(Matt: Grace wrote this post. In the following post we journey with Grace as she descends to the farthest depths of grouchiness before coming out the other side of the valley and into the light of acceptance and good cheer.)
You will recall from the previous post that plans had been made to go to Tirupati, a Hindu temple. We all had to wake up at 4AM to catch cabs up to Vijaywada to catch a train down to Tirupati—it would be a nine hour journey.
This trip was a bit poorly planned. It had been talked about previously but the night before we left was the first time we heard anything concrete about it. In India, you have to reserve seats on the trains ahead of time or else go standby, which is literally standing unless extra seats are available. There are two classes, second class and AC car/first class. Previous attempts to buy AC car tickets were unsuccessful and now there were only 2nd class so they bought them while they were available.
My mom was embarrassed of my clothes because I had only brought (completely modest and decent) skirts and t-shirts. She bought me two outfits of this somewhat stiff, uncomfortable fabric. It’s called Punjabi dress and it’s long baggy pants with a drawstring waist, and a long tunic to wear over it. On top of that you have to wear a neck scarf that hangs around the front of your neck and drapes in back. When I put the pants on, I realized they had no drawstring. I had to take the drawstring out of a different pair of pants. When we were about to leave for the train, I bent down to tie my shoe. Rrrrrrrrppp! The seams that held my pants together at the crotch ripped up. I surveyed the damage with my hands and determined the hole was about 6 inches in diameter and I thought, well, I’ll have to sit with my legs together, no biggie. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the hole was many times bigger than I imagined, more like a foot and a half in diameter and completely ragged. It was only my long tunic down to my knees that concealed it, and maybe sometimes not even then.
Anyway, in the car up to the train station I started feeling a bit queasy. By the time we were seated on the train I was doing okay. The second class car is just wooden benches, and it's very crowded with open windows.
I needed to go to the bathroom but no one could tell me where a bathroom was and so I had to go on the train. Afterwards I got queasy again and for the first time in India, felt like I needed to throw up. I slept for a little bit and felt better.
In India, vendors go through the cars back and forth and back and forth selling their snacks, drinks and meals. They have incredibly loud, high-pitched, nasal voices and shout, “Coffee, coffee! Chai, chai!” all up and down the car. It’s the kind of voice where your reflex is to look up towards it because it is so annoying. This makes the vendor think you want something and can be awkward.
Trains in India go an average speed of 30 mph and stop at each station along the way. At every station, even more vendors come on to the train and try to sell their food. It makes for a loud, crowded environment.
It is also very hot in the trains, despite copious fans on the ceiling, so it’s good to be by a window, so at least you have some fresh air. Unfortunately the air is very dirty from the debris on the tracks, soot, people freely urinating and defecating on and near the tracks, smoke from about a million cooking fires, trash which people throw out the windows of the train without hesitation. By the time we finally got off that train, my face and arms were visibly filthy and my hair was absolutely stiff with dirt and dust. It hadn’t felt so stiff since once when I was cutting drywall and all the dust fell into my hair. Luckily I brought facewipes and wiped my arms—it came away completely brown with dirt.
So the city we arrived at was called Tirupati but the actual temple was on top of one of the mountains surrounding the city. There is a whole tourist development up there to cater to the many pilgrims who come to see the temple. The reason it’s so famous is because it’s for a god called Venkateshwara, a monkey god, and the whole temple is made of solid gold. The image of the god is in the temple and if you shave your head and give him your hair as an offering he may grant you a wish. So that explained all the completely bald-headed people we saw everywhere at the train station.
As we mentioned before, people in India have very little (some would say no) public manners when they’re in a fairly anonymous setting. They will push and shove people out of their way. They rush to crowd onto the train cars before people are even able to get off making a crushing jam of people at each door. We were mildly surprised to find it was true of these religious pilgrims as well. In fact, we found they were especially pushy, rude and impatient.
We got off the train and took a taxi to the top of the mountain – we were a party of 6 adults and 4 children, and we all squeezed into one taxi. It was unbelievably hot, without a cloud in the sky.
When we got to the top, the taxi dropped us off at a center for pilgrims with a sort of barracks called ‘pilgrim amenities lodge,’ a few hotels and street vendors around. My uncle left us all with our bags sitting under a tree while he and his oldest son went to find us a hotel. This was supposed to be a three day trip.
While we waited, Matt had to go to the bathroom. The public toilets (squat toilets) had no running water. They collected water in a huge cistern at the entrance and you had to take a bucket of water into the stall with you with which to wash out the toilet afterwards.
We waited there for a half an hour before it started to rain. We went into a hotel lobby to get out. Actually, it was a multilevel concrete cell block that people slept in for free on concrete floors (Matt: This is a pilgrimage after all). Toilets and showers were whatever shack was nearby or the street. The place was so crowded, there were people lying on every spare bit of floor in the lobby, and we could see all the way back in the hallways.
Finding a hotel was taking longer than expected, my uncle’s oldest son reported to us. Every place was very crowded. My uncle was going to try making a booking on the internet. His son led us to some benches closer to where my uncle was looking and there we sat. We waited there under a tarp to protect us from the rain with no further information for five hours.
How did we pass the time? There was some tea found. We walked out in the rain to see some of the junk the vendors were selling. We discovered the women’s toilets were the same as the men’s. Matt and I had a strange conversation with my mom. She kept insisting all these people – the pilgrims all around us, the people in her village living in huts, the people we saw walking the city streets with filthy clothes and no shoes – were not poor, were far from poor, were just people going about their lives. She seemed pretty adamant but I think by any international standard these people would be considered very poor – if you can’t afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes and eat only one meal a day, you’re poor. But she also said that Indians have been getting “too rich” because they all have family members in the UK, US and Canada who send back money to them. One hundred dollars a month sent back to India is 4000 rupees, enough to build a new house.
(Matt: I thought Grace’s mom’s comments were really interesting and said a lot about just how far India has come in the last 10 or 15 years. They have had 8% growth since the early nineties when then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh – educated at Cambridge! – instituted a bunch of economic liberalization programs. For comparison’s sake, the USA usually has between 2 and 3% annual growth. From Grace’s mom’s memory what we’re seeing now is a vast improvement from 20 years ago. Other evidence bears this out. Most people we met live in pretty nice houses now, but they’re old family photos show them living in palm thatch huts. And I could count the number of beggars I’ve seen on two hands. I was hassled more in DC then I have been here. And reading about the children’s home where we’re staying is really enlightening. Ten years ago they didn’t have running water, regular power and they owned one scooter for transportation. Now they have a full western shower with heated water, a generator with 24 hour power, internet access and a fleet of buses to take kids to and from school. India seems poor compared to America, but I don’t think that’s a useful comparison. Compare it to itself 20 years ago and things are going nowhere but up. The future is promising for India.)
Eventually my uncle came back to us with accommodation. They were called “cottages” but they were pretty dismal. They were one-room apartments in little 2-storey complexes furnished with one bed, one lawn chair and one table. We had two such rooms between us, in different complexes. The beds were covered with a single ripped and filthy sheet. The single mattresses underneath were also soiled and filthy and damp from the windows being left open in the rain. There was a bathroom with a squat toilet but no sink. There was no running water at all. There were two buckets which had to be filled at a pump down the street and carried up to the room. We would have to take baths in the bathroom from these buckets. And there were cockroaches crawling on the floor and walls.
Everyone was angry and miserable, even my mom. She said, "That’s it, I don’t care about seeing this temple, let’s leave tomorrow morning and go back." Someone mumbled something about having to go standby. We didn’t understand until later but the tickets they had bought for the trip were not return tickets, they were one way.
It was 11 pm and no one had eaten anything since 6 am. My Uncle told matt to go with him and he took all the males to a restaurant. Matt was good enough to have a takeaway order packed for us, and brought it back so the women could eat.
Afterwards we went to sleep. Mom, my sister, Matt and I slept in one room (Matt: on two double beds put next to each other) and the other six people somehow slept in the other.
Before we split up, there was talk of going to see the temple when it was least crowded – its open 24 hours a day but it is very crowded. My aunt wanted to go wait in the line at 2 am (evidently, there is a line even at that hour). Most people didn't want to do that. Five A.M. was agreed on instead.
The next morning we woke, some people took baths (not me), we went to a hotel on the premises to eat breakfast. My uncle spent the day and the after this sleeping in their apartment. My mom, ever embarrassed of me, insisted I buy some bangles so that I would look right.
In India, for some reason, a woman (or girl) is not properly dressed unless she is wearing lots of jewelry. Women do not look “right” unless they have on at least one necklace, earrings, multiple bangles and bracelets, and if they are married, toe rings. Indians love gold. They love 22 and 24 karat gold, what in the US is known as ornamental gold. It is bright yellow/orange and Indians love it. I suppose it is a display of wealth. If you can’t afford gold bangles, you have to plastic ones, which I did.
After buying the bangles, we took a free bus they provide down to the temple site. You apparently had to go through a building in a queue to see it and at 7 am or so, people were pouring in. They did not let you take shoes or cameras or cell phones into the queue so we had to check everything. Then everyone had to go through metal detectors. Then we all got herded into this huge auditorium size room where we would have to wait. There wasn’t a single place to sit, people were crowded everywhere we tried to walk up the steps to the top of the room, but people were sitting or lying on the stairs and wouldn’t budge even if you started walking up. The auditorium was just a big room with rising wide concrete steps. There was nowhere to sit but people were perfectly willing to stretch full out wherever they were and not budge for anyone. Everywhere people were yelling and shouting, shoving people around, breaking their necks trying to push or cut ahead in line, physically forcing their children between people’s legs to secure a spot for them to sit. I cannot stand such a crowd. (Matt: It’s a good thing Grace never used the bathroom. You checked your shoes at the door after all…). Men kept trying to talk to me, and other people kept asking my mom who is that white boy. Indian people also have no problem asking you what, from a Western perspective, are the rudest questions in an interrogatory style. Eventually this started making my mom really angry because people refused to believe that Matt was part of our family, and would tell her so to her face (Matt: At this point in the trip I had not seen a single other white face since stepping off the plane in Hyderabad). Poor Matt was never aware when this was happening because he doesn’t speak Telugu. My mom can speak and understand it just fine and she was on her last nerve with this crowd too. Later she said she had to very firmly say to many people over the in Telugu, “Stop touching me! Don’t touch me again!” She couldn’t believe the complete absence of manners. In India people in public always seem to put their own desires, impulses, or convenience above others.
(Matt: I saw a book about just this topic a few weeks later. It was written by an Indian economist and it was trying to explain these strange behaviors of Indians en masse. I think the basic point was everyone would be better off if everyone practiced good manners but any individual is worse off practicing good manners when everyone else is being rude, so no one bothers to practice good manners. The only way to ‘flip’ the system would be if they could get everyone to switch at the same time, but I’m not sure how you would do that.)
Some of us were finally able to sit down except for Matt, myself and one of my cousins, the second of three boys – call him Cousin N. It seemed from this point we could expect a 5-6 hour wait as the crowd was moved from this room to the one next to it, and on and on and on, before seeing the temple. The three of us decided to take the room key and leave. Already the room behind the one we had been in had filled up. No one over the whole trip really told us what was going on or what to expect. If we had known we would have to wait in that situation for that long, we might have brought books or something like that. Bernice brought one so she was okay waiting. Matt and I bailed. I was glad to get away. The crowd was vicious and I wasn't very interested in the temple anyway. Matt was more disappointed and wished he’d known what to expect because he had really wanted to see the temple, being a religious studies scholar. But he was also glad to get away from the crowd.
(Matt: Here was my thinking. We’re going to be in line for 10 hours and we can’t bring cameras. This is a pilgrimage sight and I haven’t seen a single white face around. Maybe this is NOT something you do just to “see” it. Maybe it really is something you do as a religious pilgrim. For instance, whether you’re a Christian or not you can appreciate St. Peter’s Basilica. But what guarantees did I have that this was something like that? What if it was just a little statue of the god or something? I wasn’t Hindu so I made the call to skip the 10 hours. At the time I thought I could still see the temple, in the way you can see Westminster Abbey and think it’s really great even without going in. I even hoped maybe you could go in, just not to the part where the god is. Alas, I was mistaken.)
Matt, Cousin N and I went to buy some drinks (the first money we’d spent on ourselves since coming to India) and had a Mirinda (orange soda) and Thums Up (Coke). We were told you could see the outside of the temple but not the inside if you went up to it, so we went to take a look but you could actually only see the top, it was surrounded by a tall wall. Sure enough, what we could see was gold (the same 22 karat gold Indians love, probably why a solid gold temple is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world).
(Matt: It’s probably the most visited sight in the world because India has over 1 billion people, 82% of whom are Hindus and, unlike Rome, Mecca or Jerusalem, none of them need so much as a passport to visit this temple, which is the only one of it’s kind in India. (Grace: DUH.) There’s another temple to this god outside Aurora, Illinois, of all places).
There was a market of souvenirs all around the temple which we looked at. Cousin N, who is a really good lad, kept trying to buy us things that we didn’t want like fake gold rings and things. Wherever there is a sight like this, there are many shops selling souvenirs, trinkets, figurines of Hindu gods, and prints of painting of Hindu gods. These my mom collectively calls ‘bumooloo’ which literally means pictures, but here can mean any of the above. My sister says my mom loves bumooloo, especially pictures and painting but not of specific gods, and especially likes anything with a bobble head.
Anyway, we were looking at these bumooloo and then walking away when these two little beggar boys came up to us – one had a small little monkey on a leash sitting on his shoulder, but when we didn’t give them anything, the monkey lashed out and tried to grab my shirt! But I got away.
So we wandered around a bit more. There was a large garden area where we sat. At one point some kind of gypsy man approached us and tried to tell us our fortunes because if they do, you have to pay them some money. Luckily, we didn’t speak any language he spoke (he spoke three: Telugu, Hindi and Tamil) and Cousin N, who speaks Telugu was able to make him go away. We were all pretty tired from having woken up at 5 that morning and 4 the day before so we took the free bus back to our horrid apartment and slept for awhile. Matt had some vague idea that he wanted to go to an internet café in the afternoon and get some grad school application work done.
When we woke up we all three were very hungry. We went to the café where the men had eaten the night before and my cousin was instrumental in us being able to order lunch. We had two options – North Indian meal or South Indian meal. They give you a big plate with five small bowls each with a different curry and they put a mountain of rice in the center. Then it’s unlimited, you just keep eating and people come around refilling your rice and curries. Indians eat too much rice. It is fairly cheap and it is the staple of their diet. There are actually thanks to globalization and the improving economy relatively few starving people in India – almost everyone can afford rice and some curry for their family. To give a reference, an adult or teenaged Indian usually eats about the amount Matt and I would make to supply us both for dinner one night. But you see this is why so many Indians have diabetes. Also, I expected Indians to be painfully thin and gaunt, but only the very young, and I suppose the very very poor are – everyone else is clearly overweight. We haven’t seen anyone who is grossly overweight or obese (Matt: it’s not America), but that may be only a generation away, judging by the children, my cousins included.
