India in the Early Morning

I am sitting in my bed right now at 7:30 in the morning trying to stretch out the kinks in my legs that I can already feel forming after an early morning trip to the gym. Those of us who decided to buy a gym membership have been getting up early in the morning and making the five or so minute walk to “Karma”, an air conditioned fitness paradise that is brimming with trainers who are eager to help correct a faulty exercise. Unfortunately, the day after I got my membership I came down with a cough that has made it hard to breathe so I did have not been to the gym the last few times so after a trip to the doctor last night to stock up on cough syrup and antibiotics I was really looking forward to going this morning. At 6am sharp Stacey, Celina, and I tiptoed down the stairs of the guest house, past several sleeping housekeepers who apparently just roll out mats and sleep on the ground floor, and filed out the door onto the road.

 There is something peaceful about getting up early in the morning and walking the streets of Kolkata. The usual symphony of honks is reduced to a few lone beeps and the usually teaming streets are dotted with a few early-morning shoppers and those shop keepers who are sweeping the outside of their stores. As we walked along in the morning light we passed by men and women sleeping by the side of the road, the men folded in half and the women on their side with sleep-tumbled hair falling around their saris. Even the dogs walk around lazily in the morning, seemingly eyeing us as we passed by and wondering why we would ever got up this early of our own volition. Today, or the first time yet in India, I saw a man feeding a stray dog. With a big smile on his face the dirty looking man bent over and offered a cracker to a small, brown and white mutt and even though it was obvious that the dog was distrusting of the gesture of kindness, he daintily picked the morsel from the man’s hands and trotted away with the prize. The air was filled with the smells of cooking food as the food vendors began to chop up their ingredients for the day and cook them over the roadside burners. It appeared to have rained at some point in the night because puddles could be found by the side of the road, though no one was yet bathing in them as people in India are like to do. It is not unusual to see men stripped down to their underwear lathering up with soap right in the gutter and I distinctly remember on our first walking tour watching a boy splash around in the water and I actually felt envious of him as sweat rolled down the small of my back and down my legs; sure, the water is dirty but at least it would cool me off in the heat of the day.

It is easy to go about India in the morning and forget what it is like during the bustle of the day. Thoughts of frantic drivers and shouting street vendors are forgotten, as is the heat of the sun. The humidity still hangs around the air like a thick, wet blanket but at least we did not feel the burn of the sun. As we walked in our gym clothes, I could still feel wondering eyes on my face but I chose not to look back because I was too focused on absorbing the scene that I was walking through. In the back of my mind I knew that this was just the start of another hectic day here in India. In just a few hours I knew I would find myself sitting in the back of a car, wearing a hole in the ground where my food constantly presses the imaginary brake as I watch the driver squeeze through impossibly small spots at frighteningly fast speeds. Then I would be off to school At Manovikas coaxing crying Autistic children to pleasepleaseplease put the peg in the peg board or sit up straight or stop spitting or be quiet and stop shrieking. By eleven I knew I would have already been bombarded by 15 new Bengali words that the teachers around me would teasingly expect me to learn (they think it is hilarious when Kristen and I try to speak Bengali and never seem to tire of teaching us new words and laugh good-naturedly as we try to stumble our way through the foreign pronunciation). I knew that all of these things were going to happen later in the day but as I made my way down the winding roads of Kolkata this morning, none of it seemed to be real. Sometimes I still have moments where it becomes real: I am in India. This whole experience has already been the most eye-opening thing that I have ever done and It is nice every once in awhile to be able to stroll down the streets in the morning and simply take the time to drink it all in. 

First Days of School!

Sooo the internet hasn’t been great here but I really wont use that as an excuse for not posting because to tell the truth I have just been so busy that I haven’t wanted to take the time to post. I am writing this blog in my bed before I go to sleep again so I am planning on it being shorter than the other ones but we will see how that works out…

