in Delhi but walking back to the taxi from the border closing was when I really got annoyed by the boys there. There was a group of four teenage boys that followed Aoife and I all the way back to the parking lot (about at 15 minute walk), trying to get our attention and "accidentally" bumping into me and then apologizing in the midst of laughing and high-fives from their friends. Eventually we lost them and got back to the taxi, followed by more staring and waving from young men. After getting back to Amritsar, we went back to the hotel and then went to the Golden Temple to see it at night. The Golden Temple was amazing! At night, the lights on it make it look like it's glowing and it shines really brightly and the reflection of it in the pool makes the water look like a golden liquid. It was much better seeing it in person than I'd ever imagine from a picture! Pictures can't grasp the shininess of the temple like human eyes can. Photographs also can't show the complete atmosphere and mood of the area surrounding the temple. Many Sikh families travel a long way to see the temple because it is very important to them and their religion. The temple grounds at night are scattered with families sleeping on blankets on the marble floors and other people still walking clockwise around the temple and kids playing together near the water. You can hear the high priests inside the temple, reading aloud from the Granth Sahib. The entire Granth Sahib takes 48 hours to read and at the temple, they must always have a priest reading it aloud so they take shifts for reading it over the big speakers throughout the temple grounds. The temple was amazing and I didn't want to leave but we still had to get dinner somewhere and stop at an ATM. I also was temped to bring my shoes to the shoe-fixer guy on the corner of the street to get my shoe fixed because at the border closing, the back strap of my sandal snapped off on one side. But I didn't want to bother with something that wasn't extremely important. We took a rickshaw back to the hotel and on the way, we were a little confused when the rickshaw driver slowed down in the middle of the road and then stopped and turned his head too look at something outside. Then Aoife and I saw that he had stopped in front of a store window with a TV in it to watch the cricket match! We had dinner at the hotel that night. We had dinner with Varun and the taxi driver but I think that their minds were more focused on what they were missing in the cricket match! There was a TV in the bar of the hotel and a few times I saw our waiter standing by the door watching the match for a few minutes. Then he came over to our table with more beverages and apologized for being slow because he was really busy! Apparently cricket is a really big deal here! Towards the end of the night at the restaurant, Varun and the taxi driver went back inside to watch the match when there was a few minutes left. Then from our table we heard a ton of cheering coming from the bar and then people coming out of the bar and their rooms and getting on their cell phones with friends and talking about the match. Then, of course, there were fireworks! Then Aoife and I decided to go into the bar to see what the celebration on the field looked like but there was nowhere to sit and it got boring after a minute. I'm glad that they won even though I'm not a cricket fan and I don't even know the rules of the game! If India didn't win, I had a feeling that there would be a more negative mood the next day. It's more fun when the whole country is celebrating! The next morning, we went back to the temple. This time Varun came with us because there was no cricket match to watch! The Golden Temple was amazing during the day as well! It looked really bright, even against the sunny, blue sky! The temple was so crowded that day because there was a Punjabi politician visiting the city that day so many people came to Amritsar. It was too busy to go inside the temple because the line would have taken at least two or three hours. The temple grounds were crowed and we felt squished while not in the line, so I couldn't imagine being squeezed into the roped off que with hundreds of people for that many hours! I see how it would be worth it if you were Sikh and you made a long and difficult trip with your family to go see it because of it's religious importance, but for me, photographs are going to have to do for now, until I visit the temple another time! I would really like to go back to the temple sometime to spend more time there. We were a little bit rushed to leave because we got sort of pushed out by the huge crowd. There were a lot of Indian tourists there at the temple that asked to take pictures with me and Aoife. Most of the time we would stand there with the family of strangers for a quick picture but as we were leaving it was a bit of a nuisance to keep stopping for pictures. We were able to see the cooking going on in the other areas though. That was really neat to see all of those people being served the food made by the volunteers. It was awesome to go "behind the scenes" of the temple and watch all of the volunteers (including children) making hundreds of pounds of food to feed the temple visitors. There was one man standing on a platform, stirring a huge pot of food! The pot was bigger than a king sized bed! Then there was a chapati making station where people sat rolling out the dough for chapatis. I had to stand on a pile of broccoli stalks to see into the cooking area but I could have stood there and watched for hours. I loved how everyone seemed so happy to be there to work! They were mostly Sikhs that were volunteers but not all of them. There were no foreigners there but I thought that it might be fun to be a volunteer for day at the temple. I might be peeling potatoes for five hours straight but I'm sure that I'd have a very interesting experience with the other people! When you enter the temple grounds, you have to cover your head with a scarf (or turban), leave your shoes with the volunteers who put them in boxes with numbers on them, then wash your hands in the little sinks, then walk through little pools of water to clean your feet. When Aoife and I were sitting outside, waiting for Varun to come back with our shoes, we started getting surrounded by boys asking us if they could take pictures of us. We just said no but then more people came and asked for pictures or just took pictures without asking. Some boys also just stood there and tried engaging in conversation. When Varun came back, the ring of boys around us dispersed and finally, we could breathe again when we left the temple without the suffocating crowds! When we left we took a rickshaw to a dhaba for lunch and then went to the memorial park where 2,000 Innocent Indians were killed by a British man. You can walk through the park and read about the massacre and about the people that were killed there. You can walk up to a little brick structure to see the bullet holes in the bricks and then look into the well that people dove into to escape the gun fires. All over the park, you can see signs that say things like, "you are standing on blood-soaked ground" and "biking, skating, football, and playing cards are prohibited in the park". The park was nice except for when you are reading a poster about someone who died in the massacre and then all of a sudden a guy comes up to you and snaps a picture with his cell phone or when a lady assumes that you need help reading the poster and starts reading it aloud, very loudly, so that you can't concentrate on what you are trying to read! Then we got back in the car and drove back to Himachal, stopping along the way to buy some juice and getting stuck in a traffic jam, because in India, they don't hold fairs in a field or empty lot, they set them up on the street! Amritsar was great and I would have loved to stay there longer and spend more time at the temple but it was nice to get back to Himachal and see the kids in the daycare and the girls in the English class again!