(Matt: We’ve actually read in the papers about the serious diabetes problem in India. I think part of the problem is the economy has gotten better so everyone eats way way way more rice than they used to eat. Grace isn’t kidding about how much rice they eat. When they serve us they always think we hate the food because we only eat the amount of rice we're used to eating).
After lunch we went in search of internet at a tourist shopping center. This of course proved fruitless. We braved the free bus one last time, among pushy sweaty pilgrims. Indians don’t seem to have a concept of leaving people their personal space. I found myself (obviously not for the first time) longing for the British and the cushion of space everyone provides each other. It could be a fraction of an inch, but simply to avoid the sensation that someone is touching you, the British will brave any muscles spasm or cramp. Not so the Indians.
We returned once more to our apartment and put the chairs outside and sat to read our books for awhile. After a few hours of this and when it was getting quite dusky the lot who stayed at the temple came back. They all had smiles on their faces and told us about the temple, which they were able to enter. Sure enough it was gold and my sister said many of the pilgrims had no reservations at all about scraping and jabbing at the gold with pens to see if they could tear a chunk off. She said there were guards though and she now knew the Telugu word for “stop that!” All the cousins kept telling us over and over how great the temple was and told us over and over that is was solid gold like we wouldn’t believe it (Matt: I don’t believe it. I bet it’s stone with gold paneling. A solid gold building? Surely there would be a James Bond movie about some villain trying to steal it if it’s true). Mom and my aunty had bought bumooloo, real photos this time, and the cousins pointed and said, “Look, see? Real solid gold! Twenty-four karats!” I hypothesized that they were trying to prove to us that THEIR country has some fabulously extravagant and valuable sights too. Matt was sorely disappointed not to have seen it.
Several days later though my sister confessed that she had temporarily felt it was a mistake to stay in the temple queue when the 10 year old boy in front of her threw up on everyone and she had another few hours to wait. Apparently the newly wet pilgrims were pretty unhappy. She also confirmed what I had feared, that the queue was like a five hour mosh pit.
(Matt: Later we read that work is being done to address the crowding problems at this temple. Recently rejected was a plan to build a gigantic moving walkway.)
We all went to the same café again where they knew us well (the only white boy in 100 miles) and knew that we liked Mirinda (orange soda). Matt ate puri which are flat doughy rounds that have been fried in oil.
I had decided I couldn’t avoid taking a bath for another day, I would have to brave the bucket. But I insisted on buying some soap first (previous showerers had gone without). There was a kiosk on the street selling all manner of things, including a surprisingly large collection of soaps. I wanted something heavy duty – hospital grade even. I wanted to be clean, not smell nice for the 30 seconds before my sweat took over. I scanned the bars and my heart jumped at the bar of Dettol soap. Dettol is the British form of Lysol. That was the winner.
Another time we went back to the kiosk because one of the ladies of the party needed sanitary napkins. They took the package, wrapped it up in several sheets of newspaper and handed it to us in a brown paper bag like we were trying to buy booze on a Sunday in Ireland. Indians do the rudest things imaginable in public but they can’t even be straight about natural biological processes. It’s feminine and vaguely related to sex – therefore unspeakable.
Anyway, Matt brought up a full bucket of water for me. I screwed up my courage, grabbed my shampoo and industrial strength Dettol anti-bacterial soap. Halfway through my bath I noticed a cockroach on the wall behind a pipe but could not do anything about it. I kept my eye on it but it did not move. Finally … success! I had taken the worst bath of my cognizant life. And I felt better. It had rained and it was now cooler than the last few days and I felt relatively clean. The next morning I was considerably more chipper.
My uncle had gone back down the mountain to the train station the day before to buy us tickets home. They were for 5 pm and I gave up hope that they might be AC car tickets.
The night before Matt and I had gone for a short walk and this group of people seeing Matt asked if they could take a picture of him. He said no. That morning, a whole family down by the water pump asked matt to join them in a group photo. He again declined.
There was not much left to do in Tirumala so went to the Tirumala museum which was a huge pink and white building, half birthday cake, half Disney Princess Barbie Castle. It had some interesting photos and artifacts and statues of gods. It was the same sort of stuff you can see at the British Museum in London. My mom was quite indignant about that when she visited us in the UK. We were supposed to come back to the apartments at 12 because my uncle said so. We were all under the impression we need to relinquish the apartment keys by then. On returning that proved not to be true. My mom said we would go wait in our room and one of the cousins could come get us when it was time to go. The train was at 5 and it took half an hour to get there. For some reason they came at 2 and we relinquished the keys to our apartment. On going to my uncle’s apartment there was some confusion. Were we leaving now? Later? After lunch? It was three hours until the train, why had we left our apartment, it was at least a place to sit in the shade. These questions went unanswered.
During all the confusion about whether or not we were going yet, Matt, my sister and I wandered over to this landscaped garden to get a view down the mountain. We took some pictures and it was a pleasant temporary distraction.
We left. On the way down the mountain… Matt was thinking about the nature of arranged marriage in economic terms.
(Matt: Future research paper?)
At the base of the mountain, it was much hotter than up in it. We were still several hours early for the train and had not eaten lunch so we went to a restaurant near the train station and had chapathis and curry. (Matt: I got sick the next day and I wonder if it was because of these chapathis). Then we went to the station which was packed with people. The station office floor was covered with people spread out asleep. There was an old toothless man selling a sweet called luddu. They had given away luddu that had been “blessed” at the temple but no one had gotten any. My mother cannot let these things go, so she bought four or five bags of luddu from this man, even though it was the train station and they weren’t even blessed. Luddu are sort of crumbly balls of sweet dough.
At the train station we found a spare bench and sat. Beggars kept coming up to Matt and he obliged by giving them all the rupees he had. Another guy came up and chatted with Matt in English for a long time. Then he started asking Matt if he had any foreign currency, pounds and dollars, because he collects them and could he have them, but we actually didn’t have any on us. A five pound note is 400 rupees (unlimited lunch costs 50 rupees).
(Matt: On this train station I saw the first white face in Andhra Pradesh. The guy was a scraggly bearded, gaunt hippie type. He nodded at me, but looked a little too intense for a casual conversation).
Finally the train came. It was a sleeper train because it was going all the way to Mumbai, a long way. We were only going to Vijaywada. Hereafter followed what we refer to as the seating fiasco. Because the tickets were booked so late, our ten seats were spread over three cars and not a single one was next to another. Instead of going to our proper seats though, we just sat together in one place and as people came to claim ther reserved seats, moved into other that seemed empty. This basically resulted in everyone in our party being yelled at, at one time or another, for being in the wrong seat. Our own seats were lost to standby passengers who would not move. The little boys were left with nowhere to sit at all. At one point Matt and I were scrunched up into a single bunk, trying to get comfortable enough to read our books but it was not possible. Luckily, we were only on that train for 6 hours.
Tune in tomorrow for Matt’s exciting account of the train ride and possible causes of his mysterious illness the next day!
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Halfway Point
Well, we're four weeks into our time in India. Halfway. From now on we count down till we leave, not up from how long we've been here. In the time we've been here we've seen the start of the rainy season and we've moved on from touring around Andhra Pradesh with Grace's family to teaching English (we've been here for two weeks now!).
Sorry we're so far behind real time. Grace has just written a massive spiel about our trip to Tirupathi and with luck we'll post that tonight or tomorrow. Anyway a short post now about food.
We're sick of Indian food. No more rice please! Grace has made a great list of food to eat when we return to the west and Iowa City in particular. Here is that list:
1) Triple Berry Orange Julius Smoothie (Iowa City)
2) Pagliai's Pizza (Iowa City)
3) Hamburg Inn (Iowa City)
4) Whitey's Rasberry Yogurt (Iowa City)
5) Panera Cinnamon Crunch Bagel
6) Battle's Barbeque Pork Sandwhich, Texas Toast and Lemonade (Ames)
7) Real Coca-Cola
8) Dippin' Dots
9) Renee's (Matt's mom) Taco Dinner
10) Real Birthday Cake
11) Wine
12) 126 (Iowa City)
13) Italian Cream Soda from the Java House (Iowa City)
14) Java House Cinnamon Roll (Iowa City)
15) Rasberry Sorbet and Vanilla Ice Cream
16) Sushi Popo (Iowa City)
17) Extremely Buttery Mashed Potatoes
18) Cheese (Any Type)
19) Panang Chicken Curry, preferably from Thai Kitchens (Ames)
20) Cold Stone Creamery (Iowa City)
Makes my stomach rumble!
Sorry we're so far behind real time. Grace has just written a massive spiel about our trip to Tirupathi and with luck we'll post that tonight or tomorrow. Anyway a short post now about food.
We're sick of Indian food. No more rice please! Grace has made a great list of food to eat when we return to the west and Iowa City in particular. Here is that list:
1) Triple Berry Orange Julius Smoothie (Iowa City)
2) Pagliai's Pizza (Iowa City)
3) Hamburg Inn (Iowa City)
4) Whitey's Rasberry Yogurt (Iowa City)
5) Panera Cinnamon Crunch Bagel
6) Battle's Barbeque Pork Sandwhich, Texas Toast and Lemonade (Ames)
7) Real Coca-Cola
8) Dippin' Dots
9) Renee's (Matt's mom) Taco Dinner
10) Real Birthday Cake
11) Wine
12) 126 (Iowa City)
13) Italian Cream Soda from the Java House (Iowa City)
14) Java House Cinnamon Roll (Iowa City)
15) Rasberry Sorbet and Vanilla Ice Cream
16) Sushi Popo (Iowa City)
17) Extremely Buttery Mashed Potatoes
18) Cheese (Any Type)
19) Panang Chicken Curry, preferably from Thai Kitchens (Ames)
20) Cold Stone Creamery (Iowa City)
Makes my stomach rumble!
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Deeper into India
So, again a long delay followed by a longer post than you would probably care to read. This time the reason we didn’t write sooner is because we were sick for a week (we’re better now despite our fears that we had malaria or some horrible worm) and then we got my test scores for Cambridge and I didn’t make the grade! I fell short by less than 1 point, 64.1 when I needed 65. Anyway, that bummed us out for another day but we’ve bounced back. The score is good enough to get into plenty of schools and we had been thinking of taking a year off to apply for American schools anyway. Now the decision is made for us. Anyone know any good jobs for the interim year, by the way? In other news, Grace had better luck with schools and got accepted into a master’s program in Human Rights at University College London. So we don’t quite know what we’re doing next year.
Without further ado, here’s the continuing story of our trip to India. This was written by Grace over the last week and its being simultaneously typed and edited for excessive cynicism by Matt (with Grace’s permission). Also, sometimes I insert comments (Matt: Like this).
We got up early for Chruch and took an auto to the hotel in the town where we had stayed the first night. My father’s relatives were also staying there when they came for the wedding. They actually live in Visakhapatnam, the city where I was born. It’s on the east coast, a little less than halfway up the subcontinent. The Church we needed to go to was in Vijaywada, a city about an hour’s drive away. We had breakfast and tea together at the hotel and then got into cars and drove to the Church. We got there really late and the service was almost over. We were still exhausted and it was all in Telagu. It was the Church where my parents were married and the pastor was close friends with my father. He brought us up in front of the whole congregation and they all prayed for us. They thought it was a miracle we had come back to this Church. (Matt: The Church was a single story building with a wooden roof and no ornamentation on the outside. Outside there were pews, maybe 10 feet long on each side but inside people sat on the floor. Streamers hung from the ceiling. There was also a tent with plastic chairs out front and that’s where the spillover, us included, sat).
We had lunch with the Pastor and mom talked about what things are like in the States. A not bad rule of thumb when you’re chatting with an Indian person is to remember that Indian people…. have a more fluid relationship with the truth than Westerners. This ranges from relatively innocent, “Yes, we go to Church EVERY Sunday,” to gross exaggeration, “It costs $300,000 to go to Medical School,” to outright lies, “There are no factories in America, machines do everything.” It can also take the form of saying one thing then pretending the next day you’ve never said it. I’ve dealt with these kinds of thing my whole life – I did not know until I came to India that ALL Indians do it.
Speaking also of factories, we knew that education is hugely important in India and is the key to making them no longer a developing state so we saw tons of schools advertised everywhere. Some schools were obviously preppy and begging to be loaded with the children of India’s newly arisen yuppie class – one was called the “Little Genius Talent School.” Some schools are clearly more practical and down to earth. In Vijaywada we saw the Krishna Veterinary School and Bacon Factory.
(Matt: A quick note about education: in India discipline and hard work seem to be core values. It’s different in the States. I think in the States many people dream of the “easy” route to success: becoming a famous actor, musician or sports hero. To be sure, success in those fields must require tons of hard work but I think plenty of people dream of a lucky break.
I don’t see any such dreams here. No one wants to move to Mumbai and bus tables till they are “discovered” and become a Bollywood star. Everyone wants to be either a) a doctor or b) an Engineer (preferably in software of computers). Nobody imagines for an instat they will find success without hard work, or, if they do they don’t tell us. In India exceptional hard work and discipline are the norm. If you saw kids as disciplined in the States, kids who seem confused by the concept of “free time,” and when pressed, say they study when they have no other obligations, you would call them exceptional. Here you would call them ordinary, or, more charitably, “good kids.”)
After lunch we stayed in Vijaywada to visit someone – I still don’t understand how they are related to us. But they lived on a hill with a view of the mountains and gave us to drink lots of a cola called “Thums Up.” We had noticed coke was rare and Thums Up seemed to be the cola of choice. In our guidebook we read that a lot of Indians were mad at Coca-Cola because they found pesticides in some and Coca-Cola insisted it was still safe. Also apparently Coca-Cola takes too much water from a water-scarce area, and then also pollutes the remaining water supply. Oops. So it made sense that Coke would fall out of favor in India. But then we learned that Coke had done what any smart and ruthless multinational corporation would do: they bottled the same drink but gave it the new name and label -Thums Up.
Afterwards we were going to visit some more relative outside Vijaywada and spent two hours driving on dirty, busy roads to a tiny village called Nuzvid. By then is was so late in the day that the visit was turned into an impromptu overnight. This kind of thing is no sweat in India – Bernice and Yesu had earlier spontaneously extended a short visit with relatives by three or four days. But Matt and I had been in old clothes, without showers or even toothebrushes for nearly two days and we were fairly grumpy (Matt: especially Grace) about the whole thing. The relatives insisted that we shower before eating dinner and they gave us new clothes to change into. The bathroom was find by Indian standards but by my standards pretty bad. There was no shampoo, only a bar of soap. Have you ever tried to wash you dirty, greasy, sweaty hair with a bar of soap? Don’t! It doesn’t work. By then I was very, very grumpy and hating the world. But the relatives were very nice and I began to realize I would have to accept the things I could not change, as the prayer goes. This is India, and this is the way things. Then we watched Scary Movie 4 on HBO.