     After we came back from New Delhi (the most exciting part of the airplane ride was the pizza that we got in the airport because it was the first completely American food that we had had since arriving) we all went to sleep early because Thursday of last week was our first day of work! Thursday morning Sean, Kristen, and I got up at 8 so that we could head out to work at 9:30 with Baishakhi. All three of us were both excited and nervous and before we left we got a “first day of school” picture complete with Sean wearing his backpack. Even though Manovikas is only a few miles away from where we live the insane traffic makes it so that what should take 5 minutes ends up taking 25. Once we finally got to Manovikas we went straight to the office of the woman who is in charge of our work at the school. My first impression of the building was that it was much bigger than I expected. The white and blue outer walls sprawled back away from the street and were encircled my a large lawn that was dotted with toys and a few pieces of jungle gym equipment. For our first day all they had us do was take a tour of the building, which was extremely eye-opening. The first floor was mainly younger kids and the first room that we walked into was a sensory room and it was filled with tools for children suffering from various disabilities. Then we visited a room where a woman who has Cerebral Palsey was sitting on the floor and the woman who was giving us the tour explained that the woman had CP but here parents married her off anyways and when she had a child, he was born with even more severe CP. The last room on that floor was the “Early Intervention” Autism for kids 5-7 class. The second we walked in all I could think was that the sounds in that room reminded me of my childhood. Some of the children were screaming, others were banging the walls, and one was even singing to himself. The second floor of the building was mostly for older and higher functioning kinds. These children were being trained to do simple jobs, such as cooking, baking, or working a loom, and all of them were more than happy to show us the products of our labor. The last floor of the building was both a school to train special education teachers and a laboratory that focuses on searching for a cause and eventually a cure for autism and other diseases. After this tour we headed back to the manager’s off ice and she explained how she wanted our “project” for the next seven weeks to be to create a manual explaining the major types of disabilities, describing their symptoms, and coming up with management plans for all of them. So after we headed back home, eager for the next day to come so that we could start our first real day of work.

     Friday rolled around and we headed out at 9:30 so that we could get to work right on time at 10 (it was decided that we would work with the kids form 10-1 and then go back to where we are staying and work on the manual). When we first arrived we were led around and placed into different rooms. Mine happened to be the screaming room from the day before, which didn’t bother me too much because I am used to the noise and honestly after living with my brother, very little that children do surprises me anymore. The teacher of that classroom was very welcoming and we chatted while the speech therapist was talking to the mothers and she asked me about where I was from while I grilled her on the classroom logistics. Soon after, the therapist left and I got to work with two of the children. The task was simple: have the children take turns pulling pegs out of a board and putting them into a basket. Sounds easy right? Wrong. You would think that I asked these kids to kill their beloved pet rather than do a simple task. There were tears shed, walls banged, arms scratched, and hands pushed away. The little girl on my right was given a cookie by her mother and when she set it down I tried to give it back to her (thinking it would stem the tears) and after about a2 second pause, the shrieking increased and I saw the cookie come hurling toward my face. Approximately 3 minutes later, the same girl decided to bite my hand while I was trying to prompt her to take the stupid peg off of the board. Even though it was a tough day (the rest of it went on in a fashion very similar to this) I really enjoyed working with the teachers and every time a child would react to doing a task correctly (which was a limited number of times but that just made it more special when they did) I felt like just maybe I am making a bit of an impact. I can tell that the job is going to be trying but I also know that our main purpose here is to create a manual that Manovikas can use as a reference for parents and new teachers who are presented with symptoms but do not necessarily know what disability they fit.

     I am going to try to post again either tomorrow morning or afternoon but I am just getting too tired right now… Tomorrow is going to be another day at work and I am excited to see what comes 