Trekking in the Himalayas

I know it's been a while since I did a blog post but the Internet here is very slow and it takes such a long time. Since I'm into my last week in India I have been putting it off to spend more time enjoying it here before I leave. Last weekend I went on a two day, one night trek in the Himalayas! Aoife, Varun, and I started the trek at around 9:00 in the morning on Saturday. We had a trekking guide with us and we were hiking with a group of other people, also following the same guide. The trek was very nice! It was not too difficult and not too easy! The views along the way were incredible! There were huge cliffs that looked down on little towns and cities and there were bright, red and pink flowers on the trees everywhere! On the way up, we stopped a few times at little shacks that serve chai and sell snacks and drinks. There were a ton of bees at the little stops! But they never stung anyone. There was some snow at the top but only in patches and only a few inches deep. When we got to the top after about 4 hours of trekking, it was a little bit foggy but I could still see the huge mountains towering above us! They looked even more amazing up close than from the lower altitude in Sidwarri or even Mcleod! At the top, there are tiny shacks that are basically a combination of free standing aluminum strips, plastic tarps, and tree branches, held together with some string. On the inside, you can sit on Coca-Cola crates covered in dirty wool blankets and in the back, there is a little gas stove and counter where someone cooks food for the trekkers. There isn't much of a choice for food but I had instant noodles which tasted so bland after weeks of having spicy food. Luckily they had extra chili powder which I added by the spoonful to the instant package noodles. When it started getting dark, it got much colder and people were huddling in the shack and putting on all of their extra layers of clothes. It was really dark in the shack even though they had tiny candles and a few people (including me) had flashlights. It was really fun being at the top with people from all over the world. There were some people from France, Australia, Finland, Austria, Ireland, USA, and India, of course! It was fun talking to all of the people and learning about where they were from. For a while I thought that I was the only American there but there was a married couple from Atlanta that I met later on. I was definitely the only 16 year old though! We spent the night in a guest house that night and Aoife and I shared a room with two girls who had been traveling around India for a few months together. They were really nice and we had a good time talking with them and playing uno. Yes, we really brought the uno game with us! The guest house obviously wasn't a five star hotel like the Lalit, but it seemed as if some of the people up there were expecting it to be. Aside from the non-flushing toilet, missing window panes, and dirty bedding, it wasn't too bad, considering that you are 2,500 meters up in the mountains. I thought it was nice to stand outside the guest house and look down at the lights from the city and look up in the sky and look for constellations. When I was brushing my teeth outside, I was just looking around and enjoying the view when I noticed that I had been brushing my teeth for over six minutes! I guess I was just too distracted by the views to notice! My gums felt a bit sore after that! The next morning we packed up our things and took our backpacks back to the shack where we had pranthas and chai outside on a blanket. That morning, the fog was gone and the mountains looked even more clear and perfect than the day before! The way back down the mountain was much easier and quicker than the way up. That is usually how it is when you are hiking but it was especially nice this time because we had a different view going down. There were a lot of mules going up the mountain that morning. They were carrying things up the the shops most of the time but there were a few mules carrying foreigners that were too lazy to walk up the mountain themselves! When we got back down to Mcleod, we went out to lunch at another rooftop restaurant with Nina and Simone (the two girls and Aoife and I shared a room with in the guest house). Then we walked around Mcleod a bit longer and then took a taxi back to Sidwarri! I was really tired when we got back but we stayed up very late that night anyways! We were playing more uno of course!

English and Daycare

I've been putting off writing a blog post lately because until yesterday I didn't have much to write about. I started writing a post a couple of days ago. I started writing about the books that I've been reading to the daycare kids and how I started teaching the girls about adjectives and verbs and now we've moved on to articles but then I realized that I'm just going to bore everyone with too much technical stuff. I've been having a great time volunteering! I love the kids in the daycare! I love watching them because they are so resourceful when it comes to entertaining themselves. When I pack the daycare bag in the morning I always bring a ton of books because they love books. They've found more uses for the books than just to read them. Sometimes they stack them up and build towers with them or bounce a ball on one of the books like one of those ball and paddle toys. I also like to bring stuffed animals because the little kids like to cuddle them and the older kids like to balance them on their heads while they walk and play catch with them! I especially enjoy the English class in the afternoon! I teach a really awsome group of girls! It doesn't seem like work when I am teaching them! They love to learn and they are very quick learners but it also helps that they are so much fun to be around! I am very proud of them for the progress that they've made so far and I am glad that I now have so many great friends! It will be so hard to leave them when I go back home! Last week Anju and Pooja did a henna design on my hand. When they first started drawing it, I thought that it would be just one little vine but they went all out and made a really intricate design! It came out really nicely and you can't even tell that two different people did it! I was trying to avoid being to detailed in describing the English class but I can't help it! They have improved in their English so much already! I have been using an English book for ideas for lessons but sometimes, for example, lesson 5 will be significantly more difficult than lesson 4, and it makes it more difficult to judge which lessons will be a good fit. I gave them an English test on Friday (which they were actually looking forward to) but I think that they rushed through it too quickly! They had been firing off right answers in class but the test grades were much lower than I had been hoping for. When I was grading them I noticed that the one who finished her test first had the lowest grade and the one who finished her test lastly had the highest grade! They might have been rushing through it too much because it was too boring. I think it was a mistake on my part by making the test three pages long! Well, I've learned my lesson now and I will be sure to make the next test slightly shorter! They were all really excited when I told them that I was going to bring some English music to class so I made up a playlist on my iPod that I thought they would like but then when I played it on the little, portable speaker in class the next day, at first they seemed entertained but then I got the impression that they didn't particularly like the music in general! They really like their Hindi music and the styles are much different. I don't like Hindi music but since I have been listening to it all the time and everywhere I go, I don't mind it as much anymore. Now it sounds more like background noise, like cars going by or birds would sound when you get used to those noises. I wake up to the sound, I hear it every time I get in the car, I hear it every time I step out of the car onto the street, and I hear it on TV and from cell phones everywhere! I was going to write about trekking this weekend but I will do a separate post so that I can add more pictures!

