Shoshanablank’s Weblog

We arrived in India on the night of August 28th. I will begin my tale with the bus ride back from the airport in Chennai (the city in which I am staying). All 10 of us are squished into this tiny bus, with all of our luggage. It is very hot and sweaty.  Even just exiting the airport, you can tell that this place is crowded. We turn onto the main road and all hell breaks loose. Motorcycles weaving between cars, rickshaws tailgating buses, no lane lines, and of course, everyone is honking their horns. Welcome to a Chennai street; we will soon become immune to this. I see lots of people (mainly men) walking on the sides of the road, even though it is 10 pm. I see buses chock-full of Indian men, hanging out the windows and doors. Finally we turn the corner and arrive at ICSA (Inter-Church Service agency), the place where we will be staying for the next 3 weeks. When we enter the guest house we all get bottled water and are taken to our rooms.

ICSA is a school for the disabled and impovershed (mainly people with polio). the students are around my age and are learning electronics and computers in a two year program so that they will be able to go into the workforce. It also has a guest house for visitors (like us) and St. Olaf students come here every year. I am sharing a room with 3 other girls from my program (Both of the Rebeccas and Chelsea). We have a bathroom with a toilet that you can’t put toilet paper in (and has trouble flushing in general), and a “shower” (really just a shower head and faucet). When we take a shower, the whole bathroom gets wet since there is not stall. Oh, and we NEVER drink the sink water, it has green microorganisms in it… Our beds have a mosquito net covering them. This is good to protect us from bugs, but doesn’t not make the room any cooler for us at night (88 degrees Fahrenheit on a normal night). Overall, it is a very nice room by India standards.

Our first breakfast at ICSA consisted of rice noodle-cakes, dosa (more carbs), chutney (tastes like hummus, sort of), white bread (not for me), marmalade, mango flavored Corn Flakes and hot milk (mmmmm!). This is India’s attempt at giving us an American breakfast. I like the food, but really I eat anything. But, it’s nice that they are really trying to give us familiar food, even if none of us really like Wonderbread.

That morning, we met our program advisor, the teacher that will be with us for the next 3 weeks. Her name is Irene and she is a very nice Indian women. Our first task to do with her is go to the U.S. Consulate to register ourselves in India and to sign up for absentee ballots. So we had too take our first auto-rickshaw ride. What an experience. Even though we probably only traveled about 3 miles, I felt like we were going to get into an accident like 7 times. This is typical. Autorickshaws drive like maniacs, but so does everyone else here. Especially the motorcycles, we had to dodge a few of those. It was kind of scary, but also really fun and in actuality pretty safe. The rickshaw drivers no what there doing so i is an efficient means of transportation. They are like taxis only in a golf cart shape. At the consulate we met an American woman from Minnesota. It was pretty comforting to hear from someone that lives here from the U.S., especially since we just got to India and were still shell-shocked.

Later that day we had a lesson in Tamil and Irene laughed at us as we tried to pronounce the words like her. Tamil is a very difficult language to learn. And it is so hard to pronounce things like a real Indian. But atleast I know the basics: Vanakkam (Hello), Poi Varain (goodbye), and Nandri (thank you). then we had tes with some of the faculty at ICSA. They asked us questions about America and we asked them about India. Then one of the teachers sung a Tamil song for us, a sort of welcoming gesture. They then asked us if we would like to share a song with them . WE knew it would be impolite to turn them down, so we decided on sining our St. Olaf fight song (Um YA YA!) We were surprisingly all in tune and sounded great.  I only wish I could have looked at the ICSA teachers faces while we were singing the chorus. They must have thought it was a completely different language: Norweigan.

The next day we went shopping for Indian clothes with Irene at a department store. I purchased 2 salwars and 2 pieces of material to make into saris. A salwaar kammeez is a long shirt outfit with really baggy pants and a scarf to cover your shoulders. All the girls have just been wearing the shirts with our own pants because the pants are so huge (and they’re supposed to be that way). Here’s how Indian shopping works in a departent store: You look around the packed racks for something that you like among the many hideous patterns while a salesman follows you around. When you find something you want to try on the employee takes the pants from the outfit and gives you the shirt only. Now you must go to the dressing room (however I often skipped this step and just tried it on over my own shirt). If you want to buy the clothing, the salesman takes the outfit from you and you won’t see it again until after you pay and have your bill stamped.

