more on Ooty

This is very disappointing. I took a rickshaw all by myself all the way across town to the only internet cafe that allows me to use a USB port and upload pictures and, of course, it is not working today. That is what we have come to call "totally India". Things just rarely go according to plan. Buses break down, luggage gets lost, schools change their schedules, something you thought was safe to eat....wasn't. I am learning lessons in being flexible, because that is the only way we are going to be productive here.

I digress. More on Ooty:

This past weekend gave me a look into the family structure in India. As I mentioned, we went with a friend, Neely and visited with his huge extended family. He has three uncles that all live together in Ooty, as well as an aunt that lives in Pennsylvania. Neelys family moved to Arizona before he was born, but the rest of the family live together there. Not only are they very close and all business owners, the three uncles and their families all live on the same [massive] tract of land in the outskirts of town.


The first uncle, who we call "First Uncle" has the largest and nicest house and he and his family fed us breakfast the first day we were there. He is the one who opened the first and only private hospital in town. He is an ophthalmologist and his wife works there as well, she is a gynecologist. He took us on a tour of the small hospital; it wasn't much bigger than some churches but we could see the crowds outside and some of the patients inside and its clear the work they do is vital to the town. Also the daughter-in-law of First Uncle opened a spa there, which we visited. It is connected to the hospital and we all got a few treatments during our spare time (I got the nicest and most inexpensive mani/pedi of my life :)

Since there were around 15 of us there Friday morning, we ate at First Uncles house traditional Indian style...sitting around the floor eating with our hands, which I am liking more and more every day. It was also the nicest breakfast meal we have eaten yet, (only to be outdone by Second Uncle's breakfast the next day...). We had idly which are little rice pancakes that don't really have much flavor until you dip them into a sambar or chutney sauce that is made from coconut or lentils or something. We also had dosa, and these little friend doughnut things that remind me of southern hush puppies. We also had fruit, hard boiled eggs, chicken stew, and lots and lots of poori (fried bread used to dip in, well, anything). And as usual, the entire meal was followed by tea.

The Second Uncles house is right next door, he is the one who owns the tea factory if I remember correctly. The houses are just a few steps away yet they have their own household of cooks and drivers etc. They also share a little garden and greenhouse and balcony that looks over a cliff down into the town.

Third Uncle and his family live in a smaller house behind the first two and the last day we were there, the family served us a massive crab buffet with rice and chicken and fruit, which we also ate with our hands, sitting around the floor. (There is a girl on our trip from Maryland, probably less then five feet tall and usually a dainty eater. But when they brought out the crab, she put away more seafood than I have ever seen in my life).
This particular Uncle works in real estate and I believe his son (Neely cousin) is the one who own a hotel in Ooty, which we got to visit and enjoy another meal there.

Another interesting thing about meals and Indian hospitality; the entire family helps serve the guests. The Anand family seemed to have a houseful of cooks and cleaners and yet the father and all the sons still served us. They kept coming around the circles of eaters offering us more food and refilling our water and making sure we had everything we could possibly want.




BTW, Any hope of me shedding pounds in India has gone OUT THE WINDOW!!


We are all soooo envious of Neely; he gets to come here in the summers and live as the 'Prince of Ooty' and enjoy all the food and weather and amazingly hospitable and interesting family. Our group openly did not want to return to humid and stinky Chennai, and for a while, we thought we weren't going to have to. At some point our travel agent, who booked our train tickets, called to inform us that we were actually still on the waiting list for the train to get us back home (somehow she failed to mention this before we left for the weekend....). We got excited about the thought of being "stuck" in Ooty for one more night, but instead we just had to split up and take several buses back to Chennai.

[hiking in Ooty. Me, Deepa, Kaylee, Ruchi]

Also: I definitely left my Indian cell phone back in Ooty. To be specific, I left it at a boathouse on the shore of a lake and when I went back for it, it was gone. If anyone had my number, don't bother calling it. I'll update if I get a new phone, but its not likely because I'll have to pay 1200 Rupees for it.

-S

amazing ooty

The weekend in Ooty was AMAZING!! This little town is go green, green, green. As I mentioned before, a member of our group's family lives there and he took us for a few days to visit. It was just one big adventure and the weather was so cool and refreshing. LOVED IT.