Teaching and Learning

During the past few days, I've continued to work in the daycare and teach English to the girls. In the daycare, I have been mostly playing with the kids, helping them learn to count (one, two, three and ek, dow, teen) and keeping an extra eye out for children that might see their mothers washing clothes by the river and make a run for them. Some of the children have already started to warm up to me and I have been able to see their personalities and get to know them. One of the kids named Shubam, is really talkative and loves to learn English words. He is one of the oldest of the group and definitely the most outgoing! Rhea is extremely quiet and will never speak unless she is asked a question. She is three years old and really shy but she always wants to sit with me and hold my hand. She hardly ever speaks to the other kids but if I want to know the Hindi name for something I point to it and ask "yeh kya hai" (what is this) and she will always tell me! I am learning Hindi the most from the little kids rather than the older people. I think it is because younger kids are more persistent and will repeat the word and use hand motions until you understand. Varun really helps also though. I am always asking him what something is in Hindi! I really enjoy class with the girls! I've gotten to know them more and we have a lot of fun in class! Sometimes it's too much fun and we don't get a lot of work done! They are picking up what I am teaching really quickly and I think they will be able to speak English very well by the time I leave. It is sad to think that I will have to leave eventually, but I miss my family a lot already so I will be happy to go home and be with them again. I have been reading the girls the book, The Calico Buffalo and they love it! I also brought the stuffed buffalo toy with me and they took turns holding it and giggling at the sad, droopy eyes on it! The book helped increase their vocabulary because every time we came across a word that they didn't know, I would explain it. It helps with the whiteboard to draw pictures and diagrams. When I came here, I was thinking that I was going to miss St. Patricks Day but I definitely did not miss it! Aoife is from Ireland so we wore green and then when everyone had already gone to bed, Aoife and I were still wide awake so in the middle of the night we were learning Irish dancing from youtube in the driveway! Then I was teaching her how to do a headstand. It wasn't such a good idea, especially under the particular circumstances! Then we tried skyping some of Aoife's friends in Ireland and so we stayed up all night so that she could celebrate St. Patricks Day in the Indian time zone and in the Irish time zone! So we talked to her sister and brother in law on Skype and accidentally woke up Varun! I was so tired the next day so they let me sleep in and I was a little bit late for work in the daycare on Friday! Friday was Pooja's birthday and I gave her colored pencils and a candy and Aoife gave me a miniature perfume to put in the gift too. She was really surprised when I gave it to her and she loved it! I tried to say happy birthday in Hindi (janam din mubarak ho) but all the girls just giggled while I struggled to get the correct pronunciation! Yesterday was Holi and when I woke up in the morning I got a dot on my forehead smeared on with colored powder that sticks to your skin and then some on the rest of my face too. Then we drove to Vaun's parents house early that morning. They are really nice people and we had a lot of fun there! When we arrived, we got more powder smeared on our faces and we put some on them as well! Varun's mom is a really good cook and she let me help make breakfast! I watched her first make the paranthas and then I tried to do it but mine came out terribly! It started breaking apart when I was rolling it out and so I patched it up but then once I put it in the cooking pan, it split apart completely and crumbled! I didn't try to cook anything else after that! After breakfast, I met Varun's cousins and they put more colors on our faces and we took some pictures. Then we walked to his sister's house down the street and on the way there more people stopped us and dipped their hands in the powder and put it all over us and everyone was shouting "HAPPY HOLI"! Then a group of people with musical instruments came down the street, playing music and they were lead by the mayor of Palampur who put more colors on us! There was so much powder being used that it was like a big cloud of colors in the air! My face was so full that people started smearing the powder in my hair and for the rest of the day it looked like I had dyed pink streaks in my hair! When we got to Varun's sister's house we got more colors put on us of course and we visited there for a while and took a few group pictures on the balcony. Then we went back to Varun's parents house and watched people get smothered in bags of colored powder and buckets of dyed water dumped on them from the balconies as they walked by! It is really funny to see people on motorcycles ride by and then be taken off guard when they get a bucket of blue water dumped on them! Varun, Aoife, Varun's cousin and I were standing on the lower balcony watching and then a truck of boys drove by, throwing raw eggs at people. They threw two eggs up onto the balcony and one of them missed and the egg flew into the house and got all over the floor and some on the chairs. The other one hit the edge of the balcony and splattered on some of us so I got some of the raw egg on the bottom of my shirt but it dried up and was just a little stiff. Aoife and I were afraid of getting hit by eggs again so all of us moved up to the upper balcony of the roof of the town-house style building, right in the middle of the city. We were higher up than before but still not out of reach of people throwing eggs so every time we heard that truck coming or people shouting "anda" (egg in Hindi), we would run and duck! We had the perfect view of people getting covered in dyed water dumped from other balconies and they managed to hit every white car that came driving down the street! The white cars had big splashes of blue dye on them! It doesn't matter who it is walking down the street! They will still dump color on them! I saw one person walking with an umbrella! The only people that they won't throw color on are police officers but even the mailman gets covered! I felt so bad for him because his white uniform shirt was all tye-dyed with powder and colored water and his hair was purple! After most of the color throwing and craziness of Holi was over everyone was washing off the powder and it came off of my face and neck but the purple around my hairline wouldn't come off. So my face looked normal but my hair was still pink and my white pants were covered in purple, orange, green, and pink and my shirt had a ton of orange powder on it but you couldn't really tell because it was already coral colored. When we got back to Sidwarri, I took a shower and managed to scrub off the leftover color. In Sidwarri, they celebrate Holi later and Dharamsala is still celebrating today, so after I was all clean a group of people covered in powder, carrying flags, and playing drums came to the house and I was afraid that they were going to cover us in powder again but all they did was put the dot on our heads. Throughout the whole day, everyone we saw would shout "happy Holi"! When we were back at the house in the evening, Vineet and Neeraj were with their families for Holi and Varun, Ravi, Aoife, and I were playing badminton and the birdie went over the stone wall and so I climbed over it, not knowing that someone's backyard was on the other side! When I landed on the other side, there was a little girl standing there and I was a little bit shocked to see that I landed in their yard and I thought that she would be too but she just said "happy Holi"! So, still feeling a bit embarrassed, I just said "happy Holi", retrieved the birdie and started climbing back over the wall! Later that night we were playing uno outside and Ramesh had some of his friends at the house but he joined the game anyways. Ramesh always thinks he's going to win but he only won once! Today is Ramesh's birthday so this morning I went outside to say happy birthday and then I tried it in Hindi. I've been practicing so I think I said it correctly this time! Today Varun, Aoife, Ravi and I went to the Himachal Chidhyaga (zoo). It is a small zoo and not anything like the ones in the U.S. The animals are enclosed in rusty, wire fences with barbed wire on the top. It is in the jungle right off of the road we took to get to Palampur yesterday. It is a very small zoo but they do have lions and leopards! The lions and leopards were the most exciting animals we saw and Aoife and I were making fun of how they put chickens in the zoo even though most families have them at their house! We had fun at the zoo though and on our way back we stopped at a little fast food place and a sweet shop to try to find a cake for Ramesh' brithday party tonight. They had only one cake and it was white with a big pink flower on top. Aoife was going to ask if it was fresh but then Varun said that the guy would just say yes even if it wasn't but he asked anyways and the guy said no. So we figured that it must be really not-fresh if the guy admits that it wasn't so we didn't buy it! Then we stopped at a few more stores, looking for a birthday gift for Ramesh. We have been playing a ton of Uno at the house! They never get bored of it! We have been watching a lot of cricket too! The guys are always either watching cricket or playing Uno! Actually, right this second they're doing both! While writing this blog post, I forgot to mention, for anyone that doesn't know yet who everyone I have been talking about is! So, very vaguely, Varun is the director of Ispiice, Aoife, Ravi, Neeraj, and Vineet also work for Ispiice and Ramesh is the owner of the house who lives upstairs. I'll try to write another post tomorrow night so I hope everyone has been enjoying the blog so far!