The Taj

The Taj      By day five in India I thought I had gotten used to the unusual amount  of attention that our group received due to our foreign appearance. I was wrong, and not just by a little bit. At five am Stacey's alarm went off in the dark hotel room and we both lugged ourselves out of bed to get ready for a big day. We both showered in the bathroom, which was slightly more of an ordeal than one would expect. To give some background on the layout of our bathroom i have to go back to our first day at the transit house. When we all arrived we started claiming rooms, starting with the girls giving the two boys what we thought to be the largest room because we figured that its prime location would make for a good gathering area. This was all fine and dandy until about an hour later when the girls who had arrived in the first room were sitting on the second floor tying to fight off the inevitable jet lag nap. Shikha mentioned in passing that Charles believed that his bathroom did not have a shower. We all kind of chuckled and wrote it of as Charles probably not noticing another bathroom door since all of ours had been locked at first and appeared to be closets. Minutes later Charles wandered into the room and his first words were, "guys, the shower is the bathroom. The bathroom is the shower." since he was met with blank stares he went on to say "no seriously, I could take a shower while sitting on the toilet because there is just a removable shower head and a drain in the corner of the tiny room". Of course we ha to see this for ourselves so when we later had dinner in that room we all flocked to the bathroom and all we could stammer out after looking at the postage stamp sized tiled room was"the bathroom is the shower! The shower is the bathroom!". My second thought was: thank god this is the boys room...Going back to New Delhi, our shower and bathroom were one and the same, though larger than Charles and Sean's so a simple shower drenched the entire room and made later bathroom preparation a swampy one.        At six am we all piled onto the bus and set off for the 4 hour drive to Agra. We were told that we were driving to a McDonald's that was close to the edge of the city so we all settled in for the first leg of the trip. After passing a McDonald's in hour one and then slipping on to hour two we started becoming desperate. Lindsay's earlier joke of rationing out her walnuts started to seem increasingly plausible and an undertone of grumbling filled the bus. Thankfully, by hour three  we pulled in to the McDonalds and the incredible amount of ecstasy that filled the bus would have made an outsider think that we were marooned sailors who found water instead of college kids who reached a generic fast food chain. I have literally never been more excited to see those golden arches. The restaurant served some regular fare such as chi ken sandwiches but there were no beef products and you could get "shake fries" which were normal fries that the purchaser could put in a bag with a packet of spicy seasoning and shake till they were coated.       We were all much happier after the food break and the closer we got to Agra, the more palpable the excitement became in the bus. One of the amazing things that I saw out of my bus window was the menagerie of animals that the streets housed. There were the normal stray dogs but along with them there were oxen lazily strolling in an out of traffic, peacocks perched on some chosen roofs, a lone camel hanging out on the side walk, and at one of our stops we saw a boy with a snake in a basket, to Sean's great dismay. Since the taj is sensitive to car pollution we had to buy our tickets and then take an electric car/bus over to the site itself.       When we finally rounded the corner and saw the taj for the first time the only thing that could be heard among our group were the clicking of the camera shutters. The building was absolutely breath-taking. Gleaming white marble was artfully designed into curving domes and rising minarets while parts of the building were delicately inlaid with black marble embellishments and surrounding the door there were black marble passages from the Quran. Needless to say, the picture taking festivities that followed took about as long as it took to build the taj. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but not by much. Sean insightfully compared it to prom and as the clicks and poses went on I was also reminded of night filled with floor length dresses and girls screaming out suggestions for the next "pic". Of course, this time I looked a little different. Sweat has become the clutch  look for all of us on this trip so as the shots went on so did the habitual wiping of my dripping row and fanning of my ballooning Indian style pants.     Now we get to my fixation on the unusual attention we received at these monuments. While this was all going on, we started to realizing a slightly perturbing trend: people seemed to be shifting their cameras from the taj to our group. A man in a dark green polo continually waited until we had a new pose (every one with white shirts! Girls! Roommates! Jumping pic!) and would surreptitiously snap his own picture. After being told off several times it took a full blown confrontation by Sean (for those who don't know him he is 6' tall and not a guy who I would ever want to mess with) for him to slink away, glaring over his shoulder at Sean who watched his retreat. Everywhere we went people whipped out cameras for a quick picture, sneakily filmed us, asked for pictures with us, and pushed their children toward us for a picture with our group. As the day wore on our patience with such antics wore thin and the amount of men turning their home video cameras toward our predominantly female group started to actually become alarming. I felt like a part of a walking circus. An unwilling and sweaty circus. I never thought I would say this but I actually feel for brittney spears after her dramatic spiral down in the media world. Everywhere I turned I was met with a probing camera lens and felt violated and constantly reminded that I don't belong here.      After the taj we visited the Agra Fort which has been around since 1080. I was both impressed with the opulence that still exists and saddened that I would never see this place how it looked before the British looted it for precious stones and tourists graffitied their names into this historically priceless place (for clarification; tourist does not exclusively mean foreigners, much of the graffiti was in Indian script). To add to our "tour de Agra animals" we ran into some bats who were not pleased by our camera flashes that were invading their homes.      After these two visits we headed back to the bus, exhausted and sweaty. After another quick stop by McDonalds we pulled back onto the main road back to our hotel. I am writing this blog post on the bus now as the girls around me dose off and the sound of horns go off in the background. Hopefully I will get this blog up tonight! Tomorrow it is off to more New Delhi historical sites and to the Delhi Haat, a giant open-air market :)