The train ride there was an experience in itself. We took sleeper cars because it was a ten hour journey and left in the evening to arrive on Friday morning. The trains are very very crowed, and are set up as bunk beds, three bunks high and each ticket is a bed. However "bed" is a very loose interpretation. It is really just a vinyl bench that you are expected to sleep on, however with all the bumping and clamoring and babies crying and people coming by to sell you fruit and coffee, no one really sleeps. I especially, did not sleep because my assigned bed was across from a stranger. So I was lying about three feet away from some old Indian man who kind of smelled and I had this feeling he was eying my bookbag the whole time. Since I couldn't sit up and read or write (bunk beds remember?) I clutched my things and looked out the window nearly the entire ten hours.

[This is what train cabins look like. Not fancy and VERY close together]

Somehow the train ride was worth is because the town of Ooty is the very opposite of Chennai. It is high up in the mountains on the west side of India. The town is not much bigger than that of little Hazlehurst Mississippi but it is perched on the side of a big slippery mountain. It reminded me very much of some places in Latin America because it was surrounded by jungle and cloud forest. The people there were so friendly and adorable. If anyone ever wants to film a movie in India, I highly recommend you go there, because everyone loves to be photographed and they will force feed you tea and cookies. Some people even gave Deepa and I flowers, called it the "Ooty rose".[view from the hillside]

Before I go on about all the sights and adventures, its important to know that this trip was made possible by Neely and his family who arranged for all 15 of us to come and visit them. The whole weekend we joked that Neely was the "Prince of Ooty". I say this because his three uncles who live there own what seems like all of the important and thriving businesses in town (hospital, tea factory, hotel, real estate, spa etc.). They arranged for a private bus to pick us up from the train station and drive us all around town for the entire weekend. They also organized our hotel stay which was just a 30 second walk from their property. They were amazing tour guides and continually made sure we were fed (and god knows we were FED). Basically, they made sure we had an amazing time and we were so thankful for their hospitality.

We ate most of our meals at First or Second Uncles house. (I call them this because they all had really long names that we couldn't pronounce very well but to our relief they insisted we call them Uncle. Plus they introduced themselves to us in order of their birth and so that is how we remember them).

We did so much hiking, it was amazing to be outside in cool fresh calm air. The mountains are gorgeous, complete with waterfalls, lakes, cliffs, and monkeys (OOHH the monkeys...). The center of town is full of shops and tea stalls and churches of many denominations. We saw flocks of kids going to and from schools and they were usually followed by flocks of dogs and sometime mules (we never did figure out why there are so many donkeys there. They are not pets. They are not used as work animals. No one eats them. They just hang out everywhere and poop in inconvenient places). However we spent most of our time in the outskirts of town where our hotel and our hosts lived.

On Saturday, we went to Neelys family's tea factory. The Anand family owns the plantations, the factory and the distribution business. We saw the process of planting, picking and making the precious green tea the makes the little town thrive. When I talk about tea, I don't mean the thin watery stuff that comes from tea bags. Their tea is creamy and sweet. It is mixed with milk, served piping hot and is loaded with antioxidants (all workers at the factory told me "tea good for health!"). It is more like what we know as Chai tea and I purchased a lot to bring back. They even gave us a discount because we were with the owner. I took that as a justification to buy more :)

Saturday night we tried to go out to a club (if you haven't picked up on this: we have a very lively group, love to dance and be rowdy Americans on occasion). We should have know that would fail. Neely took us to the only dance floor in town - it was in the basement of the only Holiday Inn in town and you guessed it...we were the only people there. But we still had fun and had a few Kingfishers (the only beer widely accepted in India).

The monkeys there are a constant source of amusement (although some people were just plain petrified of them.) I don't know what breed they are, but there are little and wrinkly and remind me of the flying ones from the Wizard of Oz (minus the wings). Anyway, we had an odd encounter with some of the family who lived on the roof of the hotel. One morning the ringleader monkey ran in to our room and took bananas and potato chips that were sitting on the sofa. It ran out with them and ate them on the porch right in front of us. I am not making this up. I took many pictures and am still a little bitter that they stole the only junk food I could get my hand on in that entire town.

[one of the monkeys that stole my food]

More later.

-S

hostel life

I love living in a hostel. I love our little home. It is cute and quiet, a little sanctuary set back in the middle of a crazy crowded unapologetic city.