(Matt: India will surprise you like that. People will shower by filling a bucket with water and then pouring it over their head, but they will also have a brand new TV with HBO and three other movie channels. They might lose power six random times a day and be forced to cook over an open fire, but they also probably have a better cell phone than you.)
(Matt: Also there was a torrential rain that night which made passing the time easy. There was an overhang of roof we sat under and watched the trees blow and the lightning streak across the sky.)
The next morning we were supposed to leave at 10. Of course we didn’t even start moving until 12. (Matt: We later learned Indian time is a lot more flexible than Western time: 4 o’clock means, 4:30-4:40). Indian people have this crazy habit of drawing things out to absurd lengths supposedly in order to increase the ease and comfort of their companions. They will argue for 20 minutes about who should sit down and eat first, who should sit in this chair, whether or not to cut up a mango. (Matt: Here’s an example –
Person A: Please sit down.
Person B: No no no you sit down, please
Person A: No thank you, please be seated
Person B: No I’m fine standing. You need to sit, please have a seat.
Person A: No standing doesn’t bother me. Please, sit down. Sit here.
(someone, probably one of A or B’s children, brings in a second chair. They both sit down. Person C walks in. They both stand up.)
Person C: No, please, keep sitting.
Person A: Sit here, sit here.
Person B: Take rest, sit here...)
It can be infuriating but by then I had decided to stop translating it all to matt and just be an Indian child – seen but not hear, eat when told, scamper off and play while the adults chat.
Finally we left Nuzvid and drove two and a half hours back to my Uncle’s house. When we got there, there was a visitor and a friend of my uncles’; they said she was the family gynecologist (bit weird, eh?). She had been working 17 years in that area and she had her own practice now where she was the OB-GYN and her husband was her anaestheologist. She said she was performing a hysterectomy in the morning but we should come visit her and stay at her house whenever we wanted.
In the afternoon the boy cousins wanted to play cricket. So I said I’d join them. They were thoroughly shocked and incredulous. I bowled first and bowled Matt out three times in one over. For those unfamiliar with the rules of Cricket, that’s really good. For a while my Uncles played too and I think they enjoyed it even more than the kids.
While we were playing cricket, a random guy walked up and asked my Uncle something and my Uncle said to Matt, “He wants a picture of you.” Matt said okay and the guy literally came up with his camera phone, put it up to Matt’s face and took his photo. That’s all he wanted. Later Matt decided this was too creepy and declined to take pictures with people who requested or allow people to take pictures of him. Not for lack of interest either, he got many requests wherever we went. Andhra Pradesh is simply not a place Western tourists come. It’s too poor and there’s nothing to see.
Later that afternoon we were sitting on the upstairs balcony when Uncle K approached us and said he would like to tell us some things. For the next two hours he spoke at us about: the proper roles of husband and wife; how to manage your factory workers; the truth of the nihilistic worldview. Hmmmmmmmmm. Afterwards Uncle K and his friend dropped us off at the hotel.
The next morning we were supposed to be ready at 9:30 to take photos with everyone but the photo shoot never materialized. Most of the adults spent the day in Vijaywada and the kids stayed at the house and watched Evil Dead on DVD. These kids love horror movies. Eventually the electricity went out and the remaining adults said Matt and I should go back to our disgusting hotel since it was air conditioned. So we went in an auto and Bernice wanted to come with us. When we got there the AC was broken anyway.
We watched movies on HBO. Bernice took a shower once the AC came back on because she said it wasn’t worth taking a shower earlier just to come out into no AC and start sweating before you’re even dry. Later in the day Matt was in the same bathroom where he saw a horrible sight. A bunch of ants were carrying a dead gecko off towards their house in a hole in the wall. Bernice took a look and said it was disgusting; Matt said it looked like the gecko we saw the night before crawling on our wall. Still, Bernice was glad to have a shower with my shampoo because she said she hadn’t had ay shampoo to use in awhile. When the electricity went out, it got very hot without the AC. But soon a massive rain and thunderstorm rolled in, and it cooled things down a bit. We were picked up and taken back to the house at around 7. We sat on the roof of the house in the dark with the kids and enjoyed a slight breeze. Before dinner, Uncle K told matt to bring his hotel keys and come with him, it would only take 10 minutes. Almost two hours later they came back and Matt told me they had gone to one my Uncle’s friend’s house and had dinner.
Later we got a ride back to the hotel and caught some parts of Underclassman starring Nick Cannon on HBO.
The next morning we vacated the hotel to move back into the house permanently. Two of my Uncles were leaving so there would be more room. The day was spent lazing about, trying to keep cool when the AC went out. Then my Uncle K, who was remaining came back from taking my other Uncles to Vijaywada and announced we were going to Tirupathi in the morning (as in, 4 AM). Tirupathi is a Hindu pilgrimage sight and it gets more visitors per year than Rome, Mecca or Jerusalem. Now we were going too. We packed that night. It was a three day trip to Matt and I packed for five days.
Without further ado, here’s the continuing story of our trip to India. This was written by Grace over the last week and its being simultaneously typed and edited for excessive cynicism by Matt (with Grace’s permission). Also, sometimes I insert comments (Matt: Like this).
We got up early for Chruch and took an auto to the hotel in the town where we had stayed the first night. My father’s relatives were also staying there when they came for the wedding. They actually live in Visakhapatnam, the city where I was born. It’s on the east coast, a little less than halfway up the subcontinent. The Church we needed to go to was in Vijaywada, a city about an hour’s drive away. We had breakfast and tea together at the hotel and then got into cars and drove to the Church. We got there really late and the service was almost over. We were still exhausted and it was all in Telagu. It was the Church where my parents were married and the pastor was close friends with my father. He brought us up in front of the whole congregation and they all prayed for us. They thought it was a miracle we had come back to this Church. (Matt: The Church was a single story building with a wooden roof and no ornamentation on the outside. Outside there were pews, maybe 10 feet long on each side but inside people sat on the floor. Streamers hung from the ceiling. There was also a tent with plastic chairs out front and that’s where the spillover, us included, sat).
We had lunch with the Pastor and mom talked about what things are like in the States. A not bad rule of thumb when you’re chatting with an Indian person is to remember that Indian people…. have a more fluid relationship with the truth than Westerners. This ranges from relatively innocent, “Yes, we go to Church EVERY Sunday,” to gross exaggeration, “It costs $300,000 to go to Medical School,” to outright lies, “There are no factories in America, machines do everything.” It can also take the form of saying one thing then pretending the next day you’ve never said it. I’ve dealt with these kinds of thing my whole life – I did not know until I came to India that ALL Indians do it.
Speaking also of factories, we knew that education is hugely important in India and is the key to making them no longer a developing state so we saw tons of schools advertised everywhere. Some schools were obviously preppy and begging to be loaded with the children of India’s newly arisen yuppie class – one was called the “Little Genius Talent School.” Some schools are clearly more practical and down to earth. In Vijaywada we saw the Krishna Veterinary School and Bacon Factory.
(Matt: A quick note about education: in India discipline and hard work seem to be core values. It’s different in the States. I think in the States many people dream of the “easy” route to success: becoming a famous actor, musician or sports hero. To be sure, success in those fields must require tons of hard work but I think plenty of people dream of a lucky break.
I don’t see any such dreams here. No one wants to move to Mumbai and bus tables till they are “discovered” and become a Bollywood star. Everyone wants to be either a) a doctor or b) an Engineer (preferably in software of computers). Nobody imagines for an instat they will find success without hard work, or, if they do they don’t tell us. In India exceptional hard work and discipline are the norm. If you saw kids as disciplined in the States, kids who seem confused by the concept of “free time,” and when pressed, say they study when they have no other obligations, you would call them exceptional. Here you would call them ordinary, or, more charitably, “good kids.”)
After lunch we stayed in Vijaywada to visit someone – I still don’t understand how they are related to us. But they lived on a hill with a view of the mountains and gave us to drink lots of a cola called “Thums Up.” We had noticed coke was rare and Thums Up seemed to be the cola of choice. In our guidebook we read that a lot of Indians were mad at Coca-Cola because they found pesticides in some and Coca-Cola insisted it was still safe. Also apparently Coca-Cola takes too much water from a water-scarce area, and then also pollutes the remaining water supply. Oops. So it made sense that Coke would fall out of favor in India. But then we learned that Coke had done what any smart and ruthless multinational corporation would do: they bottled the same drink but gave it the new name and label -Thums Up.
Afterwards we were going to visit some more relative outside Vijaywada and spent two hours driving on dirty, busy roads to a tiny village called Nuzvid. By then is was so late in the day that the visit was turned into an impromptu overnight. This kind of thing is no sweat in India – Bernice and Yesu had earlier spontaneously extended a short visit with relatives by three or four days. But Matt and I had been in old clothes, without showers or even toothebrushes for nearly two days and we were fairly grumpy (Matt: especially Grace) about the whole thing. The relatives insisted that we shower before eating dinner and they gave us new clothes to change into. The bathroom was find by Indian standards but by my standards pretty bad. There was no shampoo, only a bar of soap. Have you ever tried to wash you dirty, greasy, sweaty hair with a bar of soap? Don’t! It doesn’t work. By then I was very, very grumpy and hating the world. But the relatives were very nice and I began to realize I would have to accept the things I could not change, as the prayer goes. This is India, and this is the way things. Then we watched Scary Movie 4 on HBO.
(Matt: India will surprise you like that. People will shower by filling a bucket with water and then pouring it over their head, but they will also have a brand new TV with HBO and three other movie channels. They might lose power six random times a day and be forced to cook over an open fire, but they also probably have a better cell phone than you.)
(Matt: Also there was a torrential rain that night which made passing the time easy. There was an overhang of roof we sat under and watched the trees blow and the lightning streak across the sky.)
The next morning we were supposed to leave at 10. Of course we didn’t even start moving until 12. (Matt: We later learned Indian time is a lot more flexible than Western time: 4 o’clock means, 4:30-4:40). Indian people have this crazy habit of drawing things out to absurd lengths supposedly in order to increase the ease and comfort of their companions. They will argue for 20 minutes about who should sit down and eat first, who should sit in this chair, whether or not to cut up a mango. (Matt: Here’s an example –
Person A: Please sit down.
Person B: No no no you sit down, please
Person A: No thank you, please be seated
Person B: No I’m fine standing. You need to sit, please have a seat.
Person A: No standing doesn’t bother me. Please, sit down. Sit here.
(someone, probably one of A or B’s children, brings in a second chair. They both sit down. Person C walks in. They both stand up.)
Person C: No, please, keep sitting.
Person A: Sit here, sit here.
Person B: Take rest, sit here...)
It can be infuriating but by then I had decided to stop translating it all to matt and just be an Indian child – seen but not hear, eat when told, scamper off and play while the adults chat.
Finally we left Nuzvid and drove two and a half hours back to my Uncle’s house. When we got there, there was a visitor and a friend of my uncles’; they said she was the family gynecologist (bit weird, eh?). She had been working 17 years in that area and she had her own practice now where she was the OB-GYN and her husband was her anaestheologist. She said she was performing a hysterectomy in the morning but we should come visit her and stay at her house whenever we wanted.
In the afternoon the boy cousins wanted to play cricket. So I said I’d join them. They were thoroughly shocked and incredulous. I bowled first and bowled Matt out three times in one over. For those unfamiliar with the rules of Cricket, that’s really good. For a while my Uncles played too and I think they enjoyed it even more than the kids.
While we were playing cricket, a random guy walked up and asked my Uncle something and my Uncle said to Matt, “He wants a picture of you.” Matt said okay and the guy literally came up with his camera phone, put it up to Matt’s face and took his photo. That’s all he wanted. Later Matt decided this was too creepy and declined to take pictures with people who requested or allow people to take pictures of him. Not for lack of interest either, he got many requests wherever we went. Andhra Pradesh is simply not a place Western tourists come. It’s too poor and there’s nothing to see.
Later that afternoon we were sitting on the upstairs balcony when Uncle K approached us and said he would like to tell us some things. For the next two hours he spoke at us about: the proper roles of husband and wife; how to manage your factory workers; the truth of the nihilistic worldview. Hmmmmmmmmm. Afterwards Uncle K and his friend dropped us off at the hotel.
The next morning we were supposed to be ready at 9:30 to take photos with everyone but the photo shoot never materialized. Most of the adults spent the day in Vijaywada and the kids stayed at the house and watched Evil Dead on DVD. These kids love horror movies. Eventually the electricity went out and the remaining adults said Matt and I should go back to our disgusting hotel since it was air conditioned. So we went in an auto and Bernice wanted to come with us. When we got there the AC was broken anyway.
We watched movies on HBO. Bernice took a shower once the AC came back on because she said it wasn’t worth taking a shower earlier just to come out into no AC and start sweating before you’re even dry. Later in the day Matt was in the same bathroom where he saw a horrible sight. A bunch of ants were carrying a dead gecko off towards their house in a hole in the wall. Bernice took a look and said it was disgusting; Matt said it looked like the gecko we saw the night before crawling on our wall. Still, Bernice was glad to have a shower with my shampoo because she said she hadn’t had ay shampoo to use in awhile. When the electricity went out, it got very hot without the AC. But soon a massive rain and thunderstorm rolled in, and it cooled things down a bit. We were picked up and taken back to the house at around 7. We sat on the roof of the house in the dark with the kids and enjoyed a slight breeze. Before dinner, Uncle K told matt to bring his hotel keys and come with him, it would only take 10 minutes. Almost two hours later they came back and Matt told me they had gone to one my Uncle’s friend’s house and had dinner.
Later we got a ride back to the hotel and caught some parts of Underclassman starring Nick Cannon on HBO.
The next morning we vacated the hotel to move back into the house permanently. Two of my Uncles were leaving so there would be more room. The day was spent lazing about, trying to keep cool when the AC went out. Then my Uncle K, who was remaining came back from taking my other Uncles to Vijaywada and announced we were going to Tirupathi in the morning (as in, 4 AM). Tirupathi is a Hindu pilgrimage sight and it gets more visitors per year than Rome, Mecca or Jerusalem. Now we were going too. We packed that night. It was a three day trip to Matt and I packed for five days.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Open Call for Advice!
Sorry to interrupt the flow of our Blog but we need to jump forward a week or two to right now and see if anyone has any advice for us. We're currently volunteering in a school in India and we've been asked to give a presentation on western teaching techniques for 3-7 year olds in a week. They seem to believe we're qualified for this.
The problem is this: the current teaching technique is really heavily dependent on the blackboard and rote memorization which means the kids pass the exams and know a lot of information but are not so good at being creative, imaginative or active problem solvers. They are looking for ways to remedy this from a young age. Specifically they're interested in activities and methods of presentation which get the kids involved and actively interested and which also break up the monotony of just using the blackboard. They are also interested in how to decorate classrooms so they are conducive to learning.
