bangles galore after our trip to the Hindu temple. (me and shilpa)

Juhi was saying "noooo!!" as in don't take the picture...so I thought she meant "post it on your blog!"

Radhika and Juhi, my sisters =)

Yesterday I got and road an autorickshaw all by myself for the first time and I didn't even get cheated. That's sounds like a silly thing to be excited about, but it is something of an achievement since my Hindi isn't so existent and my skin is such that everyone wants to make an extra buck off me. I even knew how to get where I was going, which is nice because it is a bit nerve wrecking to always be trusting people you don't know and can't really communicate with. It's hard not trusting people, but we are constantly told not to trust people we don't know and not to talk to them, don't smile, etc. It's not that everyone is going to hurt you, but safety over being friendly right?
It absolutely poured yesterday...but I missed it =( because I was in a movie (Partner, it's basically the Bollywood version of Hitch...apparently there are lots of Bollywood movies that are take offs of American ones - literally some lines and scenes are identical). I'm starting to wonder what it will be like if it really does start acting like monsoon season because with the one rain yesterday the roads were pretty flooded making it hard to drive and walk down them without getting too much too wet. My host mom thinks the lack of rain in Delhi is due to the people here. She says people don't follow the rules here and they don't do what's right. She often says she wishes someone would take over for 20 years and fix it all, she even said she hoped the army took rule (considering they would do the right things for the people).

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to class at Delhi University for the first time. We (IES students) aren't supposed to start class for another week, but DU started class last week and since I can go to class, I figure why not? I'm a little nervous since I don't know anyone...and don't know if my enrollment is complete yet...and don't know what books to get or where, but I figure the only way to find out is to start showing up. I'm starting realize that here you just have to do things if you want them done or you want to know something. I say that like it's different from home...but it really is. There is some much that is so simple and straightforward at Loyola that is not here. At home if I wait around to do something eventually someone will call me on it or go with me somewhere or help me figure things out, but here it's more like if you wait...you'll just keep waiting and waiting and waiting. The stereotypical competitiveness that is associated with India scholastically is starting to make more sense to me. There are just so many people here that if you just sit and wait, you will be left behind. In colleges here it's something like 2,000 students competing for one seat. It makes me grateful that I have more lee-way in life; I can be in college and be unsure of what the next step is...and have things work out. I could be a good student in high school and know for sure that that meant I would go to college. It's not so simple here. I knew all of this before coming here, but it's different when I know my host sister, Juhi, is in the thrust of it all. I can't answer the question: "what's this change for me?" and that's frustrating. Being here just makes those nagging questions that you sometimes ponder about equality and basically luck in life all the more present and frequent. Why is that kid a beggar, where are his parents, why is she a house maid and why does he have to do unsafe construction work in 100 degrees? Why do I assume that my life is better than theirs? (better, of course, meaning more enjoyable as I go through it) Why even ask these questions over and over? I ask the same ones of the streets of Chicago, but I guess it's easier to think of reasons there or easier to be isolated.

Enough of that. There are many things I love here. My host family being on the top of that list. They are so goofy, which makes me feel more comfortable. They even started tugging my cheeks, which I think means I'm in, haha. Of course, I'm going to have to fight off food hard to not gain 20 pounds while I am here. Purnima ji even has put more food on my plate when I was looking the other way! It's good food, but my tummy can only hold so much. I also really like Delhi University and I'm excited to start classes there, it'll be nice to meet people my age and get into campus life.

It has not rained much here for monsoon season, but their is certainly moisture in the air. There is a slight relieving cool here when the clouds actually do burst and let the rain out. That hasn't happened much though, so I don't think I've stopped sweating (besides when I'm taking a cold shower) since I've been here. The heat makes class something to look forward to because at least the classes that IES (the program I am here with) offers are air conditioned (although I don't think the university's are). Right now is kind of a limbo period because we are taking 'intensive' hindi this week and next week and have no other classes. Thus far I've been occupied with trying to figure out what classes to take at JNU or Delhi University, but it's not simple here. The course lists are not online, so we spent about 3 hours this morning going from building to building on campus (which is HUGE by the way) looking a piece of paper posted on the wall of every department that lists what is offered...but not the times of the classes. For those, we had to find the professor and ask, streamlining is not exactly the way of life here. After 3 hot hours of simply accomplishing writing down a list of 3 classes (not enrolling in them or even being able to get the times for them), me and 3 other students got lunch at the one place we know is safe for our bodies that is not American fast food. They give you sooo much food here for so little money. I ordered hummus (to mix it up since I've been eating only Indian food) with pitas, which cost 60 rupees ($1.50) and I think they gave me enough hummus for a week. My favorite things to eat here so far are the fruits. My host mom made plum juice the other, which was not only a fabulous pink color, but tasty; the mangoes are amazing; chikoo, which is very sweet and apparently high in iron (and it looks like a potato before it's pealed). There are so many flavors and smells here, good and bad, just walking around outside.
Navigating everyday life is very different here. The streets are nowhere near a grid pattern and only the very big ones have official names (or at least those are the only ones that either have signs, which you must search hard for, or that people know the name of at all). Bit by bit I'm starting to understand where things are, which makes me feel a bit more secure because I'm not completely relying on the autorickshaw driver to take me to the right place. Chester, the IES student living closest to me, and I explored our neighborhood, Vasant Kunj, the other day and took the liberty of giving our own names to the streets like RMLOO (road mackenzie lives off of) and Coffee (home of Cafe Coffee Day, the Indian equivalent of Starbucks). Otherwise the city is organized by main roads with names and neighborhoods, like Vasant Kunj, that are then split up into Sectors (A,B,C, etc.) and then into numbers. I'm amazed that the auto drivers and delivery people find the correct places. And speaking of delivery, they DELIVER ice cream here, amazing. Anyway, it is nice to feel like pieces are starting to fall in place is my mind. Every time something clicks I feel a little pressure relieved in my head and it feels good to know I'm a little closer to understanding Delhi than I was a few moments before. Let me tell you though, I have a long way to go.