We usually eat breakfast and dinner here at the little cafeteria, however it isn't really a cafeteria because the young men that work her insist on serving us and our group of Americans are usually the only diners.
Once and a while there actually are other guests. Today Kali and Deepa and I ate breakfast with with an older man who is a pentecostal veterinarian hailing from Bangalore. He told us he was in town for a wedding at the catholic church in town. Then we started to ask him questions about being a veterinarian in Western India and the kinds of things he sees (we figured a man like that must have tons of stories about cool things he has done), but really he just wanted to proselytize to a bunch of American college kids. (Too bad Kali is Jewish and Deepa is Hindu and I pretended to get more dosa...). Anyway the pentecostal veterinarian will be back for another wedding in August so we might run into him again.

Another visitor to the CSI hostel is a med student names Thakara. I think she is Indian by birth but was raised in the UK, and is here in Chennai as part of a rotation for a premier med school in London. She is absolutely adorable and traveling alone so naturally we have adopted her into our little circle of students. So now Tharkia, the surgeon-in-training eats meals with is and tells us stories of about her practice at the Chennai city hospital. Which is generally too graphic for breakfast conversation but we are interested anyway. Plus she uses cool slang like "pop-in" and "narley".

My favorite time of day at the hostel is in the evening after everyone returns from their various teaching assignments all over the city. After people eat dinner and shower the days pollution off, its nice to sit in an air conditioned room and chill out.
In some ways, it feels a lot like summer camp. We have no tv and no readily available internet. (And if there was tv, we wouldn't watch it because in India, shows are corny and in Tamil). So we spend our time doing other things that get forgotten about in college lifestyle. A few kids brought guitars with them, and last night I was treated to a few Jack Johnson numbers by some people who surprised me with their singing ability.
I also have gotten a lot more time to read, which has been nice. I was glad to see so many people brought stacks of books with them, so when I finish a book we just trade around for something interesting. We have a nice little book club going on as well. Currently everyone is reading Eat Love Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert (I just finished). The reason everyone is nuts for this book is because the woman spends a few months in India and writes about her reactions and the things she sees, and much of the book closely mirrors what we are going through here (it's kind of eerie actually...).

Tonight, however, our activity for evenings entertainment is poster-making. We start teaching at a new school tomorrow and we are preparing lessons for a ninth standard class (12 and 13 years old). It is an English-medium school which means everything is taught in English, so our translators can take a break. It is also government school; everyone that goes there are children of military and governments families. This means they should we well behaved, but here nothing is certain. I'll tell a little more about our teaching experience next time. Every place we go is so different and we have to learn to be very flexible depending on the level of English, number of students, and their prior knowledge of bio and anatomy.

This weekend, however, I am going to Ooty. Neelys family lives there and he is taking a bunch of us to go visit. We are going by sleeper train and leaving tomorrow after classes are out. I am SO excited because Ooty is a mountain town that is usually much cooler than the city and it is also famous for it's tea and beautiful temples (I might never want to leave!)

-S

water

I think we have all known for a while that water has become a scarce resource, but now I am convinced of this more than ever.

The river that runs through this city is indescribably filthy. There is garbage and dead fish that line the banks and the center of the river is a massive blanket of greenish\brownish foam. One local told me it was algae but somehow I think it is more than that. No one dares to go in the river but people have no problem throwing their garbage and peeing in it.

The beach in Mahabalipuram (the coastal town with the orphanage) is a similar story. When we took the kids swimming, I didn't get near the water on the beach. There was even more dead sea life all over the shore. Naturally none of this bothered the children, they all went diving head first into the waves. Some even found it amusing to throw crab carcasses at each other (poor Ruchi was not amused by this...). In regards to all the seafood I are that weekend, I never did get sick so that's good.

While I am here I have to force myself to drink a lot of [bottled] water everyday day because I know I sweat so much and I don't want to get dehydrated. This is not unlike living in Arizona but we all have to be careful that any we drink comes from a purified source.

There is a small restaurant near our hostel and each day before heading off in our rickshaws we will stop in and buy several liters of water. The shop owner is staring to recognize us and I'm not sure if he is amused or annoyed because each day we don't stay, we don't eat, we just buy out his supply of bottles and leave.

General guidelines for safe eating and drinking in Chennai:

• No meat of any kind (chicken, goat, fish etc.) unless its from a reputable place. This is often determined by either a recommendations from our translators or Lonely Planet.
  
• No roadside juice drinks. (You can be certain it will give you the 'runs')
• No chutney - water based dipping sauce
• No open drinks, especially at pubs and bars.
  