The school has just opened (last week) and it teaches entirely in English. Because of a generous donation the school has a nice set of resources - TV's, computers, photocopiers, etc. - but the staff isn't sure how to incorporate these resources.
If you know something about teaching or caring for young kids or any of this, please send us an email or make some comments below! The more input the better!
The problem is this: the current teaching technique is really heavily dependent on the blackboard and rote memorization which means the kids pass the exams and know a lot of information but are not so good at being creative, imaginative or active problem solvers. They are looking for ways to remedy this from a young age. Specifically they're interested in activities and methods of presentation which get the kids involved and actively interested and which also break up the monotony of just using the blackboard. They are also interested in how to decorate classrooms so they are conducive to learning.
The school has just opened (last week) and it teaches entirely in English. Because of a generous donation the school has a nice set of resources - TV's, computers, photocopiers, etc. - but the staff isn't sure how to incorporate these resources.
If you know something about teaching or caring for young kids or any of this, please send us an email or make some comments below! The more input the better!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Great Indian Wedding Day
A long post about the famous wedding! Also, cheers to Gary, Gar and Kirst for the notebook from whence all these thoughts issue.
My Uncle K said he’d come by at 9:30-10:00 the morning of the wedding to pick us up and take us to the house for the wedding. But at 9:30 we were still asleep in bed, exhausted from our travels, so he said to freshen up and get dressed and he’d come back.
An hour and a half later, we were dressed and ready. It was already blazing hot outside. We drove back to the house and this time got a better picture of the village in day light. We found that the town where the hotel was gives my mother’s family its surname. But she actually grew up in a village outside that town and it was truly a village. It was mostly low huts with palm leaf roofs but in the daylight we saw there was also a lot of construction and a lot of concrete and brick houses too. My uncle’s house in the village is just a summer house built on spare family land. No one lives there most of the time because Uncle K lives in Nagpor and Uncle S lives in Hyderabad. The house is brick and stucco, painted pale pink. The stairs are painted red and the banister is pale blue.
When we drove up, there was a large crowd gathered under a palm leaf canopy on the driveway. We walked up to many stares. The people in the village had been told my mom (their old neighbor who went to the US) was coming to visit with her children so we were considered the guests of honor.
My mom saw me and immediately pounced on me and made me put on an Indian dress instead of my skirt and t-shirt. I agreed mainly because I didn’t want to offend anybody so early in the visit.
We came outside again and they were giving my Uncle S the “holy bath”. the groom sits with a nephew or younger relative (don’t know why) with no shirt and people come one by one and sprinkle over his head three times a mixture of rice and turmeric powder which turns his scalp all yellow. Then they tell him their good wishes for his future. The crowd of people all sing and chant a loud song while this is going on. Matt and I put the rice on his head together, but awkwardly. Also then close family members will rub his chest, back and face with a turmeric paste which makes him all yellow. Then he needs to wash it all off and put on a new set of clothes. It’s a sort of rite of passage during marriage.
There were all sorts of wedding preparations going on. Adjacent to the house is a big field which must also belong to my uncle. Under one big tent there were about thirty people cooking and preparing a huge meal. My uncle said when there is a wedding in a village like this, the entire village is invited and he expected 750 people to come. They put two giant banners on either side of town to announce the wedding and invite everyone. On the other half of the field they were setting up chairs and a raised platform where the ceremony would take place. They decorated the whole platform with banners, and streamers and coated everything with bunches of fresh flowers.
There had been a lot of debate during the planning stages as to the cost of this wedding and it quickly became clear that they must have spent quite a lot to prepare all this.
All day there was a steady stream of new people to meet. One thing that made it difficult is that we were always introduced to others (as my mom’s daughter and son-in-law) but they were never introduced to us so we frequently didn’t know who we had just met and had to piece it together later. It also didn’t help that hardly anyone spoke English. Uncle K and his sons did pretty well and Uncle R and his wife who live in Bournemouth and their kids, plus Uncle S and my immediate family. With everyone else we either spoke through translators or else I listened to the Telagu (the language of Andhra Pradesh—this state in India) and translated into English for Matt who laughed or nodded as appropriate. I understand Telagu but can’t speak it.
Sometime around 1PM my brother and sister joined us at the house. They had stayed a few days with my father’s relatives and came back in time for the wedding. They seemed much more well-adjusted to the conditions and the climate. I didn’t know how they could be so calm and accepting of the state of things around them. At the time I think I was still in shock over the state of things. It’s just a whole different standard for cleanliness here. We’re not in danger of disease or anything serious, just a lot of personal discomfort. Since we first got here though I have been doing better.
Just before the start of the wedding, my mom gave Matt a traditional Indian men’s outfit to wear. It’s just a pair of thin cotton pants and a long thin tunic shirt. It’s supposed to be very cool and comfortable. Matt had brought a suit and was happy to try something cooler and to fit in better. I had brought a very nice linen dress myself but just before the wedding I was attacked by about ten aunties and had a sari wrapped around me. It really was a pretty sari, dark blue with a real silver print but it was not very practical, as I’ll explain later.
The wedding was supposed to begin at 5PM and there was a loud band of woodwind instruments playing on the driveway. Five came and went and the bride’s family did not come. We all waited. Crowds and crowds of people covered the field and came onto the house porch to introduce themselves to my mom. All the little children in the village wanted to shake Matt’s hand because he was foreign and so tall. It began to look like rain. Finally at 7PM the bride and her family came and the ceremony began. The bride wore a traditional red sari and was covered with gold jewelry and the groom wore a western style suit and tie. We all sat out on the chairs but the ceremony was in Telagu and I wasn’t able to understand most of it. It was a joint Hindu-Christian ceremony. The bride is Christian. She is a doctor like my uncle. Uncle S is some 15 years younger than my mom, that’s why he’s getting married now while my mom has grown children.
I also met for the first time my father’s brothers and their wives. They told me when I was little I used to see movies and come home and sing the songs and dance. That I used to ask my uncles to buy me bangles in the shops. It is nice to know these stories but it underscores the fact that keeps coming up for me, that that girl was another person in another lifetime.
Anyway back to the wedding. Eventually it started to sprinkle and once it started it just kept picking up and soon the thunder and lightening started and soon it was all a mess. Everyone left the ceremony field and sought shelter. No one has umbrellas here. The mud was epic. But on the platform the priest kept going and so did the loud speakers. Everyone was getting soaked and my sari was about an inch deep in mud. I kept having to hold it up and people kept stepping on it. Finally the priest abandoned the platform and the couple were moved onto the porch of the house. All the carefully made decorations were abandoned. No sooner was the couple seated in some wicker chairs on the porch when… The electricity went out and the entire neighborhood was in pitch blackness.
Due to what they call “load sharing” the village only has electricity certain parts of the day. There are regular scheduled outages (example 4PM-6PM every other day) and occasionally random ones. I think the videographer was aware this might happen though because he had a massive spotlight attached to his camera and the ceremony was able to continue through various interruptions, power outages and so forth. Matt and I sat with my mom in the garage and she unequivocally called it a disaster and a waste and blamed it all on the bride. But at least it went ahead anyway. Everyone had been waiting a long time for their dinner. It was by then almost 10 o’clock. Obviously it would be very difficult to seat and serve 750 guests at once, so they set up a long row of tables and people ate in shifts when they were hungry. It had pretty much stopped raining but everywhere was still a muddy mess. Matt and I ate with my father’s family because they had to leave again soon. It was so much food! Matt go the vegetarian options. It’s pretty to be a vegetarian in India since so many people are anyway. At a wedding you have to accommodate vegetarians.
It was pretty late and dark out. There were a million crickets out and they kept jumping up into the folds of my sari so I couldn’t see them to bat them away. Some of the crickets were HUGE, the size of small birds. We found over the week this was entirely typical. Crickets come out at night. They’re not dangerous, only disgusting and since the house is not air conditioned all the windows and doors are opened and they get everywhere, even into your suitcases and backpacks.
The wedding wound down around 11:30PM (no dancing) and everyone was too busy to drive us back to the hotel so we slept in the AC room overnight. The AC room is the one room in the house with AC. When Indian people say they have AC, they mean for just one room in their house, usually a bedroom where they keep their foreign guests. My uncle had gotten an air conditioner solely for Matt because he didn’t think Matt could handle the heat.
My sister Bernice stayed with us in the AC room and we had a good talk about what had gone on before we got there. She was already in her second week of being in India. She told us that the first two days she spent in India, my Uncle K dragged them all around Hyderabad in the intense heat and made Bernice eat all sorts of mysterious stuff. And when she said she didn’t want to he asked why did she bother to come to India if she wasn’t going to try new things. “But,” she told us, “I showed them, by throwing up and passing out from heat stroke.” She advised us to drink a lot of water and not “hold it in” so to speak. We also quickly learned the best policy is to go to the bathroom frequently and promptly when needed.
The next morning we had to wake up at 6AM to go to church!
My Uncle K said he’d come by at 9:30-10:00 the morning of the wedding to pick us up and take us to the house for the wedding. But at 9:30 we were still asleep in bed, exhausted from our travels, so he said to freshen up and get dressed and he’d come back.
An hour and a half later, we were dressed and ready. It was already blazing hot outside. We drove back to the house and this time got a better picture of the village in day light. We found that the town where the hotel was gives my mother’s family its surname. But she actually grew up in a village outside that town and it was truly a village. It was mostly low huts with palm leaf roofs but in the daylight we saw there was also a lot of construction and a lot of concrete and brick houses too. My uncle’s house in the village is just a summer house built on spare family land. No one lives there most of the time because Uncle K lives in Nagpor and Uncle S lives in Hyderabad. The house is brick and stucco, painted pale pink. The stairs are painted red and the banister is pale blue.
When we drove up, there was a large crowd gathered under a palm leaf canopy on the driveway. We walked up to many stares. The people in the village had been told my mom (their old neighbor who went to the US) was coming to visit with her children so we were considered the guests of honor.
My mom saw me and immediately pounced on me and made me put on an Indian dress instead of my skirt and t-shirt. I agreed mainly because I didn’t want to offend anybody so early in the visit.
We came outside again and they were giving my Uncle S the “holy bath”. the groom sits with a nephew or younger relative (don’t know why) with no shirt and people come one by one and sprinkle over his head three times a mixture of rice and turmeric powder which turns his scalp all yellow. Then they tell him their good wishes for his future. The crowd of people all sing and chant a loud song while this is going on. Matt and I put the rice on his head together, but awkwardly. Also then close family members will rub his chest, back and face with a turmeric paste which makes him all yellow. Then he needs to wash it all off and put on a new set of clothes. It’s a sort of rite of passage during marriage.
There were all sorts of wedding preparations going on. Adjacent to the house is a big field which must also belong to my uncle. Under one big tent there were about thirty people cooking and preparing a huge meal. My uncle said when there is a wedding in a village like this, the entire village is invited and he expected 750 people to come. They put two giant banners on either side of town to announce the wedding and invite everyone. On the other half of the field they were setting up chairs and a raised platform where the ceremony would take place. They decorated the whole platform with banners, and streamers and coated everything with bunches of fresh flowers.
There had been a lot of debate during the planning stages as to the cost of this wedding and it quickly became clear that they must have spent quite a lot to prepare all this.
All day there was a steady stream of new people to meet. One thing that made it difficult is that we were always introduced to others (as my mom’s daughter and son-in-law) but they were never introduced to us so we frequently didn’t know who we had just met and had to piece it together later. It also didn’t help that hardly anyone spoke English. Uncle K and his sons did pretty well and Uncle R and his wife who live in Bournemouth and their kids, plus Uncle S and my immediate family. With everyone else we either spoke through translators or else I listened to the Telagu (the language of Andhra Pradesh—this state in India) and translated into English for Matt who laughed or nodded as appropriate. I understand Telagu but can’t speak it.
Sometime around 1PM my brother and sister joined us at the house. They had stayed a few days with my father’s relatives and came back in time for the wedding. They seemed much more well-adjusted to the conditions and the climate. I didn’t know how they could be so calm and accepting of the state of things around them. At the time I think I was still in shock over the state of things. It’s just a whole different standard for cleanliness here. We’re not in danger of disease or anything serious, just a lot of personal discomfort. Since we first got here though I have been doing better.
Just before the start of the wedding, my mom gave Matt a traditional Indian men’s outfit to wear. It’s just a pair of thin cotton pants and a long thin tunic shirt. It’s supposed to be very cool and comfortable. Matt had brought a suit and was happy to try something cooler and to fit in better. I had brought a very nice linen dress myself but just before the wedding I was attacked by about ten aunties and had a sari wrapped around me. It really was a pretty sari, dark blue with a real silver print but it was not very practical, as I’ll explain later.
The wedding was supposed to begin at 5PM and there was a loud band of woodwind instruments playing on the driveway. Five came and went and the bride’s family did not come. We all waited. Crowds and crowds of people covered the field and came onto the house porch to introduce themselves to my mom. All the little children in the village wanted to shake Matt’s hand because he was foreign and so tall. It began to look like rain. Finally at 7PM the bride and her family came and the ceremony began. The bride wore a traditional red sari and was covered with gold jewelry and the groom wore a western style suit and tie. We all sat out on the chairs but the ceremony was in Telagu and I wasn’t able to understand most of it. It was a joint Hindu-Christian ceremony. The bride is Christian. She is a doctor like my uncle. Uncle S is some 15 years younger than my mom, that’s why he’s getting married now while my mom has grown children.
I also met for the first time my father’s brothers and their wives. They told me when I was little I used to see movies and come home and sing the songs and dance. That I used to ask my uncles to buy me bangles in the shops. It is nice to know these stories but it underscores the fact that keeps coming up for me, that that girl was another person in another lifetime.
Anyway back to the wedding. Eventually it started to sprinkle and once it started it just kept picking up and soon the thunder and lightening started and soon it was all a mess. Everyone left the ceremony field and sought shelter. No one has umbrellas here. The mud was epic. But on the platform the priest kept going and so did the loud speakers. Everyone was getting soaked and my sari was about an inch deep in mud. I kept having to hold it up and people kept stepping on it. Finally the priest abandoned the platform and the couple were moved onto the porch of the house. All the carefully made decorations were abandoned. No sooner was the couple seated in some wicker chairs on the porch when… The electricity went out and the entire neighborhood was in pitch blackness.