Expecting the Unexpected

Hello from New Delhi!
     Four days after arriving in Kolkata our group set off to New Delhi and, as we are learning to expect, things did not go quite as we expected. At nine in the morning our group set off to the Foreign Registry Office in Kolkata to make our presence officially known. Of course today of all days the ugly beast called traffic decided to remind us of its existence. As we sat in the car our bodies lurched back and forth as the driver attempted to weave through the masses of taxis, cars, motorcycles and pedestrians we did our best to keep from getting motion sickness. This was done with varying degrees of success but in the end we made it to the embassy with no issues. At the embassy we crammed ourselves in the "Visitor Room" and attempted to make 11 American-sized bodies fit into the miniscule room so that we could all enjoy the rare treat of air conditioning.
     After leaving the embassy the plan was to head to a restaurant for lunch and then get to the airport with enough time to check in and get to our gate. The funny thing about making plans in India is that they always seem to have a mind of their own. The group was divided into two cars with 6 people in each and our luggage for New Delhi and early on in the trip the van that I was in got stuck behind some slow cars and lost the other car. It wasnt until about 20 minutes later that we saw them again as we passed their car pulled over by the side of the highway. When our driver pulled over, everyone in our car craned our necks to try to see what was going on but all we could determine was that Sean and the drivers were trying to assess some sort of damage. When the car set out again those of us in my car could see a visible tremor to the car's gate and they didn't make it far before they pulled over again and everyone piled out. Soon after, our car was joined by Tierney and Michelle and, in a well intentioned but poorly thought out attempt to make more room for them, Charles vaulted himself over the back row to join Kristen and I in the back seat. As he sat upside down in the fetal position with his rear in Kristen's face and his head almost in my lap he said dejectedly, "This didn't go like I thought it would...". No it didn't. Neither, however, do a lot of things in India so instead of complaining or giving up, you wiggle around until you find another way to make them work out. Charles quickly righted himself and we were off again, with four of our party trailing behind in a cab.
     The airport was just as chaotic as I remembered it to be and after a breif panic over Charles' lost ticket we finally made it into the airport with just enough time to fly through check in and security and make it to our gate in time. Well, at least we could have done those things if it didn't take 15 minutes for them to print out our boarding passes and if they didn't have to individually pat us down in security with a metal detector and if security didn't confuse Michelle's tongue-scraper for a weapon. After several flustered moments we set off at double pace to our gate expecting to board the plane immediately and set off. Well, that would have happened if our plane hadn't been delayed by almost 30 minutes. Finally, however, we got on the plane and spent 2 pleasant hours either sleeping or playing cards among ourselves and making use of a bathroom that was relatively clean (I don't think that I can justly convey the ammount of happiness that this small pleasure brings us).
     Even after all of the set-backs of today we finally made it to New Delhi and even though we didn't have time to see the Bahai Temple because of the delay we still had the chance to see some of India's capitol. Straight out of the airport we filed onto our tour bus that is going to be taking us around for the next few days. The bus seats 14 people and has fans and air-conditioning within its shabby exterior so there were no complaints to be heard as we set off. Looking around the city as we drove, the first thing that I noticed was the difference in the terrain. In Kolkata everything that isn't built up with houses or shops is a lush green and palm trees adorn many streets while in New Delhi the ground is arid and the stray dogs that we have been so used to seeing have now been accompanied by monkeys who pick through the trash by the said of the road.         The government offices in New Delhi are surrounded by pristine streets and guards, which is a drastic difference from the streets of Kolkata. After seeing the President's House, the Parlimentary house, and the India Gate we headed to a nice dinner and then off to our hotel. The street that the hotel is on is similar to the ones that we have been seeing in Kolkata, serving as a reminder that no matter how clean the streets were around the governmental offices, New Delhi has its fair share of poverty.
     Right now we are all separating into our seperate rooms and preparing for a long day tomorrow. At 6am we are going to get on a bus and by this time tomorrow we will all have seen one of the 7 wonders of the world!

A Study in Contrasts

I am forcing myself to write this post before I go to bed because I do not want to forget any of today but since I am so tired I am not making any promises of grammatical correction.