Meeting Everyone

The next day at Ispiice, I was one of the first to wake up. I got dressed and washed my face and still had time to read in the living room before everyone was awake. I was reading Nancy Drew for a while and then started looking through some of the French fashion magazines under the coffee table. I don't know any French so it's a good thing they take good pictures! Then I picked up the Beginner' Hindi book and studied that for a little while until breakfast. For breakfast we had toast with jam, peanut butter, nutella, or marmite and corn flakes. In India they have different kinds of corn flakes with bananas and mangos. They are good but very sweet! Everything in India is either really spicy or really sweet! The chai in restaurants is really sweet and so are most Indian desserts and the green, minty, crunchy things they give you after your meal at restaurants. I'm not a big fan of the minty things. I think it tastes like something they use on your teeth at the dentist, coated in sugar. A little while after breakfast, we packed the bags of toys and drawing materials to bring to the daycare center. We only stayed long enough so that I could meet the children and get used to the daycare. The daycare is just one cement room with a porch and metal roof. It is really small and dark inside so during the warm months the children sit on the porch floor around little tables that we bring outside. When I got there, some of the children started to cry because they are not used to seeing new people and they get shy and scared. The kids are all very well behaved. They don't ever fight or throw things like I've seen in preschools before. They just sit and color like they're supposed to! The hard part is keeping track of them all. There is only one daycare teacher and lots of kids and without a way to keep them all contained in one place it is a challenge. When we leave, we have to take the toys with us because if we left them at the daycare then they would either be destroyed by the next day or taken home by one of the kids and never seen again. So after we packed up the toys, we went back to the house and had lunch and I wrote some of my blog (it took me 4 sit-downs to finally finish) and we played a million games of uno with all of the staff people (a good opportinity to learn Hindi colors)! After a few hours at the house, I left to go meet the girls that I will be teaching English to in the afternoons. We meet at Anju's house after they are done with school. Anju is one of the students. The girls are aged 10-20 years old and have different levels of knowlege in English. Anju is the oldest and speaks the most English so she helped me understand the others. The classes are held on the patio at Anju's house next to their family's little shop. Aside from English, I will also be teaching them IT skills on the tiny netbook computers that they share and like to use for playing the jawbreaker game! They were very nice wanted us to stay longer and of course, wouldn't let us leave before having chai! Then we went downtown so I could get a cell phone to use while I am here. Indian cell phones are really cheap but the only way to get minutes on your phone is to bring cash into an airtel store and give them your phone and they will give you more minutes. The phone that I got is nice and simple because I don't need anything fancy just for calling home. The phone has English and Hindi letters on the buttons but the voice notifications on the phone are all in Hindi so whenever I get one, I have to have someone translate for me! After getting the phone, we came back to the house and Aoife and I decided to go to Mcleod, the bigger city near Dharamsala and Sidwarri. It was a 40 minutes bus ride into the city and I can't say that those buses are much more comfortable than the one from Delhi! There are more buses that leave during the day so I don't know why they have to cram the bus full, past it's maximum capacity! The buses are either really old or really broken because they don't even beep when they back up. Luckily they have a man in the back of the bus with a whistle! He is also used for when they drop people off the bus. Once they are inches out of the way of getting killed by the bus, the guy blows the ear-piercing whistle and then the driver slams down the gas pedal. Once we were in Mcleod, I was a little disapointed to see that it was mostly stores and street vendors selling Tibetan crafts and souveniers. We went into one of the Buddist temple's but it wasn't much to see because it was being renovated and there was construction equipment and wood shavings everywhere. We went to the Dalai Lama temple and saw all of the mats and speakers set up like they would be if there was a big event going on. We went inside and saw all of the art and statues and people praying and then we asked someone if the Dalai Lama had been there and they said that he had just left earlier that day but that he was coming back later in the week. I'm hoping that I might have a chance to see the Dalai Lama at the temple sometime while I'm here! The temple was probably my favorite part of Mcleod. After going to the temple, Aoife and I walked around, looking for a good place to have dinner. We found a Tibetan/Indian restaurant that had a rooftop dining area with great views of the mountains and the city up in the rocks! Since being in India, I hadn't had anything that I would consider extremely spicy and I was surprised because I was preparing myself for testing my endurance with spicy food. The hotel in Delhi deffinitly toned down the spices to suit foreigners but even the restaraunts we went to seemed like they just assumed that foreigners don't like spices. So when I ordered the chana masala at the restaraunt in mcleod I asked for it to be extra spicy. It was really spicy but it was really good! There is more flavor when it is more spicy! So when Aoife saw that I could handle really spicy foods she told the Ipiice cook, Neraj (i'm not sure if I spelled his name correctly), that he could put in as much spice as he wanted to. Most of the time he make two batches of what he cooks. One has less spice for the volunteers and one has more for the staff who are used to really spicy food. We took the bus back to Dharamsala and I could write a lot about the bus stop but right now I really want to catch up on my blog posts so I won't write about it. As you could imagine, it was pretty dumpy! From there we had to hike up a lot of really steep, stone stairs that went up the side of the mountain. It was dark and you couldn't see far ahead of you so I didn't know that there was another part of the city way up there that you could get down from by driving down a little road on the other side, until we got to the top of the stairs where the taxi stand was. In Dharamsala, you don't just get in the taxi and pay the amount that it shows on the meter. We asked how much it would cost to Sidwarri and tried to negotiate a little but it was getting late and it was dark and we didn't want to be standing out there for too much longer. So we took the taxi home and by then, the guys were back from playing cricket and I was exhausted so I went to bed shortly after writing more of my blog which has been monopolizing most of my free time lately, so I hope everyone is enjoying it!

Ispiice

After the long bus ride and the short drive in the taxi to the Ispiice house, I was greeted by Aoife who showed me around the house and introduced me to the rest of the staff. They are all really nice people and they are a lot of fun! The ispiice house is nice. My room here is a good size and there is lots of storage to keep my clothes and the toys, books, and candy that I brought for the children. I think I will give it to them in small amounts at a time so that they have something new to play with everyday. There is a large full bathroom connecting me and Aoife's rooms and the bathroom as a perfect view of the snowcapped himalayas! It is strange to see the snow up on the mountains because it is so warm down here! It feels like early summer right now but it will start to get very hot soon! When I arrived, Aoife and I had breakfast and tea and then I unpacked my suitcase and then took a shower and then took a nap. Since I hadn't slept much on the bus, I ended up sleeping until 6:00 in the evening and the tradition of skipping one meal a day continued since I slept right through lunch time! That night we had dinner which was vegetables with spices and chapattis and more tea. Then Varun and Aoife set up the modem on my laptop so that I could use the internet. Then we talked about the work areas and the schedule for the next day and by that time I was tired again and I went to bed.

