back home...missing India

In case anyone has not realized by my lack of recent posts, I have made it home from Chennai safely. My (several) flights back were uneventful and all my luggage actually made it which was quite a pleasant surprise.

Following my moms suggestion, I am posting a few final thoughts because frankly, I am extremely long winded and I know that when I see people in person I can't convey things as well in conversation as I can in writing. Go figure.

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Something I didn't expect: I miss it already. I was glad to get home because I hadn't seen my family in months. But somehow I miss the chaos of that crazy city. I miss the kids I was living with; it was like being in the dorms all over again. I miss buying lunch for pennies. I got very used to the lifestyle of working with children during the day, going out at night and traveling on the weekends.

I think I can attribute such a positive experience to being in a great group. First of all, IAPA as an organization did a pretty job of making sure we were taken care of, well fed, safe and healthy. We, the students, made sure we had SO MUCH FUN.

I know I keep talking about "the group" but the other teachers really were terrific to work with. If i hadn't been there with 20 other intelligent, passionate and worldly people, it wouldn't have been the same. As a whole, the other kids spoke several languages, Spanish, French Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati (sp?) most of which were very useful in our part of India.

We also because really close, as you could imagine. When I think back to all the time we spent traveling together and working together and living in close quarters together; I think I could write a book about everyone, their life story, their goals, their pet peeves, their jr. high crushes. ...and then some. And then we had to split up. The last day we were all in CSI was like summer camp, where we all had to return each others stuff that we had borrowed throughout the course of the program. Ellen, my friend from ASU, lamented that she and three others would miss us all the most because she didn't go to UA and wouldn't see us as frequently. I think it will be sad when all of us aren't living down the hall from each other any more. For this reason, I promised her that Deepa and I would call her up everyone once in a while and say,

"wanna walk to Spencer's for lunch? Do you have bug spray I can use? Who stole my progression poster??"

It will be just like sweating it out in Chennai all over again...

The following are a few "happy snaps" of me and all my new best friends. [Thanks Deeps]

I MISS YOU ALL!!

<3>

[Believe it or not I still have more closing thoughts to write about... so keep checking back to the good ole blog. Once I sort through all my pictures I am going to start posting a slide show of the highlights. However that might take a while because I have thousands of pictures. Literally. Thousands. ]

still more later

-S

this language...

I have finally figured out what the transliteration button on blogger.com is for.

Check this out...

டுடே இ காட் எ எ சிங்கபபூரான் பெடிகிரே. இ புட் மி பீட் இன் எ த் புல் ஒப் வாட்டர் பிள்ளேட் வித் பிஷ் அண்ட் தே அதே த தேஅது ஸ்கின் ஆப் த போட்டோம்ஸ் ஒப் மி பீட். இட் வாஸ் திரிப்பி!!



This is Tamil, the very flowery writing used by people in South India. According to wikipedia, the language is spoken by 66 million people, mostly in Tamil Nadu India and some in Sri Lanka with a few people in Vietnam. Its roots are a mix of Dravidian and Sanskrit, and contains 247 characters (no wonder so many people are illiterate...)

Here is my name - சர் which is written as the two syllables.

Tamil is different than Hindi, most notably because of the line running through the top of Hindi letters. जुस्त लिखे थिस। व्हिच माय नेम वौल्ड बे सरह स्मिथ

Fascinating!!

but we only just got here!

So our summer of teaching has come to an end. We taught at our last school yesterday (I don't know about the other teaching groups, but Abeshiek and I went our with a bang...I don't think that class will ever forget us...)

On Friday we had a day of closing ceremony stuff. It was really just a chance to start saying goodbyes to our counterparts and in-country staff. We met for lunch at a small byraini place near the beach and then went to go play cricket.

[Just to give you an idea about cricket: it is a near-obsession here in India and people take their cricket very seriously and watch it religiously. It's like watching European football, or... Ohio State fans.

Us Americans thought we were just going to play a few rounds, hit the wicket and call it a day. But Alwin and Louis had other plans...which included teams, bowler rotation and score keeping. It was a little complicated to pick up at first (apparently official games can last many hours because teams can play to 60 points or more), but eventually I think we understood the gist of the game. It reminded me of my high school fastpitch softball days. However my team stuck me in left field...or the equivalent of left field. Do they even have fielding positions in cricket? All the kids whose families are from India (or the UK for that matter) seemed to know what they were doing. It took the rest of us a little longer to figure it out.