• Nothing from a tap, faucet, hose, sink or hole in the ground. You get the idea....

Being so careful about our water here makes me wonder if this is what it is like for the rest of the world, and if this is what the future is like for our own country if we do not take care of the resources we already have. Perhaps the US will never be like this due to the amount of sanitation, regulation and legislation that goes into natural resources, but no amount of regulating can save us if we run out of clean water! I've read that in a few decades, Las Vegas will have to start importing their sources of fresh water. Imagine the taxes that will ensue! Forget gasoline, that price of hydration will go through the roof... and then the black market for water will develop!!
SO SCARY!!

(I've run out of time at yet another internet cafe that does not allow USB connectors. More later)

-S

monsoons and hangovers

Today I had my first Indian hangover. We went to a dance club last night, which was an interesting experience. The place was called Vertigo and was on the ninth floor of one of the nicest hotels in Chennai. (According to Indian law, any place that serves alcohol must have a overnight rooms attached, so all clubs/bars/legit restaurants are in a hotel).
As usual, we all get stared at...A LOT. And the law also mandates that clubs close at 11 pm each night, but as we are preparing to leave at the unusually early hour, it begins to pour. And this is rain unlike any I have ever seen, not in Arizona, Mississippi, Costa Rica, NO WHERE have I ever seen such a downpour. The monsoon falls in sheets and instantly floods the roads and stops everything and everyone in their tracks. It's a little scary how it creeps up and the thunder and lightning is fierce.
Several of my friends and I hadn't left the club yet and despite the rain, were being told by the owners to leave. So we had to venture out into the apocalyptic storm to hail down a rickshaw to take us home. Ordinarily we fit three or maybe four people in an auto, but since it was a small miracle that we found the one, all six of us crammed into the back. (This gives you a little idea about Indians regard for safety, since the rickshaw driver allowed and even encouraged this...the more passengers, the more money). Anyway, we all managed to fit and even in the rickshaw we still got soaked. We also had trouble trying to explain to the driver how to find our little hostel that was on the other side of the city because his English and our Tamil were equally bad. All in all, we made it back in one piece but it was really the most hysterical and bizarre experiences I have ever had. I have pictures showing we survived our first monsoon and it is something I wont soon forget.

On that note, it appears as though most Internet cafes have a strong aversion to people using USB drives in their computers so I wont be able to upload pictures today.

From what I was told, the official "monsoon season" doesn't start until early August but we may be seeing more of these torrential rains in the next few weeks. I will need to invest in an umbrella...

PICTURES

I am going to post a few pictures because I finally figured out how and I don't know when I'll get another opportunity.



Street traffic in India. Crossing the road is a full-contact sport and not for the faint of heart.

The yellow car is an auto-rickshaw. Still, my favorite mode of transportation. Each driver owns his own car so many of them are pimped out with Hindu god stikcers and painted in many colors. I've even been in one with incence and music.

my room at the hostel...very dorm-like. I share with Deepa and Lila and in our spare time, we enjoy keeping our room bug free.

.

This is (the back of) a woman that lives near our hostel, and was talking to us in Tamil. Her family has a small house and was telling us about her husband who taught at the nearby school, but most of the conversation was in Tamil so we only know that through pantomiming. Oh, and her grandsons are adorable. Neely and Neicea bought them a soccer ball and were playing in the field behind their house.

Mani, Lakshima, Briana, myself. Despite how they look, our counterparts are actually very fascinating and thrilled to be working with us. Mani is 21 and her lives here in town and was a translator for IAPA last summer. I have a feeling he knows the biology/ immunology material better than we all do. And Lakshima is 20 and working on her undergraduate degree but lives 3 hours outside Chennai yet commutes by bus then train everyday, just to come teach with us. And we all really love mango smoothies. More later!

-S

Special Projects

While we are here teaching, we are also working on what Sanjay calls "special projects" which are organizations in the community that we pair up with and work for, (charity really) so we can learn more about how businesses are run and get more exposure in the city etc. This past week we have taken time each afternoon to visit different project sites, speak with coordinators and learning about their needs and how we can help them in the short time we are here.