Due to what they call “load sharing” the village only has electricity certain parts of the day. There are regular scheduled outages (example 4PM-6PM every other day) and occasionally random ones. I think the videographer was aware this might happen though because he had a massive spotlight attached to his camera and the ceremony was able to continue through various interruptions, power outages and so forth. Matt and I sat with my mom in the garage and she unequivocally called it a disaster and a waste and blamed it all on the bride. But at least it went ahead anyway. Everyone had been waiting a long time for their dinner. It was by then almost 10 o’clock. Obviously it would be very difficult to seat and serve 750 guests at once, so they set up a long row of tables and people ate in shifts when they were hungry. It had pretty much stopped raining but everywhere was still a muddy mess. Matt and I ate with my father’s family because they had to leave again soon. It was so much food! Matt go the vegetarian options. It’s pretty to be a vegetarian in India since so many people are anyway. At a wedding you have to accommodate vegetarians.
It was pretty late and dark out. There were a million crickets out and they kept jumping up into the folds of my sari so I couldn’t see them to bat them away. Some of the crickets were HUGE, the size of small birds. We found over the week this was entirely typical. Crickets come out at night. They’re not dangerous, only disgusting and since the house is not air conditioned all the windows and doors are opened and they get everywhere, even into your suitcases and backpacks.
The wedding wound down around 11:30PM (no dancing) and everyone was too busy to drive us back to the hotel so we slept in the AC room overnight. The AC room is the one room in the house with AC. When Indian people say they have AC, they mean for just one room in their house, usually a bedroom where they keep their foreign guests. My uncle had gotten an air conditioner solely for Matt because he didn’t think Matt could handle the heat.
My sister Bernice stayed with us in the AC room and we had a good talk about what had gone on before we got there. She was already in her second week of being in India. She told us that the first two days she spent in India, my Uncle K dragged them all around Hyderabad in the intense heat and made Bernice eat all sorts of mysterious stuff. And when she said she didn’t want to he asked why did she bother to come to India if she wasn’t going to try new things. “But,” she told us, “I showed them, by throwing up and passing out from heat stroke.” She advised us to drink a lot of water and not “hold it in” so to speak. We also quickly learned the best policy is to go to the bathroom frequently and promptly when needed.
The next morning we had to wake up at 6AM to go to church!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Arrival in India
*Apologies that we have not written more frequently! We don't have much internet access at the moment!*
We are in India and the overwhelming impression is chaos.
We left Cambridge at 9 o’clock on Thursday morning and reached Heathrow by noon, for our 2:25 pm flight. Matt had not bought any sun glasses yet so we went to Sunglasses Hut to buy a cheap pair. This however was not sunglasses hut in Coral Ridge Mall. They were all designer labels – Dolce and Gabbana, Fordi, Chanel, etc. As yet Matt does not have any glasses. The first leg of the flight was 10 hours from London to Colombo, Sri Lanka. We flew Sri Lankan Airlines and they gave us an emergency exit row so Matt could stretch his feet. The flight was fairly uneventful. We went over some interesting lands, including the Northern Alps, the Middle East desert (the plane made a noticeable route change to avoid Iraqi and Afghani airspace – we did fly over Iran).The two meals were not bad Indian/Sri Lankan food. We spent most of the time reading, sleeping and watching movies. For some reason they played the X-men movies one after the other, but starting with the second one so we saw the second, then the third, then the first. They also had several channels of Indian Bollywood movies; Matt watched a few and realized pretty quickly that they all have the same plot: handsome successful boy meets sweet meek obedient girl, love/arranged marriage at first sight, song and dance routine, trouble, conflict ensues, parents yell/guilt each other and children, conflict conflict conflict, everyone apologizes, everyone is happy, song and dance routine.
We landed in Colombo Airport early in the morning there and were supposed to catch a connecting flight to Hyderabad, which was delayed by two hours. First we settled into some chairs in a coffee shop directly under a fan (the airport was not air conditioned) and had some English Tea and discovered that the currency in use was the US dollar.(we had some with us luckily because Matt’s grandma Karen had sent him his annual $5 for his birthday!) Our flight kept being delayed farther and farther so I decided to lie down and nap a bit until our plane was ready. It was hard to find an open bench, even to sit on because so many people inconsiderately just stretched out on whole benches and didn’t leave much room. One example of the chaos that seems to rule this country is the appalling lack of public manners. People are so inconsiderate, pushing, yelling, spitting, cutting in queues, impatient, demanding. Everyone does it so it only seems to bother us Westerners.
By now it was becoming quite rare to see any Caucasian travelers and people had begun staring at Matt and I. On the next plane to Hyderabad Matt was one of only two white people on the plane and got many upward stares at how tall he is.
-KGT
We arrived in Hyderabad airport around noon local time on June 8th. The moment we stepped off the plane an Indian man in uniform asked us if we were Kaveri and Math (apparently there was some confusion about my exact name and for weeks everyone thought Grace’s husband’s name was Math). It turns out one of Grace’s Uncles, Kamalakar, was a classmate of this man and he escorted us through immigration. Once outside we met another one of Uncle Kamalakar’s friends, Mr. Mohan. He helped us carry our baggage and get our money changed into rupees. We then grabbed a taxi down to a hotel were we planned to rest and eat lunch.
This was our first experience of the Indian road system. Utter chaos. Instead of lanes every car, bike, motorcycle, bus or autorickshaw just goes where it can fit. They swarm around each other passing on any available side. And they honk and honk. It’s necessary to let other cars know where you are. Many of them can’t see behind them and you never know when you’ll be passed. We saw whole families riding along on motorcycles, the baby in front, the sari-clad wife side saddle on back, none with helmets. To give you an idea of just how lawless driving is, we missed our street so the driver just backed up on the shoulder.
Autoricksaws, or “Autos” are these little yellow taxi cabs. They only have three wheels, a canvas roof and open to the air sides, no doors. They’re only about half as wide as a regular car and they’re everywhere.
We were dropped off at the hotel were we had 90 minutes to eat and rest before catching a bus to Vijawada. We would have had more time to rest but our plane was delayed by a few hours. Anyway, we grabbed some super cheap lunch. More food than we could possibly eat for under two pounds.
It’s nice to go from England where everything is basically twice the cost as it is in the States to India, where things cost far less than in the states, especially food. The economist in me practically was screaming “This is the Balassa-Samuelson effect! You’re seeing it with your own eyes!”
Those of you not interested in economics should skip this paragraph. The Balassa-Samuelson effect is an explanation for why certain items are much cheaper in poor countries than in rich ones. Think about it – why should food cost less just because a country is poor? Shouldn’t a dollar always buy the same amount of stuff no matter where you are, and poor countries just have less dollars? It’s not the case though. Basically, what happens is there are two kinds of goods, tradable goods, ie anything you can pack onto a boat and ship overseas, so timber, steel, coal, DVD’s, Coca-cola whatever, and non-tradable goods, ie anything that you have to get from the country you live in – restaurant food, haircuts, real estate. Poor countries have to compete against rich countries in trying to export things like timber, coca-cola, clothing. Because these goods can be packed onto a boat, all countries have to sell the items for the same price – no one would buy the same good for a higher price. Rich countries have a lot of machines, poor countries have a lot of cheap labor. In a rich country the average worker sits at a machine and pumps out a lot of the product and so get paid a hefty salary. In the poor country maybe 20 people do the work of that one guy and his machine, so they all earn a lot less (they earn so little that it’s cheaper to use 20 people than buy 1 machine). Anyway, these people then have a lot less money to go out and spend on things like haircuts and restaurant food. So, unless those businesses want to close, they charge a much cheaper rate. So in India an iPod costs roughly the same as it would in London, but I can buy 8 cups of tea and four breakfasts for the price of one cup of tea in Britain.
Anyway, after lunch we got our baggage and walked a block or two to our bus stop. We had a six or seven hour ride ahead of us before we got to Vijawada. Uncle Kamalakar’s friend was accompanying us, since there was the wedding the next day and he was attending.
If we had thought driving in the city was hectic, it was nothing to the country. The drivers are ambitious passers and several times we had to resort to the shoulder to accommodate a car or truck that couldn’t get around the slower moving vehicle in time. We forced several cars onto the shoulder ourselves. My mom, who gets tense when semis pass on the highway would have promptly gotten back on the plane and out of the country I think. I sat transfixed on the edge of my seat for the first three hours then relaxed. As soon as I realized this was just how things worked here, I was able to go along with it. But we did see two accidents enroute. Driving at night is particularly dangerous.
And yes, cows do wander the streets. We had to go around them a lot. And people cross wily nily. Lots, lots, lots, of honking.
We arrived in Vijawada around midnight and Mr. Mohan arranged for a taxi to take us to Vuyyuru, where we were staying. He left us along for a few minutes while he went looking for one and it was really uncomfortable to be standing there with our suitcases. We’ve since learned that tourists simply don’t come here so a foreigner is really unusual. And since I was standing next to an Indian girl also dressed like a foreigner, well, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. The looks were not very approving.
Good thing we didn’t bring our big suitcases. We had a hard time getting these ones into the cab. We piled into the car and journeyed for another hour until we arrived and met Uncle Kamalakar and his oldest son. I had never met this man before and Grace hadn’t since she was a baby. Mr. Mohan left us here and Uncle Kamalakar joined us and directed the cab driver towards his home, where everyone was staying.
The village was much more rural than I had expected. Most of the houses were made of dried palm leaves with dirt floors. People slept outside on cots and sleeping cows were tethered to wooden stakes on the side of the road. Uncle Kamalakar, however, did not live in a house like this, but a two story concrete house which in ordinary times must have seemed enormous. Now it was draped in colorful lights for the wedding and so seemed like a mansion.
Grace’s mom was staying here and we ate a 1 am dinner with her and Uncle Kamalakar. Naturally, we had Indian food. I haven’t seen non-Indian food in the time I’ve been here at all – not on menus, not in posters, certainly not on my plate.
After dinner we piled into Uncle Kamalaker’s 28 year old car. We were instructed not to lean on the doors, because they wouldn’t hold. His son drove us to our hotel, which had been obtained for me specifically. Because I was American most people assumed I would burst into flames when the Indian heat touched me. Accordingly, they had gotten me a hotel room with Air Conditioning. The bar was set really low for me and I jumped it by a wide margin. I think they all expected me to jump back on a plane the minute I got here. They were really surprised that I ate Indian food (I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t).
The hotel room they got us did have air conditioning. It also had a lot of bugs, but that’s extremely normal for India. After some two days of traveling we finally managed to collapse into bed and fall asleep. Some time in the night the AC died because the power went out, but we’ve found that happens several times daily in India.
-MSC
We are in India and the overwhelming impression is chaos.
We left Cambridge at 9 o’clock on Thursday morning and reached Heathrow by noon, for our 2:25 pm flight. Matt had not bought any sun glasses yet so we went to Sunglasses Hut to buy a cheap pair. This however was not sunglasses hut in Coral Ridge Mall. They were all designer labels – Dolce and Gabbana, Fordi, Chanel, etc. As yet Matt does not have any glasses. The first leg of the flight was 10 hours from London to Colombo, Sri Lanka. We flew Sri Lankan Airlines and they gave us an emergency exit row so Matt could stretch his feet. The flight was fairly uneventful. We went over some interesting lands, including the Northern Alps, the Middle East desert (the plane made a noticeable route change to avoid Iraqi and Afghani airspace – we did fly over Iran).The two meals were not bad Indian/Sri Lankan food. We spent most of the time reading, sleeping and watching movies. For some reason they played the X-men movies one after the other, but starting with the second one so we saw the second, then the third, then the first. They also had several channels of Indian Bollywood movies; Matt watched a few and realized pretty quickly that they all have the same plot: handsome successful boy meets sweet meek obedient girl, love/arranged marriage at first sight, song and dance routine, trouble, conflict ensues, parents yell/guilt each other and children, conflict conflict conflict, everyone apologizes, everyone is happy, song and dance routine.
We landed in Colombo Airport early in the morning there and were supposed to catch a connecting flight to Hyderabad, which was delayed by two hours. First we settled into some chairs in a coffee shop directly under a fan (the airport was not air conditioned) and had some English Tea and discovered that the currency in use was the US dollar.(we had some with us luckily because Matt’s grandma Karen had sent him his annual $5 for his birthday!) Our flight kept being delayed farther and farther so I decided to lie down and nap a bit until our plane was ready. It was hard to find an open bench, even to sit on because so many people inconsiderately just stretched out on whole benches and didn’t leave much room. One example of the chaos that seems to rule this country is the appalling lack of public manners. People are so inconsiderate, pushing, yelling, spitting, cutting in queues, impatient, demanding. Everyone does it so it only seems to bother us Westerners.
By now it was becoming quite rare to see any Caucasian travelers and people had begun staring at Matt and I. On the next plane to Hyderabad Matt was one of only two white people on the plane and got many upward stares at how tall he is.
-KGT
We arrived in Hyderabad airport around noon local time on June 8th. The moment we stepped off the plane an Indian man in uniform asked us if we were Kaveri and Math (apparently there was some confusion about my exact name and for weeks everyone thought Grace’s husband’s name was Math). It turns out one of Grace’s Uncles, Kamalakar, was a classmate of this man and he escorted us through immigration. Once outside we met another one of Uncle Kamalakar’s friends, Mr. Mohan. He helped us carry our baggage and get our money changed into rupees. We then grabbed a taxi down to a hotel were we planned to rest and eat lunch.
This was our first experience of the Indian road system. Utter chaos. Instead of lanes every car, bike, motorcycle, bus or autorickshaw just goes where it can fit. They swarm around each other passing on any available side. And they honk and honk. It’s necessary to let other cars know where you are. Many of them can’t see behind them and you never know when you’ll be passed. We saw whole families riding along on motorcycles, the baby in front, the sari-clad wife side saddle on back, none with helmets. To give you an idea of just how lawless driving is, we missed our street so the driver just backed up on the shoulder.
Autoricksaws, or “Autos” are these little yellow taxi cabs. They only have three wheels, a canvas roof and open to the air sides, no doors. They’re only about half as wide as a regular car and they’re everywhere.
We were dropped off at the hotel were we had 90 minutes to eat and rest before catching a bus to Vijawada. We would have had more time to rest but our plane was delayed by a few hours. Anyway, we grabbed some super cheap lunch. More food than we could possibly eat for under two pounds.
It’s nice to go from England where everything is basically twice the cost as it is in the States to India, where things cost far less than in the states, especially food. The economist in me practically was screaming “This is the Balassa-Samuelson effect! You’re seeing it with your own eyes!”