Home!

My host mom, Purnami ji, was the first to come pick her student, me, up last night, so everyone was watching. She is so nice and her daughters seem great too. They are funny because Juhi, the 17 year old, is the 'good' one and Purnami ji and Radhika, the 10 year old, are the 'naughty' ones. They asked me if I am good or bad...hahaha. And, would you believe it?? they have a basketball hoop on their beautiful huge terrace!! I was meant to be here. They live in a 4 bedroom apartment with a living room, kitchen, and like I said, an amazing terrace. Purnami ji's favorite color is blue, so the walls of my room are blue and my blankets are blue and she said I should watch any of my blue clothes closely. The space here is very nice and the neighborhood is quite close to Jawaharlal Nehru University where I will be taking a few classes. I am looking forward to my months here and getting a better gasp on language in that time.

I love Bollywood. I just watched the best fake punch ever, the victim flew 10 feet in the air. Anyway, I road in an autorickshaw for the first time yesterday. It's basically a very small car with no sides and only one seat in the front. I think Achim, an IES director from Germany, describes it the best. Riding in an auto here is like being in a video game...you cut every corner, sometimes scratching other vehicles, and weave in and out of buses, car, motorcycles, and almost running over bicycles continuously...the only difference is there is no reset button. It's quite fun though after the initial shock of thinking you may die. We this these autos to go to the Conaught Place, fairly touristy shopping market, so we all got to try out haggling. Later we went to the local Thursday night market. Geeta ji, one of our coordinators, said she heard someone on the phone there saying "You wouldn't believe it...there are so many foreigners." So we got a good laugh out of that. The market was very crowded and fitted in between buildings with a vehicle working its way through the crowd here and there. On one of the side streets of the market there is a huge old building that looked castle-like to me; Delhi is truly a place where centuries of time coexist. Tonight I'm scheduled to move in with my host family and I am SO excited!!

Here I am

I arrived in Delhi Sunday morning at 6 a.m. When we landed the windows of the plane steamed over as did the glasses of people around me when we got off of the plane. Luckily the weather has been pretty mild and although it is monsoon season, it's only rained once so far. In the past 4 days or so we've been quite pampered, with our center directors getting taxis for us and telling them where to go and always traveling in our group of 19. I feel like we're hunched over on the starting line waiting for the gun because soon we will be more independent and I can't wait to feel more like I'm living here than touring. That being said, I'm certainly not in Nebraska anymore. Here they drive on the left, traffic lanes virtually do not exist, horns never cease, the traffic is a mix of cars, autoricksaws, buses, motorcycles, and bikes 24/7, oh, and most cars no longer have side mirrors. You get used to it though, at least as a passenger. The food here is great, but since it has more spice than I'm used to, my nose runs at almost every meal. As much as I have been taking pictures and just looking at people and places, I feel quite a spectacle myself. Today stares were more than usual because we were on a huge tour bus seeing some sites around Delhi and I even saw someone take a picture of me and another white girl in our group as we walked by (which is fair enough considering the number of pictures I have of Indians I do not know). The clothing here is beautiful, although most men wear western pants and shirts. Yikes, my power is about to short, but I just want to note that although I am all the way over here, I don't quite feel worlds away yet...waiting on that one I guess =)

Germany

So...I don't know if this post will show up since all my blog directions are now in German, but it's worth a try. I arrived in Germany July 3 and will leave here for India on July 14. I'm here visiting Melanie, the German exchange student we had about 6 years ago. It seems I'm here quite strictly on vacation, which I am not arguing with. It's cold and rainy here, but the sun kindly emerged for our weekend of visiting cathedrals and castles. I've found that Germans think me odd for wanting to see castles because there are so many here that it's almost like someone in Chicago wanting to go walk down the streets and just to look at sky scrapers. I guess my American mind finds something romantic and magical about castles, thank you Walt Disney. Melanie's mother has made sure that I sample every dessert, cake, candy, or icecream that is special to anywhere we go, which I cannot say I've been resisting too vehemently, how often am I in Germany after all? I did decide that if I come back I will try to learn some German because it can be a bit alienating not understanding most of the conversations had and having to always be so quiet since most people cannot understand me. It's been good motivation to keep working on Hindi before I make it to India. Alfeeterzein, haha!