Last Day in Delhi

Sunday was my last day in Delhi and it has been a tradition, traveling with Uncle Kurt and Alex in Delhi so far, to skip at least one meal per day! It's not intentional. It just seems to happen that way! So while they were having breakfast downstairs, I was still up in my hotel room, listening to Hindi music while trying to cram all of my belongings back into my suitcase! I later needed some help from Uncle Kurt who is much more experienced in packing! That morning, Uncle Kurt and I went to the Krishna Mandir temple where you take off your shoes to go inside. The temple was beautiful and very clean inside and it smelled like insence. I think I learned a lot about the Hindu religion by observing the temple and the people going to pray. I was also learning about some of the Hindu gods when I went into the shop that was right outside of the temple. The store clerk was showing me some of the small statues of the Hindu gods and telling me about each one. The plastic in the shoulder bag that I had used for a couple days had started deteriorating and the smell of plastic was overpowering, so the day before, I had switched over my things to the small black, wallet/passport holder/camera case, combination bag that Uncle Kurt had gotten from going to the confrence, so on the front of it it had "HP" in white. I felt a little bit silly carrying that around while wearing my salwar kameez. I felt like it would go better with cargo shorts, a tee shirt, sneakers and white socks pulled up to my knees topped off with a baseball cap, so I swapped bags again, this time with a colorful patchwork shoulder bag with a zipper inside that I bought at the store near the temple. After walking around the park outside the temple for a while, we went back to the hotel to meet up with Alex. At the hotel we had "brunch", but it was already afternoon so I considered it to be lunch. That lunch makes the second time that I have been offered alcohol in a restaraunt! Its not a big deal but it probably would be if I were not the kind of 16 year old to make good decisions. After lunch, we were going to go back to walk around Old Delhi but since it was Sunday, all of the places were closed. It took a long time to get to the hotel where I was going to meet Vineet, the Ispiice staff person, so we didn't have much time anyways. After meeting Vineet and saying goodbye to Uncle Kurt and Alex, I watched cricket in the lobby while we waited for the taxi. I still don't understand the sport! We then took a taxi to the bus stop, which looked like an abandoned parking lot with piles of trash around and a lot of stray animals. While waiting for the bus, I met two girls who were waiting for a different bus, also going to Dharamsala. One of them was 18 and from England and the other was 24 and from Scottland. I talked to them for a while and they told me that they had been teaching English for a couple months so far in India. Our bus came first so I said goodbye to them and boarded the bus for the 11 hour trip. The bus was very old and the seat numbers were written in pen on the back of each one. The bus was also really stuffy and hot and there were little fans on the ceiling with a switch to turn them on but they didn't work. There were also little lights above each seat but those didn't work either. It seemed like nothing but the engine on the bus worked but I changed my mind when the bus broke down an hour after the first stop. The first stop was at a compound of a bathroom, a few stores, and a restaurant. Vineet and I had chai at the restaurant that I am deciding to call "Martha stewart's nightmare". It had stone floors, bamboo ceilings, and brick supports. One wall had a plasitc sheet with a beach scene on it and I am pretty sure that it was a shower curtain, but they hung it one the wall like art. The other walls had peacock tapestries and oversized posters of renaisance art and all of the glassware was missmatched but the chai was good and it didn't make me sick! I tried to sleep on the bus but it was nearly impossible when it feels like the bus is driving over jagged boulders the whole way! Every once in a while I would fall into a light sleep but then the bus would jerk or suddenly stop or bright, oncoming headlights paired with a loud honk of a car horn would startle me and then I couldn't sleep for a few minutes after that. I was almost asleep when the bus broke down while on a hill and everyone's shoes were sliding all over the bus. The bus stopped and the drivers stepped out and started inspecting the bus with flashlights then they would try to start the bus and when it didn't work, they would go back out with the flashlights and do it again. After a while, I was afraid that we were not going to get to Dharamsala but eventually they started the bus and continued the drive and I could relax again. That didn't last long because the bus broke down again and then I was getting really worried that it wouldn't make it all the way up to the mountains. After a while of them checking the bus and trying to start it again, I noticed that none of the people on the bus looked worried or anoyed at all by it and I got the impression that the breakdowns were not unusual. So by the third breakdown I wasn't worried and I just tried to enjoy the few minutes with no bumps or loud bus motor. Some of the places that we drove past looked like we were not even in India anymore. I was started to get really anoyed with myself because, no matter how much I tried to relax and sleep, I just couldnt fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. After so long on the bus, the seats feel really uncomfortable and I just wanted to stand. The bus is really crowded and the person in front of me put their seat back so far that I couldnt even touch my duffel bag next to my feel without smaking my head on the seat in front. For the second half of the bus ride, the seat was up more and I could reach my duffel where I kept my Benadryl. I took some, hoping that it would put me to sleep. Not long after taking it, I was sleeping in incriments of aproximately 10 minutes. It was better than nothing but when I got closer to Dharamsala and the sun started to rise, I wanted to look out the window and look at the view but I was too tired to take in much. I do remember seeing the bus winding around the rocky road around the mountain and the rock on one side and the big drop off on the other side. I've heard people complain about how close the busses come to the edge of the drop off but I didn't think it was too bad. I'm not afraid of heights so It didn't scare me when they swerved a little bit closer to the edge. I loved the view of the mountains from the window but I was so releived to finally get off the bus in Dharamsala!

