my friends who blog

Hi all.
Tomorrow is Halloween. I will have stories from Halloween. I'm going to be a rickshaw - my friend Isabel is a rickshaw wala. It will be, without a doubt, a great costume. We might win the fake contest!!

I wanted to post links to two blogs - my friend Isabel's and my friend Anna's. They both post pictures (something I can do soon, because I have a rented computer!!) you can see a different side of India through them.

Isabel Blue: http://www.isabel-in-india.tumblr.com
Anna Young: http://annamal.com

I have some great friends here, I don't know if I've mentioned it but my I have 5 friends who are awesome. Anna, Isabel, Ellie (who accompanies me on many outings with Aunty, so ease the pain of having to hear each of her stories 100 times), Arielle, and Megan.

Tonight I am going to a fancy country club to hear Indian music. Now it's off to Sarojini Nagar Market to get my costume (green leggings, yellow shirt, mirrors to attach my head, and bollywood celebrity stickers and Ram stickers to put on my forehead).

sweater vests

Delhi has gotten chilly. Well, it isn't chilly come nine AM, but until then it's down-right cold! The rickshaw drivers have begun wearing sweater vests and colorful shawls, currently my favorite fashion statements of India. Right now I'm wearing a sweater over my kurta (Indian shirt that goes to the knees, slits up the sides, supposed to be worn with goofy pants but because I'm in the "young, hip" contingent I can wear it with jeans). I like the cold.

I've had a week of allowing my mind to wander around everywhere that I'm not - to my ISP, to Deer Isle, to Skidmore. I'm thinking about everything except Delhi. But now I've decided to be IN DELHI for the next week and a half. I'll be gone soon and it's actually making me sad. It's a dirty, crazy city, but it's also one-of-a-kind.

Today I'm traveling to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) to see a lecture by this professor that I am desperately seeking to be my ISP advisor. She's got contacts in Kolkata and knows all about Bengali Nationalism (Rabindranath Tagore's jam). I'm going to her lecture equipped with a very formal letter and will beg for her to sign off on my project.

Then it's off to the start of a crazy weekend. I'm going out to some restuarant tonight with Aunty-ji. It's called Haldiram, and I am being taken against my will because I would rather eat at home... but it will be fun. Tomorrow I am being taken against my will to her "club" with the entire family to eat food and listen to music. I get the feeling the "club" is basically a left-over-from-the-Raj-era country club... so that will be fascinating to say the least. Saturday is the Halloween party of SIT. We're trying to be allowed to play beer pong in the program center. I'm dressing up with my friend Megan as Thing One and Thing Two (easy, and not Indian - we were going to be Sita and Ram but needed a break). Sunday I'm going to another family dinner, and then Monday my friends and I are cooking American food for Aunty.

I'm also trying to hit up Old Delhi (it's an atrocity that I haven't been there yet, I guess school took over or something, which is a terrible excuse).

Anyway, it's crazy, but things are falling into place. Mom, the birthday party was great and funny. Julie, I got a computer, put my pictures on it, and then the computer died so I have to trade it in for another one (rented computers)... but I PROMISE I will put an online album up before I leave Delhi. Promise. Sorry, but I'm not lying when I say that technology is the most unreliable thing. Much love to all.

mera juta mai japoni

The days are flying by here in Hindustan. I have yet another cold (arg! India), a product of the 17 hour train ride from Kolkata, I think. But other than that I'm good. Things are winding down at the program center in Delhi. We have one week of finals coming up, and "practica presentations" (we'll be presenting our Bollywood dance which is truly, truly ridiculous) and then it's off to do our Independent Study Projects on November 7th!

I'm getting ready. I'm booking train tickets to Kolkata and from Kolkata to Santiniketan and from Santiniketan to Darjeeling and then back to Kolkata. I got art supplies (expensive, at least by Indian standards) and I'm reading more Tagore than my little brain can wrap around. Sometimes I get these weird feelings that I'm not sure what I'm doing on this project - like I sort of happened upon it and now I'm just doing it and saying, "what the hell." I guess that's the idea. If I kept second guessing myself then I could never commit... and I'm sure this all has some place in the rest of my life, as all experiences usually do.

Message for quasi-brother Walker: Can you please let me know if there are some specific tea houses I should visit in Darjeeling? You and your tea cult must know about this.

But, for now atleast the days are still spent in Delhi. The weather has become much more pleasant - in fact, I was COLD this morning in the rickshaw! Aunty is doing well, she's redoing her uptairs terrace so that guests can stay (she wants me to come with my WHOLE FAMILY - hey family)! She still loves Friends and we eat the best food ever. I will be very, very sad to leave her. It will be a totally different experience in a few weeks when I'm out on my own in gross hostels... but good in a different way, of course.