Monday we went to an orphanage in a coastal town an hour south of here, Mahablaipurem. We met the director of the orphanage, learned about his financial needs and we played with the kids for the afternoon. There were about 12 or so children, all under 13 years, and living and going to school in a very modest stone building.
They were amazingly sweet, knew limited English and called us all auntie and uncle. We took them down to the beach and played in the waves and played games. It was really amazing to see how unbelievably sweet they were. They didn't want anything, they didn't ask for money or things, the just wanted to hold our hand or sit in the sand with us. The director said that it costs about 50 American dollars for each child for one month, and unfortunately their wealthy Dutch benefactor just died and they are going to need financial support from the Tamil Nadu government now.
[When we went to the beach with the kids Sanjay taught them some game where you tackle everyone all at once. I didn't really get it but they had fun]


Yesterday we went to a "truck stop" outside the city. A truck stop is really the same thing here as it is in the US, men that drive cargo trucks across the county stop for a day to rest and reload. At this particular stop there is an organization doing HIV-prevention outreach and education (because stats have shown that truckers moving across the country is a high demographic being infected and spreading AIDS). Within the center of the area there is a small booth that acts as a little classroom and some peer-teachers stay there to educate truckers. There are books and posters and demonstrations on health and hygiene, which we were all very impressed with. It seemed to be very effective for such a modest working space. (Although the large crowd of local truckers might have something to do with the 20 Americans getting off a bus and taking a ton of pictures....)

This morning a small group of us went to an AIDS hospice that is located inside a hospital in Chennai. This hospice was started by some men in the medical community when they paired up with some students from IAPA a few years ago (as you can imagine, there is a serious need for palliative care in this area). The director and a physician gave us a short tour of the center and explained how it is run. The tour was short due to the fact that the place was very tiny; six beds, handful of nurses and one physician. They also only had one patient at the time because there isn't enough staff, space and supplies to allow for more. They spoke to us about helping them work to expand their services and be able to serve more people. Despite the conditions, the doctor and nurses were so happy to see us (not unlike most places we go) and we so thrilled that we might be able to help them, even if it is just administration work or "beautification".

I wish I had time to write in further detail about all of these trips, but each service project is unique and moved us a little bit. I can tell some students are more drawn to one particular project, a lot of the girls want to go back to the orphanage and some guys saw the importance in the trucker outreach. I don't really know what I want to do yet, but we still have more opportunities to see other potential projects this weekend. (I am feeling a little overwhelmed because there are so many opportunities and there is so much need. Its hard to pick just one thing that is feasible in just eight weeks! So little time to get something tangible accomplished!)

On a final note, I think that it is interesting that at nearly all places we visit, no matter how small or impoverished or crowded, everyone still breaks for tea and cookies. I will never cease to be impressed by this.

[the beach temple at Mahablipurem]

-S

FOOD

Due to popular demand, I'll write about the food here. First off, let me say that Northern Indian food and Southern Indian food is very different. It appears that all the Indian that I have had in the past has been of the northern flavor (and I am in the very...very south).
Traditionally for breakfast we have a dosa, flat rice pancake dipped in Sambar, which is kind of like chicken noodle soup. We also have coconut chutney and bananas. It's good, but very plain. Nothing here is seasoned with salt, everything is spicy or sweet. We always have breakfast at the hostel in the 'canteen' and it is pretty much the same thing every day.

Lunch, however is more exciting. We usually eat where ever we are teaching or hanging out in the city. Yesterday we ate at the food court in the big mall. That included Dominoes Pizza, KFC, and Subway, (I'll give you three guesses as to which I had).

But eating at the food court is rare, usually we find a little diner or restaurant that can fit us all and we order a ton of food and just pass things around. This includes more dosa with different masala sauces, rice and veggies, fruit chutneys, noodles with chicken or goat meat, wide variety of stuff. But mostly white carbs and spicy sauces. My stomach is slowly adjusting...I won't go in to detail there, use your imagination.

The strangest thing is EVERYONE EATS WITH THEIR HANDS. yes, EVEN RICE. So far I have been asking for silverware and taking baby steps towards eating like a local, but all the other kids really get into it. All foods are eaten with your hands, more specifically just your right hand. I will have to do some research as to why this is, but it's awfully fun to watch!

For dinner the past few nights we have gone out as a group to some nice restaurants...Sanjay wants to treat us the first few days we are here. But starting tonight we will be eating at the hostel. More rice, dosa, marsala and chutney. Also a lot of fruit like bananas and mangoes. Its very good as well, my favorite being paneer butter marsala over rice or nan bread. It is cheese cubes and a spicy sauce and sooo good.