Day 3 in Delhi

Saturday morning started off like usual with breakfast at the hotel. Alex was in a meeting and Uncle Kurt was at the gym so I took the time at breakfast to review the India guide book and look for places to go that day. We decided to go to Red Fort and Lodi Gardens and the Lakshmi Temple later in the day if we had time. I was wearing my yellow and pink salwar kameez that day and I thought that I might be blending in a little more by wearing it but I think it may have attracted more attention. While I was sitting in the lobby, waiting for Uncle Kurt, a group of Chinese men that were attending a confrence at the hotel asked me something I couldn't understand because I don't speak Chinese. With them gesturing at the camera, I figured that they wanted me to take a group photo for them with their camera, so I nodded my head. Then before I knew it, they had snapped a picture of me and I realized that they didn't want a picture of themselves. They wanted a picture of me. Not liking the attention so much, I put on my sunglasses and sat in a more isolated, hidden part of the lobby, by the restaurant. When we finally left the hotel, we drove to Red Fort and parked a few blocks away and took a bicycle rickshaw closer to Red Fort. We told the rickshaw biker that we wanted to go to Red Fort and he seemed to understand but when we got closer and stood in front of the fort he asked us if we wanted to take a picture of it so we did and then he gestured for us to get back in the rickshaw. We thought that he was going to bring us closer to the entrance so we could go inside but he must have thought that we just wanted to take a picture of the outside because he brought us back to the car! I noticed while in the rickshaw that a lot of people were staring and I looked down at my outfit to make sure that I was wearing it correctly and it looked like the way that everyone else was wearing it so I wasnt sure why they were staring. Then I noticed that many of the women and girls that were staring, were also smiling and some were waving, so I then concluded that they were just being friendly. We were able to communicate with the rickshaw biker enough to tell him that we wanted to go inside and he brought us to the entrance where we bought our tickets and got in line to go through security. When I approached the woman security gaurd, she looked through my bag and asked me what country I was from. I told her that I was from the U.S. and she said "from the U.S. and wearing traditional clothes? That is so sweet! Thank you!". I realized then that the people were happy that a foreigner was wearing tradtional Indian clothes and I was happy to be honoring their culture! Inside Red Fort, we were looking around and admiring the huge structure and the detail in the architecture and a few women came up to me and said hello and smiled. I would have loved to stay there and chat with them and try speaking the very little Hindi that I know, but Uncle Kurt was walking further towards another part of the venue and I didn't want to get seperated from him, so I just smiled back and said hello. Red Fort is really big and it is hard to imagine how huge it is unless you go there and see it! We had been looking around for a long time there and still hadn't seen the whole thing! There is so much to take in because every corner has so much detail! I noticed that I was one of the only foreigners there and deffinitly the only foreigner wearing a salwar kameez that I had seen at all since I was in India. At one point, Uncle Kurt and I were still looking around the fort and two girls came up to me and said hello and shook hands with me. They asked if they could take a picture with me so I agreed and they took the picture and Uncle Kurt took a picture of me with them on my camera. Then they asked what country I was from and how old I was. Knowing that they were just interested because they were not used to seeing foreigners made me not mind the attention from other people as much and I didn't feel so awkward, like something was wrong with me. Uncle Kurt and I wanted to see the whole fort but we also wanted time to see Lodi Gardens, so we left the fort and got back in the car and drove to the gardens where we spent most of the rest of the day! Before going to the gardens, we took a rickshaw ride back to the hotel car where our driver was. We paid the rickshaw biker but then the driver who had parked next to a expensive, tourist targeting shop told us that the shop had already paid him and he wanted us to go in the shop. We had clearly told him before that we didn't want to visit any stores but we had a problem with that before Red Fort also. He wanted us to go see the India gate and the president's house, probably because he knew of a store there that would give him a deal if he brought us there. We told him that we had already seen it and we didn't want to go there but he brought us anyways but then we told him to turn around and bring us to Red Fort. We didn't want to do any shopping and wanted to go straight to Lodi Gardens but the driver insisted that we go in the shop because they had paid for the rickshaw so to get out of an akward situation with the driver and the shop owner we agreed to go in and look around quickly, so reluctantly, we went into the store for literaly, a minute. There was obviously an agreement made with the driver and the shop owner while we were at the fort. If we had bought anything from the store, the driver would have gotten a cut from what we had purchased. You can expect that this would happen when you hire an independant driver but this one worked for the hotel and was not supposed to be affiliated with shops offering to make deals like that. When we got there, we wanted to buy some bottled water so Uncle Kurt gave me the money to buy it from the street vendor and I was able to succsesfully purchase two bottles of water, using only Hindi! I know it's not much of an acomplishment but I couldn't have done it a year ago! When we first started exploring the gardens, we were looking at the bonsai trees and were a little bit dissapointed. The trees didn't look very well taken care of and some of the plants around the stone walls were dry and sparse. I had had high hopes for the gardens so I was a little bit shocked and I thought that I might not want to see the rest of the gardens but I am glad we did! When we walked a little bit further in, it was such a relief to see all of the beautiful flowers and the perfectly kept grass! The flowers were so bright and there were a ton of them! The gardens were so peacefull and there were people relaxing and kids running around and playing in the grass and other people, peacefully walking around the gardens on the stone paths. The garden is home to two tombs and two mosques that you can go inside and admire the stuctures and the views of the garden from up on the walls. The fragrance of the garden was a very nice change from the smells of the city streets. From the garden, you could no longer here the screetching breaks or beeping horns from the road. India has squirells like the U.S. but in India the squirrels are so tiny! They are the size of chipmunks! There were a lot of squirrels and birds in Lodi Gardens! For a squirrel, Lodi gardens must be the ultimate paradise! While walking in the garden, we saw the same little girl that we had seen at the India gate and on the street near our hotel. She was wearing the same clothes, ful length boy's pants, a red sweater, and a blue baseball cap that had a string with a ball attatched to it that she would swing around by bobbing her head while doing cartwheels, walkovers, and other cirus-like performances. There was also a boy nearby the time we saw her near the hotel and at the gardens that had face paint on and was playing music with a makeshift drum. The children looked a little bit alike so I am thinking that they may have been brother and sister. In Delhi, children can get free schooling and books but sometimes poor families decide not to send their children to school because they make more money by begging or street performing. We gave the kids a few boxes of raisins, granola bars, and lolipops. When we saw her the second time, on the way back from the India gate, she had one of the lollipops we had given her in her mouth while doing her performances. It worried me a little that she might choke on it but then I started to think that if she could make money and survive on the streets alone, then she could handle not choking on a lollipop. It was really sad to think that she was out on the street trying to make money for her family when she could be in school, learning things that would help her get a job as an adult and escape poverty. If I had enough money, I would offer to cover a family's living expences if they promised to send their children to school. So many children don't even have the chance to get an education so it makes me wonder why so many people want to drop out of high school and not even finish when they have the chance to! We often think of school as a burden but in reality, it is a privelege that can make or break our futures! A couple of times at Lodi Gardens I was asked if I could be in a photo with someone and one time Uncle Kurt and I had our pictures taken with a whole family! That night, we went out to dinner at restaraunt with live music but we got there early and we still had over half an hour before our reservation. There were some stores nearby, in the same building so we looked around some of them. I was really cold because I am not used to the temperature drop at night so we went into a shop, looking to buy a shawl for warmth and we were being shown the more expensive ones of course but I told them that I wanted the cheapest one and they showed me a blue shawl for 150 rupees which is less than 4 dollars. It was nice and warm during dinner that night so I am glad that I got it! While Uncle Kurt was looking at some art to buy for his house, I was walking around and looking in the other shop windows and I was getting bored so I decided to peek into a jewelery store, forgetting that in India, it's unlikely to go look around a store and leave without someone trying to sell you everything! The store was only one small room with glass walls facing the other stores so I could see Uncle Kurt and Alex if they left the art store. There were two jewelery sellers in the store and the insisted that I sit down and look at some jewelery. The woman was wearing a western style business suit and she complimented me on my outfit and asked me how long I had been living in Delhi, so she was shocked when I told her that I had only been there for 4 days! She said that she had moved to Delhi a year and a half ago from China. They put out a bunch of bracelets on the table and I didn't feel like I wanted to buy anything. They were trying to persuade me to buy something with my birthstone in it but I was more interested in buying something for my mom and sister if I were to buy anything at all. Uncle Kurt was still looking at art and I figured that if looking at art took him as long as looking at rugs, than I would have quite a bit of time on my hands. So I asked them what they had for May birthstones. They showed me some items with emeralds but they were too expensive. Then I learned that for each birthmonth there is also a semi-precious stone in adition to the traditional, fancier stones, like rubies and garnets. So the stone for the month of May is peridot. They showed me a cute, little bracelet, with light greet peridots on an elastic string. I thought that is was pretty but the tag was marked as 750 rupees and that was 750 rupees that I hadn't been planning on spending. Then without even asking about the price, the man told me that it was 700 rupees. Still that was too much and I said that I didn't want to buy it, thinking that the price would never go any lower than 600 rupees. But then he said he would sell it for 500 rupees. I was still not convinced because I didn't have much money on me at the moment so I said, again that I did not want to buy it. They seemed to be alright with me not buying anything and they started asking me about what I was doing in India. I told them about my plans to volunteer in schools and the man said that he was very impressed and it was a nice thing to do and he offered me the bracelet again, but this time for 250 rupees. I was shocked at first and began to concider buying the bracelet. I was still a little torn because it was a good price and would look great on the wrist of my little sister but I kept thinking that I should save the money for something else until I was sure that I wanted to get a bracelet for her. I was just about to accept 250 rupees as the price and buy the bracelet and then the woman, out of the blue, said that she would sell it for 200 rupees! I couldn't pass up the great price and I bought the bracelet that came in a little gold, embroidered pouch! So I left the store with a gift for Claire and about 10 minutes to spare before Uncle Kurt was done in the art store. I had considered going into another store, but by then, I didn't have the energy to repeat the "just looking around" again! When the art barganing was done we went to the restaurant and had a lovely dinner with live music. The desert was very good also! Alex and I both got fig ice cream and Uncle Kurt got saffron ice cream. The ice cream wasn't the light and fluffy kind that I was expecting but it was more dense and frozen and was in little rectangular blocks, like it was cut off of a larger block of it. It was delicious but very filling! I was really tired by then and I acctually started to fall asleep on the way back to the hotel!