Those of you not interested in economics should skip this paragraph. The Balassa-Samuelson effect is an explanation for why certain items are much cheaper in poor countries than in rich ones. Think about it – why should food cost less just because a country is poor? Shouldn’t a dollar always buy the same amount of stuff no matter where you are, and poor countries just have less dollars? It’s not the case though. Basically, what happens is there are two kinds of goods, tradable goods, ie anything you can pack onto a boat and ship overseas, so timber, steel, coal, DVD’s, Coca-cola whatever, and non-tradable goods, ie anything that you have to get from the country you live in – restaurant food, haircuts, real estate. Poor countries have to compete against rich countries in trying to export things like timber, coca-cola, clothing. Because these goods can be packed onto a boat, all countries have to sell the items for the same price – no one would buy the same good for a higher price. Rich countries have a lot of machines, poor countries have a lot of cheap labor. In a rich country the average worker sits at a machine and pumps out a lot of the product and so get paid a hefty salary. In the poor country maybe 20 people do the work of that one guy and his machine, so they all earn a lot less (they earn so little that it’s cheaper to use 20 people than buy 1 machine). Anyway, these people then have a lot less money to go out and spend on things like haircuts and restaurant food. So, unless those businesses want to close, they charge a much cheaper rate. So in India an iPod costs roughly the same as it would in London, but I can buy 8 cups of tea and four breakfasts for the price of one cup of tea in Britain.
Anyway, after lunch we got our baggage and walked a block or two to our bus stop. We had a six or seven hour ride ahead of us before we got to Vijawada. Uncle Kamalakar’s friend was accompanying us, since there was the wedding the next day and he was attending.
If we had thought driving in the city was hectic, it was nothing to the country. The drivers are ambitious passers and several times we had to resort to the shoulder to accommodate a car or truck that couldn’t get around the slower moving vehicle in time. We forced several cars onto the shoulder ourselves. My mom, who gets tense when semis pass on the highway would have promptly gotten back on the plane and out of the country I think. I sat transfixed on the edge of my seat for the first three hours then relaxed. As soon as I realized this was just how things worked here, I was able to go along with it. But we did see two accidents enroute. Driving at night is particularly dangerous.
And yes, cows do wander the streets. We had to go around them a lot. And people cross wily nily. Lots, lots, lots, of honking.
We arrived in Vijawada around midnight and Mr. Mohan arranged for a taxi to take us to Vuyyuru, where we were staying. He left us along for a few minutes while he went looking for one and it was really uncomfortable to be standing there with our suitcases. We’ve since learned that tourists simply don’t come here so a foreigner is really unusual. And since I was standing next to an Indian girl also dressed like a foreigner, well, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. The looks were not very approving.
Good thing we didn’t bring our big suitcases. We had a hard time getting these ones into the cab. We piled into the car and journeyed for another hour until we arrived and met Uncle Kamalakar and his oldest son. I had never met this man before and Grace hadn’t since she was a baby. Mr. Mohan left us here and Uncle Kamalakar joined us and directed the cab driver towards his home, where everyone was staying.
The village was much more rural than I had expected. Most of the houses were made of dried palm leaves with dirt floors. People slept outside on cots and sleeping cows were tethered to wooden stakes on the side of the road. Uncle Kamalakar, however, did not live in a house like this, but a two story concrete house which in ordinary times must have seemed enormous. Now it was draped in colorful lights for the wedding and so seemed like a mansion.
Grace’s mom was staying here and we ate a 1 am dinner with her and Uncle Kamalakar. Naturally, we had Indian food. I haven’t seen non-Indian food in the time I’ve been here at all – not on menus, not in posters, certainly not on my plate.
After dinner we piled into Uncle Kamalaker’s 28 year old car. We were instructed not to lean on the doors, because they wouldn’t hold. His son drove us to our hotel, which had been obtained for me specifically. Because I was American most people assumed I would burst into flames when the Indian heat touched me. Accordingly, they had gotten me a hotel room with Air Conditioning. The bar was set really low for me and I jumped it by a wide margin. I think they all expected me to jump back on a plane the minute I got here. They were really surprised that I ate Indian food (I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t).
The hotel room they got us did have air conditioning. It also had a lot of bugs, but that’s extremely normal for India. After some two days of traveling we finally managed to collapse into bed and fall asleep. Some time in the night the AC died because the power went out, but we’ve found that happens several times daily in India.
-MSC
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
We're off!
Well, Matt's last exam was today and he thinks it went really well.
Our flat is NEARLY done, just needs a few swishes of a broom and a large haul to the dumpsters out back.
Tomorrow we are leaving at 9AM to get to India. Check out our ridiculous travel itinerary.
Cambridge to London: 1 hour
Tube ride: 1/2 hour
London to Heathrow Airport: 1 hour
Wait: 2 hours
UK to Sri Lanka: 15 hours
Wait: 2 hours
Sri Lanka to Hyderabad, India: 2 hours
Hyderabad to Vijaywada: 10 hours
Vijaywada to village*: 1 hour
*We have no idea what village we're going to. We just know we're being picked up at the airport.
We'll get back to ya'll real soon. Wish us luck!
PS to TJ: We are taking your advice seriously, thank you for warning us!
PPS: Lost season finale? Where are they going with this?!?
Our flat is NEARLY done, just needs a few swishes of a broom and a large haul to the dumpsters out back.
Tomorrow we are leaving at 9AM to get to India. Check out our ridiculous travel itinerary.
Cambridge to London: 1 hour
Tube ride: 1/2 hour
London to Heathrow Airport: 1 hour
Wait: 2 hours
UK to Sri Lanka: 15 hours
Wait: 2 hours
Sri Lanka to Hyderabad, India: 2 hours
Hyderabad to Vijaywada: 10 hours
Vijaywada to village*: 1 hour
*We have no idea what village we're going to. We just know we're being picked up at the airport.
We'll get back to ya'll real soon. Wish us luck!
PS to TJ: We are taking your advice seriously, thank you for warning us!
PPS: Lost season finale? Where are they going with this?!?
Anti-Malarials make me sick
I thought I was nervous for the exams but I think these Anti-Malarials make my stomach all fluttery and slightly nauseous. I take them every morning and I don't seem to get "nervous" until after I take them and then it clears up later in the day. Anyway, I hope my body adjusts because it would not be fun to feel a little nauseous every morning for the next 12 weeks.
Anyway, we're cleaning the place out today. Grace hates moving. It's a shame we do it so often. Yesterday a company picked up most of our stuff. Today we move the rest to a friend's house or we take it down to India. I think at worst we'll have to start the festivities a little late tonight to get everything done in time. Anyway, you can't be too festive when you have to get up early the next morning and take your Auntie Em's (That's what Grace calls the Anti-Malarials. It's like Anti-M's, only she prefers to think of it like Auntie Em from the Wizard of Oz) which make you just a little sick.
Anyway, we're cleaning the place out today. Grace hates moving. It's a shame we do it so often. Yesterday a company picked up most of our stuff. Today we move the rest to a friend's house or we take it down to India. I think at worst we'll have to start the festivities a little late tonight to get everything done in time. Anyway, you can't be too festive when you have to get up early the next morning and take your Auntie Em's (That's what Grace calls the Anti-Malarials. It's like Anti-M's, only she prefers to think of it like Auntie Em from the Wizard of Oz) which make you just a little sick.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Two Down, One to Go
Allright, this one went better! It was a really hard exam, but they score on a curve and I think I did relatively well.
One more tomorrow. This last one is only worth 60% of our final grade, not 80%.
Hey, want to know what an exam is like in Cambridge?
Well, since they're so important the exams aren't administered like in the states, where you walk in and they hand out the test and then you go to work. It's much more like the SAT's or the ACT's. You go into your assigned room and your test and a pad of scratch paper are already laid out for you. You have an assigned spot with a little name tag. You're not allowed to bring your backpack in and you can only write in pen.
And, since it's Cambridge the teachers are wearing gowns.
They're very nerve racking. I've never felt so nervous before an exam. I had butterflies in my stomach all day.
When you sit the exam, you're with students in other classes as well. Some of them are done with all their exams after this one and they get really celebratory. There's always a few kids with Champagne and they pop them once they get outside and there's lots of cheering. Today the Champagne was getting sprayed all over people.
That's me tomorrow. I don't have Champagne but the plan is to immediately retire to a pub following the exam. My peers are planning on consuming massive quantities of alcohol, but I have to go to India the next day, so I don't think I'll do the same.
One more tomorrow. This last one is only worth 60% of our final grade, not 80%.
Hey, want to know what an exam is like in Cambridge?
Well, since they're so important the exams aren't administered like in the states, where you walk in and they hand out the test and then you go to work. It's much more like the SAT's or the ACT's. You go into your assigned room and your test and a pad of scratch paper are already laid out for you. You have an assigned spot with a little name tag. You're not allowed to bring your backpack in and you can only write in pen.
And, since it's Cambridge the teachers are wearing gowns.
They're very nerve racking. I've never felt so nervous before an exam. I had butterflies in my stomach all day.
When you sit the exam, you're with students in other classes as well. Some of them are done with all their exams after this one and they get really celebratory. There's always a few kids with Champagne and they pop them once they get outside and there's lots of cheering. Today the Champagne was getting sprayed all over people.
That's me tomorrow. I don't have Champagne but the plan is to immediately retire to a pub following the exam. My peers are planning on consuming massive quantities of alcohol, but I have to go to India the next day, so I don't think I'll do the same.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Cambridge Strawberry Festival
Yesterday Matt and I met Gar at the Cambridge Strawberry Festival on Midsummer Common.
I have never seen a bigger collection of hippie freaks and weirdos in my life, AND I'M FROM IOWA CITY, IOWA!
It was bizarre the way these people came out of the woodwork. Cambridge is a fairly posh town, most everyone is fairly well-dressed at all times (excepting us on certain occasions), everyone seems to drive a Jaguar or a Land Cruiser or a BMW, and the fact that it's pretty expensive to live in Cambridge keeps in that way generally. Apparently though, when there's a major festival or event, all the country folk come in and they vastly outnumber the staid and proper Cambridge lot.
This festival by the way was called the Strawberry Festival, but we didn't see a SINGLE strawberry the whole time and we walked the entire width of Midsummer Common. Rather, it was just an excuse to grab a pint and veg out on the grass in the sun. There were a few bands playing to not many people. There were, thanks to the country folk, a lot of men walking around without shirts who probably shouldn't have done that. Pregnant women in short-shorts and bikini tops (to be fair, most of them WERE teenagers). Unwashed hippies as far as the eye could see. Middle-class white kids with dreds, doing capoera, trying to pretend they're poor and rasta. Far too many children rolling around on the ground unattended, a bad idea because the previous week there were cows grazing in Midsummer Common. A thousand shops selling tie-dyed crap. It felt quite like home, but actually weirder.
In other news, Matt's exams start tomorrow. Wish him luck!
I have never seen a bigger collection of hippie freaks and weirdos in my life, AND I'M FROM IOWA CITY, IOWA!
It was bizarre the way these people came out of the woodwork. Cambridge is a fairly posh town, most everyone is fairly well-dressed at all times (excepting us on certain occasions), everyone seems to drive a Jaguar or a Land Cruiser or a BMW, and the fact that it's pretty expensive to live in Cambridge keeps in that way generally. Apparently though, when there's a major festival or event, all the country folk come in and they vastly outnumber the staid and proper Cambridge lot.
This festival by the way was called the Strawberry Festival, but we didn't see a SINGLE strawberry the whole time and we walked the entire width of Midsummer Common. Rather, it was just an excuse to grab a pint and veg out on the grass in the sun. There were a few bands playing to not many people. There were, thanks to the country folk, a lot of men walking around without shirts who probably shouldn't have done that. Pregnant women in short-shorts and bikini tops (to be fair, most of them WERE teenagers). Unwashed hippies as far as the eye could see. Middle-class white kids with dreds, doing capoera, trying to pretend they're poor and rasta. Far too many children rolling around on the ground unattended, a bad idea because the previous week there were cows grazing in Midsummer Common. A thousand shops selling tie-dyed crap. It felt quite like home, but actually weirder.
In other news, Matt's exams start tomorrow. Wish him luck!
Friday, June 01, 2007
Spencer and Clancy: A Wrapup
Well, the guys left day before yesterday morning and we have since heard they got back to GA safe and sound. We had a good time hanging out with them. We spent two days in Cambridge, with most of the second day spent in the pub or restaurant or movie theatre. This was both necessary because it was raining and expedient because we were looking for some relaxing fun and we found it.
The movie we saw was Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End and we all agreed it simply wasn't worth it to try to follow the plot, but it was fun just the same.
The next day Spencer, Clancy and I went to Hampton Court Palace, but we just saw the amazing gardens. Afterward we met Emer, an Irish relative currently living in London, for a coffee. Then we took the train back up to Cambridge and made it back in time to go to a formal hall at Fitzwilliam College. Earlier that day Matt had found out we were the only four people at the formal! And when we showed up, it seriously was just four places set in a huge cafeteria-style room! We were served three courses, and were then invited to spend the rest of the evening in the bar. Instead we went home and the boys packed up to leave early the next morning.
Now as you can see it is a mad dash to finish exams, packing, moving etc before we leave for the summer.
The movie we saw was Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End and we all agreed it simply wasn't worth it to try to follow the plot, but it was fun just the same.
The next day Spencer, Clancy and I went to Hampton Court Palace, but we just saw the amazing gardens. Afterward we met Emer, an Irish relative currently living in London, for a coffee. Then we took the train back up to Cambridge and made it back in time to go to a formal hall at Fitzwilliam College. Earlier that day Matt had found out we were the only four people at the formal! And when we showed up, it seriously was just four places set in a huge cafeteria-style room! We were served three courses, and were then invited to spend the rest of the evening in the bar. Instead we went home and the boys packed up to leave early the next morning.
Now as you can see it is a mad dash to finish exams, packing, moving etc before we leave for the summer.
Anti-Malarials
We're taking Anti-Malarials now, which means we have less than a week before we're in India. Exams are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and we're having a dirt cheap storage company pick up our junk on Tuesday. Things are wrapping up. Yep.
Also, I lost my digital camera. Oops. While we were out punting with the boys it somehow disappeared, which is strange since we were on a boat - there's not a lot of room to hide. So we're off to India with my mom's Advantix camera. Which, unfortunately, means there might not be a lot of opportunity for putting photos online, we'll have to see. The Children's home does have internet access, so we'll keep you all updated.
Those exams are coming right up! There's not much more that can be accomplished. The short time remaining means anything else I want to know needs to go in the short term memory slot, but that's alright.
We've been getting ready for India the last few days, especially Grace. We've got money belts, little chains, tons of bug spray, sunscreen, and 14 weeks worth of anti-malarials each. Grace got some new sandals (flip flops are not a practical long term footwear) and I'm looking forward to getting some summer reading books. I figure it's the one time I can read economics for pleasure. I tried to read some extra economics stuff earlier in the year but I just went crazy. Can't have one thing on your mind all the time. You need breaks. But this summer I think I'm going to try out the famous "The World is Flat" and "Freakonomics." If you think there's something else Grace or I might like, please, we're all ears.
Almost forgot - I also bought some new music on iTunes. That's vitally important. And I'll probably buy some more before we head out. I think the iPod is the one valuable thing I'm going to take, since I tend to lose everything.
And that's that! Now I'm going to study for the rest of the night!