Today we are spending the afternoon south of the city is a little coastal town where a children's orphanage is. We ate lunch at a little seafood place and since this is a food-related post, my first picture of the day will be of our lunch selection. very fresh!Actually, I had marsala calamari... way good. If you are wondering if the seafood is safe to eat even when the water is not safe to drink...that is a very good question. And I don't really have an answer to that, other than I'll let you know if I get ill. But everyone seems to think it's ok. :/

On a different note, my new favorite thing is tea breaks! When we are teaching or visiting or just having lessons, locals take a tea break just about every three hours. And the tea is really just a mix of coffee and tea leaves, very sweet, kind of milky and a highly caffeinated and it comes served with little biscuits as well. At first I thought this was a practice reserved for foreigners or wealthy people, but in actuality there are tea stalls all over the city and everyone takes multiple tea breaks throughout the day no matter what you are doing.

Some days I love it and some days it doesn't love me back but all in all the food is pretty good.

-S

Well that crisis is over. My luggage arrived (one week after I did) and I am pretty sure everything is intact. I have been ten times happier since.

Let me explain a little about how our orientation has been going this week. We are preparing to start teaching at the schools and clinics on Monday so each day our group meets with our CPs (CP being short for counterparts...they are our translators but Sanjay doesn't want us to call them translators because they are doing so much more than that, they show us around the city and help teach the curriculum,take us shopping and touring places on the weekends, basically our new best friends). There are about 10 CPs, two per teaching group and they are college students from all over the city of Chennai who are fluent in both English and Tamil. We have to practice teaching with them so they can learn how to translate for us when we are with students. We are also learning how to get around the city and taking a few lessons in Tamil and learning a little background on the history of HIV in India. We also got a short lesson in how the Indian government is helping those infected and other marginalized groups. (NEWS FLASH: you are better off being infected with AIDS in India rather than in the US because Indian government will pay for majority of medicines and health care no matter what the social class or status...not so in the US).

Here is your Tamil lesson for the day (and this is about as much as I can remember without my notebook in front of me)

Hello - Van-i-com
Where is it? - Inge e ir-i-ku?
Thanks - Nan-dri
Rice with spicy tomato sauce and cheese - Paneer Butter Marsala (my favorite dish, I order it everywhere)

It does not appear that I can upload pictures yet, still working that out.

-S

still jet-lagged

Coming from Arizona, the humidity is suffocating especially when the sun is strongest. It also doesn't help that there is a visible cloud of hazy pollution that hangs on the city and prevents any kind of cool breezes.
We took auto-rickshaws to orientation this morning which is really just a glorified lawn mower with a cover. You cram four people in the back seat and it functions just like a cab. They are the most popular form of transportation because they are cheap and very common and only the wealthiest people have cars. Most use motorbike and bicycles. The rickshaw drivers can be compared to cab drivers in New York, except they drive so close to the auto next to you, you could reach out and grab the steering wheel. These cab rides have been my favorite thing we have done as of yet, because you get a fantastic tour of the city as well as a breeze (which is important because it is annoning showing up to meeting drenched in sweat by 8 am). Plus avoiding walking in the street whenever possible is a good idea because our group gets many stares...apparently huge groups of Caucasian young people are not common here and reason for people to stop what they are doing and gawk at us. That is something that will take getting used to.

It turns out that getting to an Internet connection is not as easy as I would have liked, so blog posts are not going to happen often. Hopefully I will be able to write more about our translators and orientation soon, as well as upload pictures once my camera equipment arrives.

Luggage status: still not here. It had been six days and I am wearing other peoples clothes. This is beyond frustrating because I am not having any luck with the transportation desk her in Chennai nor with British Airways. Maybe I will never see my stuff ever again. Oh well...I guess I 'll just have to do some serious shopping. :)

More later
-S

FINALLY

You can breathe now...I finally made it to Chennai. My first impression of this city...hazy, crowded, colorful, humid. I arrived late at night and Eric, Sanjay and Cambel were there to pick me up and take me to where we are staying. We are staying at a Christian Church led hostel. It is actually a non-denominational Christian Church (imagine my surprise!). We call it CSI, Church of South India. There is a small chapel with a small hotel and canteen attached which is run by the Christian Indians that live there. Among our group we have ten or so rooms with three people in each. The rooms are nice, reminiscent of summer camp. Three beds, a desk, two dressers and yes...a full bathroom in each room. However drainage systems are interesting...that I will save for another day. Did I mention each room is air conditioned? That was a nice surprise. :)
One thing us American students must get used to while living here at the CSI is being more conservative. Since we are living at a church, we must abide by their rules, and that means dressing appropriately, keeping our voices down and not swearing (our hosts do speak English). They are so serious about all three of these things. Swearing is hugely offensive and that could cause them to ask us to leave. In all honesty though, these are not unreasonable requests, and seeing as though the CSI is centrally located, inexpensive, and safe, I think we got a pretty good set-up. Hopefully I'll be able to upload pictures at some point because it is interesting.