Day 3

     Today was our third day in Kolkata and by far the most overstimulating to the senses. First thing in the morning we all woke up and had a “light” breakfast (the quotes are there because light apparently constitutes cereal, toast, omelets, boiled eggs, coffee, tea, and fruit. I am actually slightly frightened to think of what a heavy breakfast is. Side note #1, the milk is served hot here with cereal) and then headed out for our first walking tour of Kolkata. The day was surprisingly cool, probably only in the mid 80s or early 90s and there was a slight breeze. This does not mean, however, that the humidity had let up. Last night there was a violent monsoon (which I slept through but Stacey assures me that it was impressive) which had left the ground wet and the air thick. A quick word about Indian humidity: Imagine that you are in a sauna, then imagine that there are 15 humidifiers in the sauna with you, and just for good measure imagine that there is a hose misting you off. That is India. The air hangs heavy and immediately when I step out of my air conditioned room my body is covered in a layer of water. There is no concept of “being dry” in India.

     Moving on to the walking tour itself. The guide met us on the side of a street that was an off-branch of a main road and as we piled out of the car and looked around it became apparent that this tour was going to give us a real view of the city, not a disenchanted one. The guide was dressed in a red American printed T-shirt, dark wash jeans, and bright red Crocks and he teased us for our sleepy demeanors. As we talked with him, two girls with no shoes on and too small clothing slowly circled our group: the first of many people who were both intrigued by us and hoping to make some money off of our naiveté.  We set off in what appeared to be no particular direction and made it no further than a block away before we stopped by a water spigot that had two men by it. One man was filling up a gallon of water while the other was waiting nearby with a large black bag. Our guide explained to us that the bag was made of goat skin and, as the man kneeled and began to scoop water in the bag from the provided bucket in order to increase the filling rate from that of the hose alone, he continued to say that he delivered water to families who did not live by a water source. Water in India only flows from certain areas at designated times, one of the many things that I am learning I take for granted in America. Following along the theme of getting fresh goods delivered to ones house, about five minutes later a man with three goats passed by us on the way to houses that receive fresh (about as fresh as you can get) morning goat milk. We passed through a Buddhist temple and several other landmarks but the next event that really sticks out in my mind was when we went to the Chinese market.

     The market is on a street that used to be owned by Chinese businesses and still today there is a Chinese influence. The street was the picture of organized chaos; vendors shouted their wares while buyers passed by with an appraising eye. There were flower vendors, people making fresh food, fish being skinned, chickens being slaughtered, motorcycles passing through; my head felt like it was going to fly off from looking back and forth so many times. As much as I was looking at the people around me, it was nothing like how we were being looked at.

     Side Note #2, staring. Not only is it painfully obvious that I am foreign, I am also 5’10’’, blonde, blue-eyed and was traveling with 8 other women on a street that was predominantly male in a country where the average height for women is 5’ tall. As we passed by, all heads jerked in our direction and gazes that should have been passing glances locked onto us. I can now say that the sight of my group and I has literally stopped people in their tracks. This is not, however, the staring of adoration as I am sure celebrities are used to. No. This is the kind of staring that people in America would do if a group of aliens walked down the street. Their faces pass so quickly from intrigue, to curiosity, to amazement, and even to disgust on some; I cannot help but feel like some sort of strange animal in a zoo. I have never noticed how anonymous I am in America, but I am beginning to long for the days when my every action doesn’t feel so scrutinized.

     The tour continued on and we went through a staggering number of different houses of worship. This is one of the many amazing things of India: even through there is such apparent wealth disparity and social issues, it is truly a secular country. There is no discrimination based on religion, which was demonstrated by the fact that the caretakers of one of the cities oldest synagogues are all Muslim. Along the way we sampled several different types of traditional food with mixed reviews and continually wiped our dripping foreheads. The streets of India are, like most things here, unlike anything I have ever seen. There is trash on every corner and in every gutter and rotting fruit peels line the sidewalks, which have a noticeable absence of trashcans. Maybe it is the humidity or the heat but for some reason I felt like the smells were amplified in India to a level that I had never experienced before. The smell of the rain storm that had recently happened with mixed in with that of smoke, pollution, cooking food, unwashed bodies, spices, and wet dirt all hung heavy in the air. Thankfully, the slight breeze in the air kept it from being completely stagnant and we walked along in relative comfort. After 5 hours we bid our tour guide goodbye and took a several hour rest period in the house.