Second Day in Delhi

Today was my second day in Delhi and the start of the Catalyst confrences at the hotel. Uncle Kurt and Alex had to attend the confrences in the morning so I woke up and hung out in my room for a while and then went down to the lobby and had breakfast by myself. I had planned on staying in my room until the first confrence was done but I got bored of the room and the confrence got out really late so I went downstairs and walked around the lobby for a while. I really wanted to go outside because it was so sunny and warm but I couldn't leave the hotel so I had to settle for sitting on the purple couches by the window, facing the sun, outside the confrence rooms. Then after about an hour of sitting there practicing my Hindi from Alex's phrasebook, I got bored again and went up to the floor that my room is on and walked around and peeked out the window near the elevators and saw a big crowd of people marching down the street. The crowd of people stretched on for what looked like about a quarter mile. They were holding signs and flags and at first looked like the start of a protest. I asked one of the housekeeping people what it was and they told me that it is a parade that they hold every week. I'm not sure what the parade is for but I am going to look it up and try to find out. When the confrence was done and Uncle Kurt was free for the rest of the day, we planned out some things we wanted to do while Alex was in more confrences. We decided to go to Conaught Place which is a huge shopping center! The biggest one I have ever seen! It has three rings of arcade style buildings with shops and restaraunts. In the middle of the inside ring there is a park and the entrance to an underground shopping center.The rings are so big that you can't even see the whole thing from anywhere you stand! We mostly walked around the larger, outer ring and went into some stores and bought a few embroidered pillow covers. I liked just looking around because there is so much to see. A few stores were obviously targeted towards tourist, selling overpriced, mass-produced, souveniers but some of them were fun to look through. I liked the store "Fab India", which is a clothing store but I didn't buy anything because I had already bought clothes the day before. We had a late lunch at one of the outer ring's restaurants called "Legend of Conaught". It was very good food and they made really good cold coffee with ice cream. One thing I hate about Delhi is crossing the street! It is so scary because at crosswalks, the cars never stop! If you look both ways before crossing the street, like we're taught as kids, it won't matter because you know there will always be cars coming at you and you could wait to cross until the cars stop but they never will so you have to run arcross and dodge the cars and hope that they slow down just enough so that your feet don't get run over! When Alex was done with confrences we were going to go out to dinner, but again, none of us were hungry so we went to the movie theatre instead. The movie theatre was within Conaught Place where we had been shopping earlier. The movie theatres here are very fancy and they have metal detectors and security gaurds checking your bags and pockets at the entrance. I noticed that everywhere there is a security gaurd checking bags and pockets, if there is not a female security guard then they let girls and women go through. They will only check your bag, backpack or pockets if there is a woman security gaurd to do it. At the movie theatre there was a security check line for men and one for women. I walked in with a full water bottle that had been purchased from a street vendor and I thought that they would make me throw it away in the theatre because that is what they do in the U.S. but they let you bring in your own refreshments. The thing that they are strict about is bringing in cameras. I still had my camera from earlier that day in my bag so the security woman told me to take out the batteries while in the theatre. The doors to the individual theatre rooms were big, shiny, double doors with gold handles with fake diamonds. In the lobby, there were big sparkly chandaliers and gold colored sofas for waiting. The theatre seats were big, puffy seats that you sink into when you sit in them and they felf a little bit damp and the room smelled musty, like a damp basement. We saw a movie called "Tanu Weds Manu". It was a Hindi movie without subtitles so I was able to practice my Hindi listening skills! I could pick up on a few words or sentences here and there, enough to get a vague idea of the story line, until the middle when I started getting really sleepy and was only half awake for a small part of the movie. I was fully awake after intermission though. That is something that you never see in an American movie theatre! In Indian theatres the movies that they play are usually very long and have an intermission half-way through it and for the intermission, they turn on the house lights and people come by to take your order if you want to order sandwiches, drinks, or fast food. I noticed though that this particular theartre did not sell popcorn or candy which are American theatre classics! It is really interesting to see the differences between our countries! We took a taxi from the hotel to the movie theatre but we decided to walk back after the movie. I don't like walking around Delhi at night because the sidewalks are not well lit and there is a lot of liter on the sidewalk and it is difficult to see where you are stepping. I got my clothes delivered to the hotel tonight and I tried them on. They look great.... well, except for the sari! It took me forever just to get the blouse on because of all the tiny hook closures on the back and it is tight fitting so it is difficult to reach the hooks. Even after I got it on, I realized that I had no idea how to put on a sari! I looked up tutorial on youtube on how to put on a sari but it was very confusing and when I was done I looked very foolish! Obviously I need more practice so that I don't wander around looking like I wrapped a big sheet around my waist and then tossed it over my shoulder! I'm sure that eventually I will learn the right way to do it! I hope so anyway!

Day 1 in Delhi

My first full day in Delhi started off with my wakeup call (Bollywood music blaring from the radio) at 7:00 AM, followed by breakfast at the hotel. The hotel restaraunt has glass walls, facing the patio and it is very sunny and bright in the morning! The breakfast buffet was mostly vegetables, rice, breads, and very delicious fresh juices! The weather here is perfect! It is not too hot and not too cold! It is warm and sunny with a nice breeze that comes occasionaly when you walk outside. I am really excited to start the volunteer work in Dharamsala but I am glad that I have the opportunity to spend more time in Delhi before heading North! After breakfast, we called a driver and tour guide to pick us up from the hotel and show us around New Delhi and Old Delhi. We visited the Humayun's tomb which blew me away with the intricacy of the architecture and preservation of the beautiful structure that has been around for thousands of years! It made me wonder what kind of palace the emperor's must have lived in if their burrial place was so huge and extravagant! India has the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen! They are also the oldest I have seen! We also visited the India gate which was beautiful also! The guide was really good about explaining the historical significance of each place we visited, such as the Hindu and Muslim temples. It was really sad seeing the poverty throughout the city and the children, covered in dirt, begging for money. I know that it's not good to give them money because it encourages them to beg so instead, we have a stash of granola bars, fruit snacks, rasins and lolipops that we have been handing out to homeless people on the streets. We were outside at a spot off the street with a grassy area and benches and I spotted a couple of homeless children playing with a plastic bottle in the dirt so I walked over to them to give them each a couple lolipops and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I was surrounded by a crowd of dirty kids with tattered clothes who were touching my arms and tugging on my clothes to get my attention and to get lolipops. Luckily I had enough to go around and for each child to get at least one but it took a while after that before they finaly left me alone and went back to playing. I wondered how many of them were brothers and sisters and if they had any parents. There was one girl who looked like she may have been about 10 or 11 years old that seemed to be taking care of them all. It is heartbreaking to see kids and toddlers so young, roaming the streets by themselves. One of my favorite activities of the day was riding on a bicycle rickshaw around Old Delhi! Old Delhi is so busy and crowded and chaotic but when you are sitting on the rickshaw seat, you can just watch the chaos, smell the smells, hear the noises, see the colors and feel the breezes caused by zooming traffic the speed of the rickshaw! The buildings that are built right on the edge of the road (with no sidewalks) are old, dull and dark but the open wall facing the street lets you see the inside of the bright, colorful, and cheerful looking shops where they sell flowers, jewelery, fabrics, and an assortment of other colorful and sparkly things! Even the fruits and vegetables look brighter and bolder thatn I have ever seen! After all of our site-seeing, the guide took us to a shop where we looked at silk and wool carpets and jewellery and clothes. We didn't buy anything at that shop though. I needed to buy some clothes so we went to a clothing store to see what they had. The clothes shopping experience there was much more different than anything I have ever experienced in the U.S. I thought that I would go in the store and pick out a couple outfits that I liked and pay for them at cash register but it was not like that at all! First, when I walked into the store, a woman lead me through the store, which was a long and narrow and the walls covered in shelves from floor to ceiling, holding hundreds of bright colored clothes wrapped in clear plastic bags. There were mattresses against the shelves that the sellers sat on while unwrapping the clothes to show to customers who sat on leather sofas. The woman showed me to a vacant sofa and offered me tea and coffee while she started laying out all different kinds of fabric on the matresses. All of the ones that I didn't find appealing, she would thrown into a heap on the mattress and a man standing on the matress was working on folding them up and re-wrapping them in the plastic and putting them back on the shelves. Sometimes the woman would ask him to go get something for her and he would go down a few shelves and retreve another stack of fabrics. I saw a lot that I liked but finaly I narrowed it down to my top favorites. I bought two salwar kameez sets (one yellow and pink, the other blue and gold) and one sari (pink and gold). They took my measurments and then I got to pick the kind of neckline I wanted and they told me that they would be sewn and delivered to my hotel room the next night. Of course they didn't let me leave after those 3 purhases though! They insisted that I look at the jewellery so I did and they tried to sell me everything in the store! I didn't want to buy any jewellery though so I managed to escape the store clerks just long enough to find Uncle Kurt and Alex and make our way out of the store. We were all tired at the end of the day so we all skipped dinner and went to our rooms to sleep.