The city of Chennai itself is breathtaking. Not for its beauty (because to be honest, it is filthy), but because of the sheer amount of people that fill the streets in all forms of transportation and in all methods of dress. I learned today that there are close to seven million people here, and I have a feeling every single one of them all try to cross the street at once. The busy roads here are full of motorbikes, rickshaws, cabs, cars, bikes, people, everything all at once and driving in different directions, swerving and crossing in front of eachother. Not to mention they drive on the left side of the road whuch made my first ricksahw experience very frightening. I am astonished that there aren't more head-on collisions. I don't really know how else to describe the street life except that I am going to have to upload pictures as soon as my card reader arrives...
On that note, still no luggage.
Oh well.

-S

I hate airports

Ok, so it went down like this: Point of origin = Tucson. Got delayed three hours in Phoenix made it to my next city four hours late. Was supposed to make a flight to London from Chicago however nothing was leaving Chicago for the rest of the evening thanks to some kind of wind advisory...So I spent the night there, left the next morning for Toronto where I learned that I have to be on a flight to Brussels that wull then take me to Chennai (final destination).
So by the time I arrive in Chennai I will have passed through five cities on three continents in two days. Or maybe three days, thats debatable because I crossed multiple time zones and I dont really know what counts as a day anymore. Perhaps it has been three days because I have seen three sunsets.
Oh and have I mentioned that my luggage did not, in fact, make it here to Toronto with me. That means I dont know were it is and it won't make it to India on time. But I think I will be okay, I have my toothbrush, my camera, and a few turkey sandwitches in the bottom of my bag (thanks to my mom who inadvertently taught me to always travel with sandwitches). I'm going to go take a nap on the floor of the airport...hopefull next time I write I will be in Chennai!

Hope in the Face of AIDS Banquet, Phoenix Arizona. 5/9/2008

T-5 DAYS

The countdown has begun! Next Friday I take off. Well actually I am leaving for Phoenix then Chicago then London then Chennai. I am so excited I don't think I am going to make it through the end of summer school...

A little background on the trip:
I will be teaching with International Alliance for the Prevention of AIDS, a nonprofit group that was started by medical students looking for a practical way to make a difference in the AIDS epidemic.
This group teaches college students a curriculum about HIV/AIDS and prepares us to teach it to others overseas in India, where the spread of the virus has become a huge socioeconomic problem. This link has a few stats on the current issues and numbers of those infected.

http://www.who.int/hiv/HIVCP_IND.pdf (from the World Health Organization)

Some of our lessons include immunology, basic biology, methods of transmission, prevention, and healthy living. And lets not forget my favorite, the condom demonstration. (The 10th graders at Tucson High thought it was…very informative. They were our guinea pig class. I think I learned more from them than they did from me)
Once in India, we are going to be traveling to different schools and organizations in Chennai and teaching different material, depending on the audience.


I can’t wait to be working and living with all the IAPA kids...even the ones from ASU. Everyone has some different talent and passion and they have really inspired me and made me realize how much more I have to learn in order to be a successful teacher.

Just for kicks
Here is my current packing list:
-Sunscreen SPF 1,000
-Mosquito net
-A gallon of bug spray
-A pretty hefty supply of doxycycline - malaria medication
-Another supply of Cipro (we wouldn’t another ‘Spring Break Mexico’ incident…)
-A case of Luna Bars, apparently I’ve been told I won’t like what is traditionally offered for breakfast. However as long as it isn’t goat testicles I think i'll try anything.
-Modest clothing. (No tank tops. No skirts. No tight shirts. Basically I had to buy a whole new wardrobe)
-12 or so camera memory cards
-A long book for the plane ride. Right now I have Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Anyone have any other suggestions? Lets face it, I have about 40 hours worth of travel to look forward to.

More details once we arrive in country :)

-S