I'm also already getting panicky about leaving in the sense that I haven't made it to Varanasi or Rajasthan... places I'm dying to go. Although I also want to go to Ladakh and can't do that, so obviously I just need to come back. Right? Right.

money, money! picture, picture!

We have returned from another excursion, this time to the jungle state of Orissa and Kolkata in West Bengal. It was a lovely trip. I turned 21 on Monday, after seeing a 64 Yogini temple and a Buddhist stupa build by the Japanese to honor Emperor Asoka. It was pretty great.

The first stop on opur trip was Bubaneshwar, where we saw the temples and stupa. We also saw the most beautiful Indian countryside - just jungle and rice paddys as far as the eye could see. It was spectacluar. We visited a village where they have been panting in the same Orissan style for centuries - and where all the villagers are painters. We also went to a beach and saw the ocean!!! This was my favorite part of the trip, I'll be honest. I missed the ocean a lot.

We then traveled to Kolkata, where I'll be living for 1 1/2 weeks of my Independent Study period. Luckily, I loved the city. Sure, it was a bit smelly and wild, but it was just so incredibly cool. There are all of these beautiful old Raj-era structures that are now overloaded with Indian squatters, and standing right in the middle of fish markets. We also ended up staying at the most gorgeous hotel, and we ate like kings and queens. It was very fun - like we were on vacation, but we were "learning." I'm excited to stay there. We visited the Tagore house, where I'll be doing the majority of my research before taking off to Santiniketan, and it was beautiful and informative and really peaceful. All good things.

I'm posting photos to an online album and you can all look at them soon enough. I'll let you know when. Much love.

Diwali, Diwali, don't put me in that sari!!

Ah, Diwali, the festival of lights here in India. Today is the true day of Diwali (though from all the festivities of the past week one can't really discern one festive day from the next) and I had my initiation into "true Indianness." Yes, that's right. I wore a sari today. I will be wearing one tonight too, for puja (prayer) to Lakshmi (goddess of wealth). Saris are beautiful, yes. Saris feel wonderful, yes. But are saris really fun to wear? No, no. No. Let me tell you a story of my sari afternoon. (haha, get it, sari-sorry)

Aunty wanted me wear my new (maroon) sari for a little Diwali luncheon with her husband's family. He is deceased, but she is, of course, still invited to the family functions. So, about 1 1/2 hours before we left for the party, I was told to put on my sari. Well, of course I couldn't do it myself, so Aunty came into my room to help me. I guess the sari I have is a bit long, and she had to get help from the servant downstairs... so I was being pushed and proded and turned around by two elderly women as they attempted to get the meters and meters of silk wound around my body. Now, once this was finished, I tried to walk. Then I realized that the sari is the Indian equivilent of the corset, though this particular fashion restricts your legs rather than your abdomen. I think I prefer a restricted abdomen...

Anyway, so now the sari was on. I looked pretty and whatnot. (pictures, yes I know, I know). But then we went to the party. Now, this was not just any old Diwali party. We ended up at a lawn party under a tent with fancy outside furniture. Everything was yellow and gold and pink. The party was chock full of fashionable, hip, young Indians. I might add that these people are all exceeding wealthy, as well. So, of course, I am the only young person in a sari other than the 11 year old girl with the braces and glasses who decided to sit next to me at lunch. I chatted with a Punjabi woman who went to Colby (wow! small world) and an American girl (in a very revealing outfit) whose grandmother is Indian. It was a nice lunch, but I was in a sari. Every time I sat or walked or got up I had to shift it and adjust it and then I felt really strange, like some dorky Indian-obsessed American girl who crashed the elitist-Western-influenced class of Delhi.

This was, I have to say, the most culturally enlightening experience I've had yet.

But, that's all said and done. I'll put the sari back on when I get home. Delhi is beautiful right now... Diwali means candles and christmas lights and gifts a plenty! It's pretty much Christmas, except it's 80 degrees and we're eating curry, not pot roast (pot roast? do we eat pot roast at Christmas?).

To respond to my dear brother Ezra, there are monkeys. They come on the roof of our school and eat the chair cushions and we have to get a monkey wala to come and bring his BIG monkey to chase away the small ones. Very exotic. Also, there are men who ride around my neighborhood with monkeys on the back of their bikes, dressed in little outfits. It's sad. They can dance and it makes me sad. That's all about the monkeys. They're kind of like chickadees here, or... racoons. More like racoons.

There was something else I wanted to tell you all... oh! The other day we were shopping for Diwali and I found the most beautiful paper in the world (oh, India!). Also, the area we were shopping in (GK N-Block Market) decided to celebrate the holiday by playing such American hits as "I believe in miracles," "Doing That Thing You Do" (from that old movie written by Tom Hanks?), and various Stevie Wonder tunes. Huh. India?