We had two teams; Brown Town and The Lilly White Crew. I'll give you two guesses as to which team I was on. :) [Alwin teaching Jason to swing. Harder than it looks...]

After we were comfortable with bowling, wicket hitting and swinging the paddle (it is called a paddle? Clearly I wasn't paying enough attention) we had a lot of fun. Like most things we have done in India, we drew a small crowd of locals who wanted to watch us play. I imagine it would be something like sitting at a park and watching a bunch of Indians and foreign white people trying to teach each other how to play basketball.

After cricket lessons, we went back to CSI for the viewing of the summer slide show. A compilation of pictures from the entire summer covering everything we had done; teaching, partying, traveling. It was then, that I started to get emotional about leaving. I know that I want to go home to see my family (I haven't seen them since Christmas) but I know I don't want to leave this incredible place. This place full of anomalies and adventure and new best friends. It feels like we only just got here!! I really can't write any more on that topic for now...too early to get emotional.

Anyway, after slideshow we got ready to go out for dinner with the whole group. This would be our last dinner with all the students, counterparts, and Indian staff. Us girls were stoked about going to a nice restaurant, this means we actually have a legit chance to wear our fancy Indian clothes!

We went to a very special place for dinner that was picked out by Sanjay in advance - A Barbecue place. That's right. Our last formal meal in Chennai and we go get BBQ. It was actually pretty cool, the servers put meat and fish and veggies on little kebabs at your tables. Plus there was a buffet. Like most other buffet places here in Chennai, Indians can grossly underestimate how much us American college students can eat.

During dinner, some final speeches were made and we gave gifts to our in-country staff who has worked so hard this summer. This includes Seema, our adopted mother, Louis, who makes sure we get places on time yet can never be on time himself, and Alwin, who spends countless hours in the IAPA office taking care of all those details with the schools.

After dinner, the group decided to end the evening by hitting up a nightclub. We chose to be sentimental for our last night of partying. GRT Grand is where we went out the very first weekend we were in Chennai, and now it's the final place we went out.

About nightlife in Chennai; well, it's not great. This isn't Bombay after all. Alcohol here is strictly regulated by the government. I heard someone say that by law, any place that serves booze must have rooms for people to sleep on the premises. This is why most bars/nightclubs are in the big fancy hotels. Also, the nicer bars only permit couples to enter, groups of men cannot come in unless there are women with them. There are only about five decent clubs in town and we saw them all.
Our group has "experienced the nightlife" so frequently over the course of the summer that our picture is actually on the wall at a bar near our end of town.

[The picture that will forever be on the wall of Zaras. IT'S LAMINATED!]

Our final night of clubbin' was a very sentimental one. Like I said, we went to GRT's (no one knows what it stands for) and many of our counterparts and staff came with us. Louis and Seema actually made it out to the dance floor and boogied with us a couple times.

We had an amazing time, and the evening prepared us to start saying our goodbyes. It also prompted me to start a list of all the things I am going to miss about India when I get back to the states.

1. first of all, everything is cheaper here. if i didn't explain it earlier, we get 42 rupees to the dollar and have the power to bargain for just about anything and everything you purchase

2. mangoes 24/7

3. walking in to a nightclub/restaurant/elementary school/bus station/market and getting every ones attention based solely on my skin color

4. rooming with Deepa and Lila (those two are the best:)

5. train rides

6. cows all over the streets (which reminds me to add something to my list of things I won't miss...cow s**! all over the streets)

7. tea breaks

8. Kingfisher

9. DOOM MACHALE! (google it)

10. And finally, I am going to miss all the students who are now
my new best friends and all the staff who worked so hard to make sure that we had the time of our lives this summer. Which we did.

more later (tear)

-S

Indian Baby Ceremony

Last night I had the pleasure of going to an Indian baby shower for a woman in Seema's neighborhood. [Seema is one of our in-country directors. She is amazingly generous and cares so much about us. She also likes to take us out places so we can be exposed to more Indian culture]


An Indian baby shower is very different from a Western one. Here, the families of the mother and father -to be host a small ceremony where friends can come and bless the mother and father. Guests also bring gifts for the mother such as bangles and jewelry because they think that if the mother is pleased, then the baby will be happy too. It is also believed that if the mother wears many bangles then the baby can hear them clinking and it will know that it is welcomed.