Departure and Arrival

After lunch at Durgin Park and the teary goodbyes at the Boston Logan Airport, I began my jouney by first flying into Newark, NJ where my connecting flight to Delhi was delayed. We ended up wandering around the airport for at least 4 hours until our flight to Delhi finaly departed that night. I tried to avoid sleeping too much on the way so that I could sleep when I arrived at night, but I got bored with watching movies and playing with bendaroos and I was extremely exhausted so I did sleep for a little while, but not any longer than an hour. We had dinner on the plane, which was a little tray of mushy orange stuff, mushy green stuff, and rice, with a cup of something that looked like runny, ranch dressing with clumps of ricotta cheese. Later on in the flight, they served cereal bars and miniature chickpea wraps, which were not as bad as the dinner. When they served breakfast towards the end of the flight (when it was around dinner time at our destination) they brought trays of the same mushy, orange stuff, potato pancakes, and rice with cashews. I met some very friendly women on the plane outside the galley where we had gone to stand to stretch our legs. They were very nice and we had a very nice conversation about travel in India. It had seemed like days when the plane finally landed and at that time I started to get a little bit nervous. I'm not sure what I was nervous about. Maybe I was afraid that I wouldn't like it in Delhi or something, but whatever it was, was making my hands shake a bit. I felt better when we got off the plane and the airport at that point was fairly calm and not too busy. We went through customs and got our luggage sometime between 11:30 PM and Midnight and when we went outide to get a taxi, is when I got my first impression of India! It was very busy in the car port with cars, taxi's and rickshaws appearing in front of you from nowhere and then zooming off again, and people stacking their luggage in the back of cars and piling into the seats. While I was taking in everything I was seeing, I couldn't believe that I was really in India! I had seen pictures and read about the country but it was still much different than what I had imagined. When we got in the taxi, I was slightly shocked. It was not anything like at taxi in the U.S! It was much older looking and the seats were covered in towels that were tied on to the seats with knots. Driving on the roads for the first time in India was also a bit shocking! I couldn't believe how fast they speed by eachother when they are inches away from another car or someone's feet! It was a long taxi ride because the driver didn't know where the hotel was and had to stop and ask for directions a few times. I found it funny that when he asked for directions, he would just roll down the window and shout something to the rickshaw driver beside us! I noticed upon arrival in Delhi that the city smelled different than other cities I have been too. It smelled like a celar or basement, only a little stonger. We made it to the hotel very late and I hadn't slept much at all in the past 24 hours so when I got to my room, right away, I took a shower and then went to bed. My hotel room is very nice and a good size. It has a queen size bed, an armchair and ottoman, desk, large TV, a very large, marble shower, a seperate bathtub, closet and a refrigerator and a place to make tea. So far the hotel is great and seems very safe. They have much more security at the entrance than any hotel in the U.S. that I have been to. I think I will like it here!

Packing

before leaving, it took all my will power to stop procrastinating and start packing my suitcase. I kept putting it off because there was so much to pack! I only packed a few outfits because I was planning on buying local Indian clothes but I did have to pack a winter coat and other warm clothes for treking in the Himalayas. I packed lots t-shirts, a few pairs of pants, a long, light skirt, hiking gear, and a hiking backpack in compression bags and they filled my giant suitcase about half-way. The leftover space in the suitcase was soon filled with toys, books, candy, and school supplies to give to the school children in Dharamsala. I also packed my own sheets, towels, blanket and pillow case which took up a lot of space, even in the compression bags. The packing process was made a little easier for me with the help of my little sister, Claire! Since Claire and I could both fit in my suitcase at the same time, she had asked me if she could ride in my suitcase all the way to India with me! I wish that could have been possible because I know how badly she wanted me to stay! I packed so much into one suitcase that it was over the weight limit at the airport and I had to pay the fine but it was worth it to have everything I needed in one suitcase! Now that I am an experienced luggage packer, I think that getting ready for the trip back home will be much easier!

The Start of a New Adventure

Months ago, the idea of volunteering in India was just a distant dream. Today, I am happy to tell you that it is a reality in the near future. For a couple of years, I had been volunteering in the local preschool class, reading to kids, entertaining them with crafts, and watching them learn. I believe that education is the key to success and that every child deserves a good education. Unfortunately, poverty makes this difficult in some cases. Too many children are going without a quality education and I felt the need to help. Last summer I came across Integrated Social Programs in Indian Child Education (ISPIICE). I was intrigued by the efforts of the organization not long after reading every word on their website. ISPIICE works with government schools in Himachal Pradesh, India by teaching them English as well as other school subjects. The schools are understaffed in need of fluent English speakers to help the children learn English which helps their career outlook when they are older. ISPIICE also helps in daycares that are also lacking enough staff to care for all the children that come in everyday, needing to be fed and bathed. Amazingly, ISPIICE doesn't stop there! They also run a women's empowerment group! The purpose of the group is to help women in the community learn English and IT skills and further their education, therefore improving their social status! When I get there, I will be able to choose a primary volunteer placement to work in. ISPIICE has done many great things for the people of the Dharamsala area and I am overjoyed that I will have the chance to be a part of it!
Although I will be arriving in India on March 9th, my volunteer adventure won't start until March 13th. My first 4 days in India will be spent in Delhi, the capitol of India! Coincidentally (and fortunately), my Uncle Kurt will be traveling to Delhi with a friend on a business trip. So I am taking the opportunity to do some sight seeing in Delhi with my Uncle Kurt before heading up to the mountains with ISPIICE. For the duration of my volunteer trip, I will be staying in the ISPIICE base camp. The base camp houses the staff members and volunteers, but this time it will just be me and the staff because I am the only volunteer scheduled for the weeks of March 13th-April 10th. I think that it will be a good opportunity to get to know the staff people better! They sound like a great group of people!
Many people have asked me about what I am most excited to get out of my trip. It is difficult to narrow it down to one thing because everything about the trip will be completely new to me but I believe that what I will find most rewarding about the trip is getting to know the community and people of Dharmasala. ISPIICE puts so much effort into improving the community and schools so I know that the people they are helping must be very special! I can't wait to feel like I am really making a difference in a child's education! The thought of being a teacher in a formal classroom setting is a little bit intimidating but I'm sure that it will start to feel more natural once I get the hang of it! I also am looking forward to learning about their way of life. I'm sure it is worlds different from the way I am accustomed to living in Vermont so I am very excited to be open to their culture as a great learning experience and to better understand the typical lifestyle of someone living in India.
I hope you enjoy reading my blog and keeping up with my experiences in India! Stay tuned in for my next post about preperations for my final departure!

You can read more about ISPIICE on their website (http://www.volunteeringinindia.com/).