Oh, and I was very, very ill yesterday, but now I'm fine. Had a freak attack of super-tummy-death-world. That's what I'll call it, for lack of a better phrase. But now I'm all right. I sat on Aunty's couch, drank Limca (the best soda ever), and watched TERRIBLE Hindi television.

I'm going on a trip again on Monday - this time to the West, to Orissa and Kolkata! I get to scope out the city I'll be in for one month of my ISP period!
Mucho love. Happy Diwali.

festivals, monuments, revolutionary poets

I know, I know. I said I would post pictures, then I didn't. I have no excuses. I hope I'll get them up sometime. If not I'll just do one of those cool online albums so ya'lls (ezra) can see them.

We are back in the swing of school and there is so much to do. I have to organize an interview with a professor at JNU in Delhi for my independent study project. We are getting underway with the planning of our ISP's.... it's crazy but so, so exciting. I was fascinated with the artist Nandalal Bose, but then I came across the poetry, plays, short stories, and basic philosophical writings of Rabindranath Tagore (who founded Santiniketan, which is now Visva-Bharati, an art school based on ashram values in West Bengal- Bose attended the school and was part of Tagore's inner circle of intellectual hoo-hahs), and I think he's pretty hip to the jive. So, now my goal is to convince my uber-academic AD that doing a study of Tagore through collage is relevant.... I still have to write a 20 page paper so I can't imagine why she wouldn't let me do it. Either way, I will do it.... so we'll see what happens.

I should talk for a moment about the trip. We saw some really amazing things. My favorite monuments being the Gwalior Fort, the temples of Khajuraho, Datia, and of course the Taj Mahal. Gwalior Fort was really cool because it's built into a hillside, which I loved. The Taj is truly incredible and was especially satisfying because we went there at 5 am. We were the first in line to enter at 6 am and we got to have about 15 minutes to ourselves. There was no one in or around the building, and it was shrouded in mist. Truly, truly awe inspiring. It was also the first tomb tht actually felt like it was "haunted" or something. I went into the main chamber and even the faintest whisper would resonate all the way into the dome - very eerie and beautiful.

It was also really great to get out of Delhi. We saw the countryside, and we saw poverty on a level that is sometimes (not that often, but sometimes) hidden in Delhi. Agra was especially disturbing... but at least we are all in group and there's an oppurtunity to discuss what we see.

Anyway, the festival season is still in high swing. This Saturday is Diwali (kind of like Christmas except, according to the Indians, MUCH MUCH better). The city is decorated with lights and I'm expected to get a sari. Our family is having a huge, huge dinner. This past Saturday we had a dinner for the beginning of Diwali week - and I guess you have to gamble so we played poker until about 2 am. I say we, but I really mean the men played poker. My aunty's daughter (Jaya) is hilarious and informed me that Indian men are chauvinists, after her husband Rajiv (who is also a jokester) told us we had to stay one more hour. There's an interesting power dynamic. Rajov told Jaya we would stay, then Jaya sent her daughter over and Rajiv immediately got up because, in this family, the daughter has ALL the power. They're a great family.

Hope all is well. I'll check in again soon.

excursion return

I'm back! I am going to spend most of today in the internet cafe, trying to figure out how to get my photos on here and also doing research for my independent project.

The excursion was absolutely amazing! We traveled from Delhi-Gwalior-Orccha-Khajuraho-Agra-Delhi again. We saw the Gwalior Fort, the temples of Khajuraho (tantric masterpieces), the Taj Mahal, and Fatuhpursikri (I am butchering the spelling of that). I didn't get sick once, despite the sketchy hotel food, and I maintained a positive attitude! Sometimes that's hard when you are with the same 12 people for over a week.

The good news is that the Academic Director has improved by leaps and bounds. I think she was in her element - telling us about architecture and Mughal emperors and all of that. It was great. She also really loves my particular group of friends. She sat in our van with us on all the car rides (one of which was an extra 3 hours because we had to take a detour when a village abrupted in a mob because of some murder that happened 7 days before we drove through) and sang along to the mo-town and Muddy Waters-esque music we insisted on listening to. For some reason that's the soundtrack to this trip. We are all a bunch of jokesters. Humor is essential in India. That's what I'm finding.

I really want to get pictures up here. These buldings were unreal. The Taj Mahal is, truly, everything one would expect. I have to run home right now to see Aunty's preschool do a play of the Ramayana... but I will post later when I'm back here doing research.

Love to all.

excursioning

Just writing a quick message. We are going on excursion to many amazing sites for the next week (the Taj Mahal, for example)!! I might be off and away and not at a computer/internet. It's been a crazy, albeit boring, week full of studying for a hindi midterm. It was crazy....

But yes, mom. I am taking "actual pictures." Sorry I'm not posting any. I really don't have time to load them onto an unreliable internet cafe computer and then try to post them on here... but maybe I will be able to sometime.

Love to all.