     Later on in the evening we decided to go grocery shopping for some items and many of the girls needed to buy some heat appropriate pants and shirts. First we headed to the Ganga (Ganges) river to see what it looked like right before sunset. As we strolled down the path (accompanied by the usual amount of staring) I couldn’t help but notice the difference between this place and that of the streets we were walking just hours before in the same city. The area by the river was free of trash and there were even (surprisingly) trashcans. It is obvious that the reconstruction has been recent especially because when Tierney tried to use the restroom she was told that it would be “finished in 2-4 days”. The people who were taking an evening stroll were also obviously of a totally different class than those we saw earlier. The contrast between the half naked men who were literally bathing in street water and these elegantly clothed women who walked arm in arm with their tailored husbands was astonishing.

     Our last stop of the day was a mall in South Kolkata and if I thought the contrast between the Ganga and our tour was vast, I was in for a surprise. The mall was immaculate and the florescent lighting made everything look new and appealing, just as any mall that I would visit in a nice area of the US. Five floors boasted a plethora of shops, some with traditional American wears such as Nike and some with traditional Indian garb. The girls combed through the pants and tunics while the boys aimlessly wandered and, I am sure, cursed us silently. After picking out several outlandish looking pairs of pants that I can only describe as and have officially dubbed “Printed and Colorful (Disney) Princess Jasmine Pants” we headed to the basement to pick up some food. In “Spencers” we raked the shelves for necessary toiletries and food but the line (crowd really) at the checkout/exit was beyond shocking.

     Sidenote #3. Personal space. It doesn’t exist in India. At all. People will stand directly behind you in line, in elevators, in escalators, at the counter, when walking, and all without a second thought. Cutting in line is appropriate and it is every man for himself when it comes to getting from place to place as fast as you can. I couldn’t help but think that walking in the Indian mall was incredibly similar to the drivers on the Indian streets except for the fact that the people lacked horns.

After the mall we went back to the house, ate dinner, and crashed. It is now past midnight and I am so ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow we fly to New Delhi and I can’t wait to see the famous Taj Mahal! Hopefully I will get around to pictures soon...

Until Next Time!

Duke Takes on International Travel – Hilarity Ensues…

35 and ½ hours after I first stepped into LAX I am finally settled into my room in Kolkata. My feet hurt a bit, I may still be sweating even after I showered, and it has become obvious that I packed a serious surplus of ziplock bags but I, like all the others of us who are still fighting jetlag and awake at this point, can’t seem to stop smiling. Flying is a weird experience. I walked into the Tom Bradley International Terminal in Los Angles and sat in a metal box with wings for a relatively short period of time and before I knew it I was walking out of the Kolkata Airport; literally around the world from where I started. These last few hours hove been a study in the contrast of emotions: fear to excitement to frustration to exhaustion to awe and hopefully this post will do all of them a little bit of justice.

            By the time I boarded the Emriates flight from LAX to Dubai, (the first leg of my two-flight journey, others on the trip had various different routes with all but one meeting up in Dubai to head to Kolkata) I could tell that this flight was going to be a unlike any that I had taken before. This plane made my mediocre domestic flights that I take to get back and forth to Durham look like rides on a dirty public bus. I had to remind myself several times to stop looking so awestruck as my eyes ran over the personal TV, flight crew with makeup perfected to a T, and the “anti-jetlag” lighting. I even caught a glimpse of flowerpots that were hung on the wall of the business class cabin before they shut off economy with the curtain to maintain “privacy”, which is of course, a total sham. Airplanes can try as hard as they can to try to make the passengers feel as though they have their own personal space, from putting individual covers on the headrests, to handing out eye-masks to be used while sleeping, to the arm rests that are lowered between to seats , but this is all in vain. If you looked up the word antithesis in the dictionary I am quite sure the two words: “airplane” and “privacy” would be the main entry. No matter how nice a flight and how much a person tries to mind their own business you always somehow become entangled with those who are seated next to you, so inevitably, the story of my flight is wound around the stories of two different groups of people who just so happened to be surrounding me.

These two particular stories were those of the two middle school aged sisters who sat next to me and that of the honeymooners who were directly in front of me. Going back to the aspect of privacy on a plane, there is really no privacy in any sense. In the middle of the night when I woke up to find one of the girls sleeping square in the middle of my lap I learned that physical privacy was a sham. She awoke to my sudden exclamation of “Oh!” as I peeled off my eye-mask and looked down and when she opened her eyes to find mine to be directly looking down at her as she lay like a baby in my lap she responded with a similar “Oh!!!”. She quickly flung herself back into her seat with many apologies on both our parts being said (I am not completely sure why I felt the need to apologize but it was better than breaking into nervous laughter which is my usually habit in situations like this). Our seats on this plane brought us into such intimate physical contact that all premise of privacy that was provided by the meager armrest that was in-between us was quickly dissolved. The honeymooners in front of me shattered the premise of verbal privacy approximately 3 hours into the flight. This third hour just so happened to also correspond with their 6^th drink of the flight. I learned things about Bethany and Miles that I never wanted to know. Until I was finally bored enough of hearing about their beautiful wedding “Just two days past in wine country with hundreds of guests!” to put on an episode of CSI on my TV I learned more about a pair of complete strangers than I ever have before.