Also, I lost my digital camera. Oops. While we were out punting with the boys it somehow disappeared, which is strange since we were on a boat - there's not a lot of room to hide. So we're off to India with my mom's Advantix camera. Which, unfortunately, means there might not be a lot of opportunity for putting photos online, we'll have to see. The Children's home does have internet access, so we'll keep you all updated.
Those exams are coming right up! There's not much more that can be accomplished. The short time remaining means anything else I want to know needs to go in the short term memory slot, but that's alright.
We've been getting ready for India the last few days, especially Grace. We've got money belts, little chains, tons of bug spray, sunscreen, and 14 weeks worth of anti-malarials each. Grace got some new sandals (flip flops are not a practical long term footwear) and I'm looking forward to getting some summer reading books. I figure it's the one time I can read economics for pleasure. I tried to read some extra economics stuff earlier in the year but I just went crazy. Can't have one thing on your mind all the time. You need breaks. But this summer I think I'm going to try out the famous "The World is Flat" and "Freakonomics." If you think there's something else Grace or I might like, please, we're all ears.
Almost forgot - I also bought some new music on iTunes. That's vitally important. And I'll probably buy some more before we head out. I think the iPod is the one valuable thing I'm going to take, since I tend to lose everything.
And that's that! Now I'm going to study for the rest of the night!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Hebron Children's Home
Matt and I have mentioned that we are going to India (in a week actually) for my uncle's wedding and to meet some family. And we have also mentioned that we are going to teach English at an orphanage afterward for six weeks. The orphanage is called Hebron Chidlren's Home and it is located about an hour's drive away from the east coast of Andhra Pradesh (a state in India). I was reading their website today and under the section for "what you can do" the first thing they suggested was posting a link on your blog.
Hebron Children's Home
So give it a look.
There are 340 children in their facilities, which were meant to house only 70. Many of them are orphans from the tsunami. They clearly need help. If you have any inclination, please think about giving a donation. There are no administrative fees, because two of the major funders Richard and Mandy Swanell (of Australia) handle all administration themselves. All the donations go straight to Hebron House.
Hebron Children's Home
So give it a look.
There are 340 children in their facilities, which were meant to house only 70. Many of them are orphans from the tsunami. They clearly need help. If you have any inclination, please think about giving a donation. There are no administrative fees, because two of the major funders Richard and Mandy Swanell (of Australia) handle all administration themselves. All the donations go straight to Hebron House.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Photos of the Guys' Trip
We, and especially Grace, have been showing the guys around Cambridge and London-town for the past few days. We've put some pictures up, hope you like them.
Click here for the pictures.
Click here for the pictures.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Update, Spencer and Clancy
Here's a brief update on what we've been doing with Spencer and Clancy the last few days.
The day after they arrived, Spencer, Clancy and I went down to take in the sights of London. Matt stayed in Cambridge to study. We took the train down to King's Cross and picked up a theatre guide. Looking through it the guys wanted to try and see Stomp! the percussion extravaganza extraordinaire. So we went to the theatre to see if we could get tickets. We got three of the cheapest tickets and they were for the very back row of the very highest section. Then we went to the British Museum, which has all sorts of artifacts and things from around the world. Basically, it's stuff that the British have pillaged from different nations through all their colonialism. The British Museum is the largest enclosed open space in Europe and holds the Rosetta Stone.
Then we were famished and had a Pizza Express lunch. Then we went to the Natural History Museum and the guys saw dinosaurs and animals. In the gift shop we saw an awesome collection of stationary called Poo Poo Paper, it was paper maade out of recycled elephant dung because apparently they don't digest fibrous grasses very well and it can be sterilized and turned into paper. Afterwards because were were nearby, we went to the Victoria and Albert museum to try to see an exhibit called "Kylie, the Exhibition" which is basically a collection of Kylie Minogue's craziest get-ups from music videos and concerts. Last time Matt and I tried to see this exhibit, you had to get timed tickets. We went on a Saturday morning to try and see it and they didn't have any tickets until Monday afternoon. This time we didn't have to get tickets, we just walked in and I can honestly say it was amazing. I only recognized a few outfits but they were in person even crazier than they are on TV. We saw the white space suit from the "Can't get you outta my head" video" and we saw her crazy Vegas showgirl outfit from her "comeback" concert. It was crazy. Then we went to the room in the V&A that has plaster casts of various existing monuments from around the world. There was the cast of Trajan's column, only cut in half and stacked beside each other because it was so big. There was a cast of the front of Santiago de Compostella from Spain. And of David, which is a lot bigger than you think it is.
After that we did a little walking tour around St James's Park, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Westminster and the Eye. By then it was time to grab dinner and head to the theatre. Stomp! was cool, but I thought the best bits were not when it was loud but when it was quiet and they had little funny skits. After Stomp! we went back to King's Cross and then back to Cambridge. We got home after midnight and we all went sleep pretty exhausted because it had been a long day.
On the next day, we didn't make it into London until 2PM so we just went to Piccadilly Circus so the guys could see the jumbo trons and the flashing lights and then walked down to the National Gallery to look at paintings. The National Gallery is one of the best art museums in the world, but it is actually pretty small. It's definately smaller than the US National Gallery ha ha. But we hung out there for about an hour, then walked up (getting lost along the way) through Soho to a conveyer belt sushi place and had some sushi for lunch. It was awesome! Then we went to Oxford Street to see one of the major shopping areas and hung out in Borders for a while because it was raining. After that we went home and Matt had cooked us a lovely dinner. We watched episodes of the Office (American) and exchanged funny YouTube clips.
The next day was rainy and we stayed in Cambridge. We biked into town and Matt took a break from studying to show the guys into the various colleges. They took lots of pictures. The guys bought a magnet for their mom and we looked into some shops in town. We stopped for lunch. Then we saw St John's College and Trinity College. Then we picked up some groceries and biked home in the rain. We spent the rest of the day hanging out in the dryness of our flat, watching the Office. Then we ate dinner and watched Pirates of the Caribbean II. That way we can watch P of the C III in theatres today.
The day after they arrived, Spencer, Clancy and I went down to take in the sights of London. Matt stayed in Cambridge to study. We took the train down to King's Cross and picked up a theatre guide. Looking through it the guys wanted to try and see Stomp! the percussion extravaganza extraordinaire. So we went to the theatre to see if we could get tickets. We got three of the cheapest tickets and they were for the very back row of the very highest section. Then we went to the British Museum, which has all sorts of artifacts and things from around the world. Basically, it's stuff that the British have pillaged from different nations through all their colonialism. The British Museum is the largest enclosed open space in Europe and holds the Rosetta Stone.
Then we were famished and had a Pizza Express lunch. Then we went to the Natural History Museum and the guys saw dinosaurs and animals. In the gift shop we saw an awesome collection of stationary called Poo Poo Paper, it was paper maade out of recycled elephant dung because apparently they don't digest fibrous grasses very well and it can be sterilized and turned into paper. Afterwards because were were nearby, we went to the Victoria and Albert museum to try to see an exhibit called "Kylie, the Exhibition" which is basically a collection of Kylie Minogue's craziest get-ups from music videos and concerts. Last time Matt and I tried to see this exhibit, you had to get timed tickets. We went on a Saturday morning to try and see it and they didn't have any tickets until Monday afternoon. This time we didn't have to get tickets, we just walked in and I can honestly say it was amazing. I only recognized a few outfits but they were in person even crazier than they are on TV. We saw the white space suit from the "Can't get you outta my head" video" and we saw her crazy Vegas showgirl outfit from her "comeback" concert. It was crazy. Then we went to the room in the V&A that has plaster casts of various existing monuments from around the world. There was the cast of Trajan's column, only cut in half and stacked beside each other because it was so big. There was a cast of the front of Santiago de Compostella from Spain. And of David, which is a lot bigger than you think it is.
After that we did a little walking tour around St James's Park, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Westminster and the Eye. By then it was time to grab dinner and head to the theatre. Stomp! was cool, but I thought the best bits were not when it was loud but when it was quiet and they had little funny skits. After Stomp! we went back to King's Cross and then back to Cambridge. We got home after midnight and we all went sleep pretty exhausted because it had been a long day.
On the next day, we didn't make it into London until 2PM so we just went to Piccadilly Circus so the guys could see the jumbo trons and the flashing lights and then walked down to the National Gallery to look at paintings. The National Gallery is one of the best art museums in the world, but it is actually pretty small. It's definately smaller than the US National Gallery ha ha. But we hung out there for about an hour, then walked up (getting lost along the way) through Soho to a conveyer belt sushi place and had some sushi for lunch. It was awesome! Then we went to Oxford Street to see one of the major shopping areas and hung out in Borders for a while because it was raining. After that we went home and Matt had cooked us a lovely dinner. We watched episodes of the Office (American) and exchanged funny YouTube clips.
The next day was rainy and we stayed in Cambridge. We biked into town and Matt took a break from studying to show the guys into the various colleges. They took lots of pictures. The guys bought a magnet for their mom and we looked into some shops in town. We stopped for lunch. Then we saw St John's College and Trinity College. Then we picked up some groceries and biked home in the rain. We spent the rest of the day hanging out in the dryness of our flat, watching the Office. Then we ate dinner and watched Pirates of the Caribbean II. That way we can watch P of the C III in theatres today.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Spencer and Clancy
Spencer and Clancy have arrived! As you can see we took a detour at London King's Cross to see Platform 9 3/4, where Harry Potter and his best pals go to Hogwarts each year on the Hogwarts express. It was tons o' fun. But eventually we had to take the Cambridge express up to boring old Cambridge. When we got there the guys hung on for about 45 minutes before falling asleep for 5 hours straight. We woke them up at six for a night of punting. One of my Economics classmates, Adam, is a real expert on the art of Punting, having done his Undergraduate degree here and he got us a boat from his college which meant it was dirt cheap, £3 per hour! Anyway, we ended up taking the boat out for more than 3.5 hours. It was a real blast.
I took us up the river while Adam gave the guys the history of Cambridge. We made it from one end to the other and then let Spencer give it a shot. He had some. . . trouble. He was very good at making us go in circles and crash into willow trees. He gave up the pole before we got to a really crowded part of the river, where all the kids sit on the bank and watch the punters go by.
Clancy was hesitant to try it next, but when he did he was a natural. He manuevered us under bridges, around corners - he was really good, nothing more to say. I think he has a promising future in a very specific field of boatwork.
Grace did it as well and she was good although she did lose the pole at one point (not the only one to do so - keep reading). Anyway we had the river to ourselve most of the night since all the punting companies require the boats be in by 7 which is when we started. We could keep it out until 11 if we wanted to, since we were renting from a college. We found ourselves back where we started at nine with plenty of energy so we kept going.
This meant we had to drag the boat up a ramp with rollers to get it into the higher part of the river. With mighty muscles we did the job and went down the river cam up towards Grantchester. I was driving the boat again, and I was getting very cocky. I drank a beer with one hand while driving with the other. But, things went awry.
I lost the pole. Oops. This was the turning point. We headed back.
When we got to the rollers Adam told us the thing to do is ride the boat down the ramp, like a log flume ride. It's a tricky business that involves proper weight distribution or else the boat floods. Spencer, Clancy, Adam and I gave a mighty push and hopped in. We were headed down and into the water! A big wave washed over the front of the boat and worked it's way to the back, so everyone yelled as it came to them and soaked their feet.
We had to bail the boat out, since you get fined for returning a waterlogged boat. We pulled ashore and used a pint glass Grace brought to empty the boat (only 15 minutes work). We returned the boat a little before 11 and then biked into town for some late night chips.
The chipper guy must have liked Spencer and Clancy - I think they charm everyone with their politness and use of the word "sir" - anyway he gave us all free lollipops.
And that was day one.
-Written by Matt, not Grace
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Cambridge Beer Festival
Honestly, who schedules a beer festival for a week so close to final exams?
Hundreds of beers on tap out on Jesus Green. Grace and I paid our £2.50 to enter and then proceeded to work our way through several half pints - Grace sticking to her favorite kind of beer, the Wheat Beer, and me wandering blindly around and getting random stuff. The plan was a pint or two then a night of work. And I did stick to my goal of two pints - OK, three - but somehow, perhaps not surprisingly the evening got away from me.
Well, now we have the commemorative pint glasses.
Also, my computer is finally back.
Tomorrow morning I rise bright and early to make the trip down to Gatwick airport. Cousins Spencer and Clancy are arriving in the early hours of morning and they're staying with us for the week.
Two weeks from tonight I will be done with my finals and Grace and I will be getting up early to go to Heathrow and from then, on to India.
Hundreds of beers on tap out on Jesus Green. Grace and I paid our £2.50 to enter and then proceeded to work our way through several half pints - Grace sticking to her favorite kind of beer, the Wheat Beer, and me wandering blindly around and getting random stuff. The plan was a pint or two then a night of work. And I did stick to my goal of two pints - OK, three - but somehow, perhaps not surprisingly the evening got away from me.
Well, now we have the commemorative pint glasses.
Also, my computer is finally back.
Tomorrow morning I rise bright and early to make the trip down to Gatwick airport. Cousins Spencer and Clancy are arriving in the early hours of morning and they're staying with us for the week.
Two weeks from tonight I will be done with my finals and Grace and I will be getting up early to go to Heathrow and from then, on to India.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
More Updates
So, on Friday I took the early train down to London and went to India house to get my visa. I was prepared for a very long haul. Grace has had to get Visas for Paris twice now and each time she's been in lines for 6 hours out of the day. And that was after she booked an appointment a month in advance. There was no such opportunity with the Indian Embassy. I just had to show up between 8:30 and noon when they handed out numbers - up to 1500 in a day - and then wait my turn.
Ha ha, I showed up at 9:30 and I was done by 10:30! Life is a breeze for me. Also, when Grace applied she needed tons of documents, while I just needed a form. Also, when Grace applied they ignored her request for a six month visa and only issued her a two month one, which is why she had to go down twice. For me, I needed a two month one and they gave me a six month one. Ouch.
Anyway, I was going to stay in London all day because one of our friends, Erica, was coming in on the train from Paris that night and I figured I would meet her. She's currently slaving away in Paris directing the cultural education of a bunch of small town Iowa kids with little to no international experience. Quite a job. I had no idea there were so many things to see there - she's scheduled something for them to do every afternoon for a month (mostly museums I hear)! She doesn't have a computer in her Paris flat, so we caught her up on all the hot videos (mostly Eurovision - see below).
I spend the rest of the day in the British Library which is a massive library with every book ever published in the UK. You can't bring pens or scissors or highlighters into the books area (so they don't damage the books). They make you check everything and they give you a transparent plastic bag to carry your notebooks and pencils around in. After awhile I left the book area and hung out in the lobby which was much nicer. Big leather chairs and personal desks, plus I could use pens.
After the library closed Grace came down and we went to one of the conveyer belt sushi restaraunts for a quick bite before we met Erica at London Waterloo. Another reason we both decided to go to London that night was because one of our friends was having a birthday party there, so Grace bought her a dozen Krispe Kreme donuts (a rare delicacy in the UK - only available in some twenty locations across the country, including the London Waterloo station).