On Sunday I went to the church service at ICSA out of respect. There were a lot of cute babies there and the people were really nice. Also that day, a few of us took a really cool tour around Chennai in a pair of rickshaws. Two rickshaw drivers offered to drive us around to tourist attractions for a few hours with one stipulation, that they take us to some stores first. When the drivers take us to these stores, they earn a commission from the store owners. We were fine with this and ended up going to some really sweet stores. One of the stores was a Kashmir rug stores and they taught us how the rugs are made (often taking over 6 months for one rug). Then we saw a beautiful Hindu temple, went to Marina Beach, and also to St. Thomas tomb/ Cathedral.

Something that has come up a lot here is beggars. There are old and young women begging me for money. Kate gave two bananas away to beggars the other day and then another to a begging child. However, we’re not supposed to indulge them because otherwise they will keep coming back for more. At the temple we went to a girl put a flower necklace on me Rand and chelsea and we assumed it was free. Then she asked us for 50 rupees each (just over 1 US dollar, but this is still a lot in India). We haggled for 20 each. The poor can be pretty tricky people.

Monday morning we had a lecture on Gandhi, but the speaker was a little hard to understand. It is hard to understand a lot of Indian people, especially since they speak out of the sides of their mouth so you can’t read lips. In the afternoon we went to a Buddhist temple. A monk told us about the 5 principle of Buddhism. I also learned that Buddha was from a royal family but saw suffering in the world and he decided that he could live with a lot less wealth and possessions. The entire time the monk was talking to us we were in a room no more than 6 square feet in space, with the sun beating down through the open door. It was a cool experience and I really learned a lot.

On Monday night I took my first visit up to the ICSA girls’ dormitory. And what a warm welcome I received. Girls were inviting me to sit in their bunk bed, asking me about my family, taking pictures with me, teaching me games and songs, and even asking for my email address. while I met a lot of great girls, I have definitely become closest with Lela, a 21 year old who loves to sing. She is trying to sing the st. Olaf fight song and on Monday we practices the first verse together about 50 times. She wants to get the tune and pronunciation down perfectly and I admire her persistence. She made me promise to come back the next night, and I did. Now I have friend in ICSA (other than the Olaf students) to wave to during the day.

On Tuesday we had lectures on Indian mannerisms and on the Education System here. That afternoon we had a panel discussion on Global warming prepared by the 10 of us. We had each prepared a small speech on a particular aspect of the subject. I spoke on the health implications. this panel discussion went great. It feels so good to educate people on a subject that is so important to me, especially since a lot of these students did not know much about global warming before. The head professor, Dr. Moses, and also Irene’s husband ended the discussion in a sincere fashion by stating that Indians naturally use less energy per person becasue they don’t need a heating system like we do in the US! While this may be true, this doesn’t account for the amount of energy the average American consumes in comparison to the average Indian, but it was a nice gesture.

After the discussion, another professor, Dos, came over to us and said something like “I know that this global warming stuff is scary, but in the end we must remember that it is really up to God what happens.” It dawned on me that much of the world has this attitude. I think it is important to remember that God created science, and really it is now in the hands of people to determine what will happen to the world in terms of climate change. While God is good, people have a a huge responsibility, but of course I respectfully nodded to his comment.

Anyways, after that, a few girls and I decided to go to a nearby yoga class. It looked great from the outside but it was absolutely terrible. It wasn’t even yoga. The instructor made us do the most ridiculous exercises, but NOTHING was a yoga pose. After paying 150 rupees for an hour, we met a girl from Chicago in the waiting area, and told her to leave right away. She is very nice and traveling in India alone. We hope to see her again soon.

Yesterday we went to a wedding (a Christian one). It was cool to see the differences between American weddings and Indian ones. One major difference was that while the bride and groom were exchanging rings (actually the groom gives the bride a necklace) about 25 people were crowding around them with cameras like paparazzi. So strange. Anyways, the bride knows someone that goes to St. Olaf, one of our friends who is from Pondicherry. What a small world after all!