After the 15 hours that I spent in my assigned seat thousands of feet up in the air I finally arrived at the Dubai International airport. I have heard many rumors about the glitz and wealth of Dubai and to say that the airport itself didn’t disappoint would be an egregious understatement. Somehow those of us who were flying through the airport at the same time managed to find each other, the most amazing find being Stacy casually walking in the same bathroom off of her flight from JFK as those of us from LAX were just finishing up. After about 20 frustrating minutes spent battling with the WiFi we decided to walk over to the shopping part of the airport, with tales of amazing sites to be seen going through our minds. Shiny Bentleys adorned the artificially lit walkways in the airport that seemed to be more of a mall than a place of international transit. Like any good American tourists, the four girls I was with and myself grabbed the provided shopping carts to put our luggage in and set off down the aisles with cameras at the ready. We ran into several obstacles along the way, such as the cramped elevators that strangely only had buttons of floors one and three, apparently two didn’t make the cut, and the maneuvering of the carts in the crowded aisles as we purchased the largest bottles of water that we could find, but we trucked along determined to absorb as much as possible. Somewhere along the way we ran into “camel chocolate” which claims to be the “first and finest camel milk chocolate”. Being the reasonable people that we are we decided to wait till our trip back through Dubai before buying excessive amounts of this newfound delicacy.

About 90 minutes before our flight we headed over to our gate only to find that we were not allowed into the waiting area until an hour before departure. As our feet began to get tired we looked around and decided to sit in the waiting area for the empty gate next to us. Soon after that we found ourselves surrounded by men and women returning from the Hajj (the holy pilgrimage to Mecca). Men bedecked in white floor length garb protectively led the way for their wives who were covered head to toe in their black burkas and in a matter of minutes our small touristy group was surrounded in a chatter of Arabic. Only a few moments after they had all settled down an airy voice with an unmistakable British accent wafted through the air with one request: “All passengers must vacate the waiting room”. At this point I started to think that this was almost as bad a paradox as privacy on airplanes, (I mean honestly, a waiting room where you cant wait?) when they finally opened up the gate for our flight.

Unlike the previous flight, this one required that we all pile on a bus that drove for about 5 minutes to take us to our plane. As soon as we stepped outside it finally hit me that I was really abroad. You see, all airports have basically the same feel: artificial lights, perfectly heated and cooled, and the incessant chatter of travelers. It took stepping out into the 90-degree weather at 2am in Dubai to give me the slap I needed to make me realize that I was finally on the journey that I have been waiting for for so long. After some initial seat confusion that ended in me sitting in the totally wrong seat so that a husband and wife duo returning from the Hajj could remain together, I was finally onto the last leg of my trip. I fell asleep during take-off around 2:30 and then at 3:30am Dubai time (I had really lost all track of time at that point though) I was woken up for my meal. I opened my eyes to a rather flustered looking stewardess speaking to me in very heavily accented English. Coming out of a nap and being confronted with broken English was a combination that ended with me absently smiling and nodding and subsequently receiving a plate of food that I had absolutely no idea of what it was. I could make out the word “eggs” so I believe that they were present in the mush of potatoes and red paste but I was still unsure after several bites. At this point I abandoned the main dish and stuck to the fruit and roll. A few hours later we began our descent into Kolkata and I looked out the window at my new home for 8 months. The lush greenery was spotted with colorful but dilapidated houses and intertwined with glistening rivers and lakes.