We stayed in town till late and took a train into Cambridge, arriving past midnight.
Over the weekend we showed Erica around Cambridge at a very relaxed pace, just one or two things per day. The weather was really nice and it was great to have a visitor. We went punting today and, for the first time, I managed the job without any trouble (fourth time's a charm!). It was very nice to be able to make the boat go where I wanted it. There weren't any drunk crazy kids this time either, which added to the relaxing charm of it all.
While we were near the Bridge of Sighs we saw a family trying to get through and the kid punting in the back fell off the boat. They lost the pole and the kid was splashing around in the water. They paddled back and he climbed in and someone else got the pole. The Dad from the family was not sympathetic. All he had to say was "Well, now we have to go under the bridge again."
Grace even gave it a shot and she did a-ok, especially considering my absolutely terrible advice about how to manage the boat. It's all sort of gone into muscle memory now, so I would say completely unhelpful things like, "You sort of have to push and pull the stick towards you."
And then I would demonstrate with my arms, which was not helpful. But she wants to give it another go, so that's good.
Our friend has to leave tomorrow morning at 5:30 am from London so she has an epic midnight journey ahead of her. I pity her.
Nothing but crazy amounts of studying for me from here on out. Grace finishes work in two days, just in time for the arrival of our American cousins. They've never left the country, so this is going to be a pretty big trip for them. After they leave we have about a week to tie up our loose ends in Cambridge. Busy times lie ahead!
Ha ha, I showed up at 9:30 and I was done by 10:30! Life is a breeze for me. Also, when Grace applied she needed tons of documents, while I just needed a form. Also, when Grace applied they ignored her request for a six month visa and only issued her a two month one, which is why she had to go down twice. For me, I needed a two month one and they gave me a six month one. Ouch.
Anyway, I was going to stay in London all day because one of our friends, Erica, was coming in on the train from Paris that night and I figured I would meet her. She's currently slaving away in Paris directing the cultural education of a bunch of small town Iowa kids with little to no international experience. Quite a job. I had no idea there were so many things to see there - she's scheduled something for them to do every afternoon for a month (mostly museums I hear)! She doesn't have a computer in her Paris flat, so we caught her up on all the hot videos (mostly Eurovision - see below).
I spend the rest of the day in the British Library which is a massive library with every book ever published in the UK. You can't bring pens or scissors or highlighters into the books area (so they don't damage the books). They make you check everything and they give you a transparent plastic bag to carry your notebooks and pencils around in. After awhile I left the book area and hung out in the lobby which was much nicer. Big leather chairs and personal desks, plus I could use pens.
After the library closed Grace came down and we went to one of the conveyer belt sushi restaraunts for a quick bite before we met Erica at London Waterloo. Another reason we both decided to go to London that night was because one of our friends was having a birthday party there, so Grace bought her a dozen Krispe Kreme donuts (a rare delicacy in the UK - only available in some twenty locations across the country, including the London Waterloo station).
We stayed in town till late and took a train into Cambridge, arriving past midnight.
Over the weekend we showed Erica around Cambridge at a very relaxed pace, just one or two things per day. The weather was really nice and it was great to have a visitor. We went punting today and, for the first time, I managed the job without any trouble (fourth time's a charm!). It was very nice to be able to make the boat go where I wanted it. There weren't any drunk crazy kids this time either, which added to the relaxing charm of it all.
While we were near the Bridge of Sighs we saw a family trying to get through and the kid punting in the back fell off the boat. They lost the pole and the kid was splashing around in the water. They paddled back and he climbed in and someone else got the pole. The Dad from the family was not sympathetic. All he had to say was "Well, now we have to go under the bridge again."
Grace even gave it a shot and she did a-ok, especially considering my absolutely terrible advice about how to manage the boat. It's all sort of gone into muscle memory now, so I would say completely unhelpful things like, "You sort of have to push and pull the stick towards you."
And then I would demonstrate with my arms, which was not helpful. But she wants to give it another go, so that's good.
Our friend has to leave tomorrow morning at 5:30 am from London so she has an epic midnight journey ahead of her. I pity her.
Nothing but crazy amounts of studying for me from here on out. Grace finishes work in two days, just in time for the arrival of our American cousins. They've never left the country, so this is going to be a pretty big trip for them. After they leave we have about a week to tie up our loose ends in Cambridge. Busy times lie ahead!
The British and their Food Complex
I think the British have an inferiority complex about British food. Cooking is a sensation here. There are dozens of hardback British celebrity chef cookbooks on sale in the front of all the bookstores. They all prominently hint at the glory of British cuisine.
And there's this TV show - "Great British Menu." In the show chefs from around Britain compete by cooking the best British menu they can. They get judged by food critics until a winner is selected. The master menu of British food goes down to the French Embassy where they have a cook-off with the French. The opening slogan of the show? "We'll prove we can cook just as well as them!" Note, not better - "Just as good."
Throughout the show the chefs always bicker about whether the opponent's meal is truly "British" to which the retort is always that "my mom used to cook it for me." The chefs all talk about how their dish is classic British updated for the modern age - as if they admit that the old way of cooking was inferior, but at it's core it's really good and deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world's cuisine. A good portion of the show is devoted to following the Chefs to distant farms where the care and devotion shown to British produce is showcased.
It's a lie. Give me traditional Indian, Thai, Irish, French, or Mexican food. Sorry guys. Anyway, the best British food institutions - Tea, Brown Sauce and Chicken Tikka Masala - are imports. Again, apologies.
And there's this TV show - "Great British Menu." In the show chefs from around Britain compete by cooking the best British menu they can. They get judged by food critics until a winner is selected. The master menu of British food goes down to the French Embassy where they have a cook-off with the French. The opening slogan of the show? "We'll prove we can cook just as well as them!" Note, not better - "Just as good."
Throughout the show the chefs always bicker about whether the opponent's meal is truly "British" to which the retort is always that "my mom used to cook it for me." The chefs all talk about how their dish is classic British updated for the modern age - as if they admit that the old way of cooking was inferior, but at it's core it's really good and deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world's cuisine. A good portion of the show is devoted to following the Chefs to distant farms where the care and devotion shown to British produce is showcased.
It's a lie. Give me traditional Indian, Thai, Irish, French, or Mexican food. Sorry guys. Anyway, the best British food institutions - Tea, Brown Sauce and Chicken Tikka Masala - are imports. Again, apologies.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Danzing!
OK, so this is Ukraine's performance at the Eurovision finale. The one below is from their national semi-finals. I can't get enough of these guys. Two other things - Enya was never on Eurovision (but Celine Dion was), and Ireland does not always get beat. In fact, Ireland has historically won more than any other nation.
Danzing!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Eurovision 2007
I'm in a state of shock and bewilderment.
Last night Grace and I went over to a Eurovision party. Eurovision is this massive song contest, sort of like American Idol only much older (it's been going on for decades), and all of Europe participates. Abba won Eurovision way back when and Enya and Tatu also made it big from the contest.
Each nation selects an act to compete. These national selections are like American Idol, except whole bands can compete, not just solo singers. Then they all fly to the home of last year's winners to show their stuff on the stage. And then Europe votes by texting and a winner is declared. The voting is sort of like the electoral college with each country (there are 42 participating!) delegating 12 points to the top picked song, 10 points to #2, 8 points #3, and then 7,6,5,4,3,2 and 1 points to #4,#5, #6, etc.
So, imagine being in a dark room with 50 screaming Europeans as you're watching this on a projection screen. It's madness. I shouldn't say anymore. Just watch. This is Ukraine.
Last night Grace and I went over to a Eurovision party. Eurovision is this massive song contest, sort of like American Idol only much older (it's been going on for decades), and all of Europe participates. Abba won Eurovision way back when and Enya and Tatu also made it big from the contest.
Each nation selects an act to compete. These national selections are like American Idol, except whole bands can compete, not just solo singers. Then they all fly to the home of last year's winners to show their stuff on the stage. And then Europe votes by texting and a winner is declared. The voting is sort of like the electoral college with each country (there are 42 participating!) delegating 12 points to the top picked song, 10 points to #2, 8 points #3, and then 7,6,5,4,3,2 and 1 points to #4,#5, #6, etc.
So, imagine being in a dark room with 50 screaming Europeans as you're watching this on a projection screen. It's madness. I shouldn't say anymore. Just watch. This is Ukraine.
Holy cow. They came in second with, like 240 points. Next up is Serbia, the winner. I voted for them by the way.
And now for the United Kingdom. Out of 24 countries that made it to the final round, the UK came in. . . 2nd to last with 19 points (7 from their neighbor Ireland and, inexplicably, 12 from Malta). Ireland got dead last. They always send some kind of traditional singer and they always get blown away by people like Ukraine. I should also add that this isn't the official Eurovision performance of this song. It's the semi-finals or something, but you get the idea.
I think they should broadcast this in America. I think jaws would drop.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Spiderman and other updates
We saw Spiderman 3 last night. What a laugh--that was a supremely forgettable movie.
In other news, yes, Matt and I are going to India this summer. My uncle is getting married, so there is a wedding to go to. Also, we heard through Cambridge that there was an orphanage in a village near where the wedding is to take place that wants english teachers for the summer and we volunteered. We have no idea what to expect and we have no idea how to teach english, especially since we don't speak their language. We're not even sure what language the kids will speak! The plan for the summer is this: Matt's final exams finish on the 6th of June. We fly to India on the 7th. The wedding is on the 9th. We will hang around with my family for a few weeks until my mom and sister head back to the states. Then we will spend 6-7 weeks teaching english at this orphanage. Then we fly back to London on the 3rd of August for a few days before flying into Boston, where my good friend Julia is getting married on the 11th. After that we'll head home home HOME! to Iowa City and spend one blissful month living in Matt's parent's basement, seeing all our friends and taking road trips to visit ones we won't see otherwise. Then on Labor Day weekend, we are going to Tom and Emily's wedding! And shortly after that we will return to Cambridge for Matt's start of term.
If and when we get back to Cambridge is still unknown because we won't know if Matt has achieved the necessary mark on his finals to proceed to master's level until July. Neither will we find out if he has gotten funding until later this summer. Even if he gets back into Cambridge and even if he gets full funding, for various other reasons, Matt is not certain he will want to stay at Cambridge. That is something we will have to decide later this summer.
So that is the sitch at this point. There is nothing really exciting to report other than this. Matt is studying continually for exams. I am still working for the financial services company, though I have been moved to another team. This team is basically responsible for fixing things that other parts of the company have screwed up (so you can imagine it's a big job.) We are staying in town weekends to save up money for the summer. We are getting very excited for Harry Potter fever this summer, though we are very worried we won't have access in India to an English bookstore! I have reread the whole series in preparation. Matt has given up though and is now working his way through a brick of a book called "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. It's about post-independence India and good luck to him.
Question: which bear is best? False! Black bear! Fact: bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
In other news, yes, Matt and I are going to India this summer. My uncle is getting married, so there is a wedding to go to. Also, we heard through Cambridge that there was an orphanage in a village near where the wedding is to take place that wants english teachers for the summer and we volunteered. We have no idea what to expect and we have no idea how to teach english, especially since we don't speak their language. We're not even sure what language the kids will speak! The plan for the summer is this: Matt's final exams finish on the 6th of June. We fly to India on the 7th. The wedding is on the 9th. We will hang around with my family for a few weeks until my mom and sister head back to the states. Then we will spend 6-7 weeks teaching english at this orphanage. Then we fly back to London on the 3rd of August for a few days before flying into Boston, where my good friend Julia is getting married on the 11th. After that we'll head home home HOME! to Iowa City and spend one blissful month living in Matt's parent's basement, seeing all our friends and taking road trips to visit ones we won't see otherwise. Then on Labor Day weekend, we are going to Tom and Emily's wedding! And shortly after that we will return to Cambridge for Matt's start of term.
If and when we get back to Cambridge is still unknown because we won't know if Matt has achieved the necessary mark on his finals to proceed to master's level until July. Neither will we find out if he has gotten funding until later this summer. Even if he gets back into Cambridge and even if he gets full funding, for various other reasons, Matt is not certain he will want to stay at Cambridge. That is something we will have to decide later this summer.
So that is the sitch at this point. There is nothing really exciting to report other than this. Matt is studying continually for exams. I am still working for the financial services company, though I have been moved to another team. This team is basically responsible for fixing things that other parts of the company have screwed up (so you can imagine it's a big job.) We are staying in town weekends to save up money for the summer. We are getting very excited for Harry Potter fever this summer, though we are very worried we won't have access in India to an English bookstore! I have reread the whole series in preparation. Matt has given up though and is now working his way through a brick of a book called "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. It's about post-independence India and good luck to him.
Question: which bear is best? False! Black bear! Fact: bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Friday, May 04, 2007
India Update
We're going to India this summer. Tickets are purchased and we leave in about a month. We'll be there for about two months. When we arrive we'll meet a bunch of family and attend a wedding. Late June we're saying goodbye and going to live with Hebron House orphanage were we're going to (try to) teach English until we leave in early August. In between our arrival and our teaching english maybe we'll go to Delhi. There's a scholarship to support Cambridge students who want to travel in India and I applied for it, but if we get it we have to go to Delhi (24 hour train ride!).
We went to the doctor this morning to figure out all our vaccines. Whoo! There will be a lot of needles in the next month. We got our first rabies shot this morning - we get another next week, and another later on. We've got to get anti-malarial medicine, bugs spray all sorts of good stuff. And here's the kicker - travel medicine like this is not covered under British National Health Service so we have to pay for our treatment (gasp!). They gave us a set of reading we have to do as well. And I still have to get a visa - that's one project for this weekend.
On top of all this the economics department has piled on an econometrics project that I have 10 days to complete (it's worth 40% of the class!). The question: how does health of the population affect economic growth? So my life is suddenly swimming with information about diseases and health. On top of that I have my final exams in four weeks! And Grace and I have to vacate the flat before we leave for India. So, it's looking like it will be a busy May.
We went to the doctor this morning to figure out all our vaccines. Whoo! There will be a lot of needles in the next month. We got our first rabies shot this morning - we get another next week, and another later on. We've got to get anti-malarial medicine, bugs spray all sorts of good stuff. And here's the kicker - travel medicine like this is not covered under British National Health Service so we have to pay for our treatment (gasp!). They gave us a set of reading we have to do as well. And I still have to get a visa - that's one project for this weekend.
On top of all this the economics department has piled on an econometrics project that I have 10 days to complete (it's worth 40% of the class!). The question: how does health of the population affect economic growth? So my life is suddenly swimming with information about diseases and health. On top of that I have my final exams in four weeks! And Grace and I have to vacate the flat before we leave for India. So, it's looking like it will be a busy May.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Visitor Map