Carrie and I were ecstatic that Seema wanted to take us to something so significant in a persons life and as usual we were grateful to her for asking in advance if we could take pics :)
At first, we were apprehensive about going. We know what kind of reaction we elicit when we go places; Americans wearing Indian dress, showing up where everyone is not used to seeing white people... we usually manage to become the center of attention. The last thing we wanted was to steal the spotlight from the pregnant guest of honor. But Seema insisted, and we know now that if an Indian extends an invitation, you had better not decline...



This particular baby-welcoming ceremony was not like usual as Seema informed us. Apparently the marriage of the two people having the baby had caused a bit of a scandal in the neighborhood. This is because the two did not have an arranged marriage which is the usual custom. Instead the two eloped and got married in secret because he is a Christian man and she comes from a Hindi family. Even now, one year after the secret wedding, the two families don't completely accept the nuptials and even the girls parents chose to be absent from the ceremony to show their displeasure.


After hearing this I felt sorry for Preeta. It seems as though her family abandoned her when she needed them the most. But that's really not the way they see it. Apparently it would have even been more auspicious if Preeta's parents had attended even if they wanted to. Since the marriage was not arranged by them, then they have little ties with how the marriage is carried out.


Either way, it was a delicate situation because it was the first time both of the families were even meeting each other (minus Preeta's parents of course). Upon hearing this, I realized why Seema had encouraged us to come. I think Carrie and I were used as a buffer to break some awkward tensions that arose between guests. More than a few times, Seema approached groups of ladies and introduced s and told us to say hi in the few words of Tamil that we knew. Also the girls family was seated on one side and the mans family was on the other side and when we showed up, Carried and I were seated in the middle of the crowd. This of course, encouraged mingling because ladies and little girls approached us to say hi and ask our names.

Glad I could be of service. :)


All scandal aside, it was a beautiful ceremony. The extended family prepared lots of food and delicacies and placed them out at the feet of the mother. These are gifts for her and also a way for the family to show off their wealth and show that the baby will be born into a family with security. Guests bring other gifts such as bangles and saris. Seema was very generous, she brought 500 rupees for the couple as her offering.


Once all of the guests have arrived, the mother-to-be sits on a chair in front of all the gifts and the guests take turns going up in front and blessing her. [Usually the parents of the bride are the first to do this blessing. Oddly enough no one wanted to be the first to do it because the didn't want to seem like they were on one side or the other. So what do they do? Make the foreign girls go first to break the ice...]

So even though I didn't understand what I was doing, I took a turn preforming a blessing. One of the aunts showed me how to do it...

First I had to dip my finger in red powder and touch Preeta's cheeks. Then I had to sprinkle water on her head and place two glass bangles on each wrist. I later learned that she has to keep all the bangles on until the baby arrives; it would be bad luck to take them off. Lucky for her that is only going to be another week or so because she was already up to her elbows in the sparkly jewelry.

In return for blessing the mother-to-be, I was given a little 'party favor'. It was a banana, two glass bangles, and a little box of red talcum powder used for the dot on the forehead. It was in a large green leaf wrapped in a string of jasmine flowers. (cute huh?)






A traditional baby ceremony could go on for hours due to all the blessings and gift giving etc. However after our turn Seema wanted to leave. Her personal opinion is that these things can be unnecessarily drawn out. Also Seema said a lot of the attendees may have only been half-hearted in their blessings because they disapproved of a marriage between the two religions.


However I would have never known anything was out of the ordinary (mostly because I had no idea how these things are usually run) but also because it was still a beautiful ceremony. Preeta was absolutely stunning and couldn't stop smiling. The father-to-be was extremely gracious and offered us a bottle of orange soda before we left.

[Just a note: People in Chennai are much more conservative than the rest in India. In most other cities, inter-religious unions are very common and don't receive the same disapproval]

All in all, it was an interesting evening and gave us more exposure to the complicated and fascinating culture that is South India.


-S

---The countdown till home has begun!!