The airport, in contrast with this beautiful scenery, was a study in chaos. Finally we all made it through customs and I headed straight for the baggage claim (Having lost my bag a few times I am always paranoid that it won’t come through). My bags ended up coming fairly early in the process but we had to wait as poor Michelle was put through the nerve-wracking experience of being the owner of the last bag off the plane. After that there was a brief stop in the public bathroom (let it suffice to be known that it was an …experience) and then off into a car headed to our new home. I am pretty sure that I could spend 15 pages writing about the traffic system of India but I will try to break it down into a few sentences. There are no lanes. There are no side mirrors (they get clipped off in particularly tight squeezes). There is no road rage but there is a cacophony of horns that are always going off to let the cars with no side mirrors know that they are being passed. To top this all off: there are no rules. Baishakhi (our fearless leader on this program who grew up in Kolkata) told us in an almost motherly tone that it would be best if at the beginning we simply didn’t look out the windows and trusted our drivers as the weaved through impossibly tight spaces.

Physically intact, though perhaps mentally scarred by the number of times I slammed on the brakes of the car in my head, I finally made the treck up the two flights of unairconditioned stairs into my new room. I am sharing the room with Stacy, a rising sophomore at Duke, because of our unlikely common traits. These common traits basically boil down to the fact that both of us have the immune systems (and perhaps luck) of a dying salmon. Asthma, sinus infections, and overall poor stomach health are a strange series of characteristics to bond over but we did just that. Unpacking was a whirlwind of colorful clothes and Clorox wipes as Stacy and I settled into the place where we would be spending the next 8 weeks. The room itself has air-conditioning and is extremely spacious with two beds, a table, chairs, and a wardrobe. The bathroom is constantly muggy due to the fact that the window doesn’t close all the way but all in all I was impressed with the accommodations. I was also impressed with the 8 inch lizard that appeared on the wall. Due to the fact that my roommate and I fled the room and the caretaker’s broken English explanation of where the lizard went when he went after it with a boom I would say that the is a 50-50 chance that the lizard has now taken up residence under our sink.

Currently, I am sitting in another room on the second floor (not to be confused with what Americans would call the third floor since the numbering starts with “ground” and goes up) writing this post as the other people in my group watch a Hindi movie (which is very gripping and suspenseful based on the music and their gasps) or tinker around on their computers. It is very easy to feel at home here in this foreign place. Maybe it is the hospitality or the homey rooms but whatever it is I am finally able to relax since that first moment that I stepped on a plane. 

This was an unusually long post, they won’t always be like this, but I had a lot of ground to cover! More to come soon on our exploration of Kolkata and battles with a 12 and ½ hour time and 30-degree heat difference...

Bon Voyage!

It is 10:15pm the night before I take my first international trip and of course I am not finished packing. My trail of destruction begins in my room and ends in the living room, consisting mainly of clothes and the odds and ends of travel necessities. Maybe it is because it still hasn’t hit me yet that I am really leaving that the inevitable freakout has yet to begin, but I am sure it is close at hand. Tomorrow at 4:45pm I am going to take off on Emirates flight EK216 bound for first Dubai then Kolkata India, the place that is going to be my home for the next 8 weeks of my life.

This new home is going to be both the most difficult and I am sure the most rewarding experience of my life thus far and even though I am dreading the last steps of packing, I am unbelievably excited for this journey. I am a participant in the Duke Engage in Kolkata program (for those not familiar to Duke Engage this is their mission statement via their website: "DukeEngage empowers students to address critical human needs through immersive service, in the process transforming students, advancing the University’s educational mission, and providing meaningful assistance to communities in the U.S. and abroad. DukeEngage provides funding for Duke undergraduates who wish to pursue an immersive service experience") and will be working with the NGO Manovikas Kendra Rehabilitation and Research Institute for the Handicapped.

Manovikas Kendra is an institute that aims to help diagnose and educate “differently-able” children with the goal being the facilitation of these children into everyday society. Ever since the first day that I read through the Duke Engage programs almost a year ago, I knew that this program was the perfect fit for me. Like many kids I have a little brother: Eric; he is witty, bubbly, spends hours on computer and likes to annoy me just like any younger sibling would. He is also Autistic. Being the sibling of a severely disabled child has changed my life more than anything else; it has shaped me into the individual that I am today. Throughout my life I have been working with special needs children and also learning how to grow up with one and it has always been a goal of mine to take all of the skills that I have learned through these experiences and try to make a difference. I know that going to India will turn my understanding of the world of special needs children upside-down but I am ready for the challenge that it will present me.

I can’t believe that the day that I have been waiting for for months is almost here. The mixture of emotions going through my body right now is unbelievable: excitement mixed with nerve, bundled with awe, and tossed about with a bit of fear. I will use this blog to follow this whirlwind journey and hopefully it will provide some good reading of my adventures!