I just realized THE most important, life changing part of the trip will be....

Cadbury Creme Eggs! 

I bet I get the imported British version rather than Americanized Hershey's Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Kraft had better not screw up my eggs....

Bangalore visit

Two weekends ago, my husband and I traveled to see some of his family. We had a great time, so I figured I’d share the experience.  I should have written this a week ago, when it was fresh in my mind, but it is too late to worry about that now.  

His case is in Bangalore, so he had been there for a few days already.  I flew to meet him.  Airport security is very different than it is in the US.  You aren’t even allowed in the building unless you have a printout with your flight information.   It can’t be handwritten, and they wouldn’t let me show it, in pdf form, on my phone.  Fortunately, if you haven’t printed it in advance, there are manned windows where you give your pin number and ID, and they will print the confirmation for you.  In a strangely slow manner. I don’t know why it takes so long, but it seemed to take much longer than needed.  Maybe they are actually checking your ID rather than just glancing at it. 

Once inside the building, you are not allowed to check into your flight unless it is occurring in less than 2 hours.  And check-in closes 45 minutes before the flight. So in reality, you only have 1.25 hours to check-in.  This seems to work well, because I never saw any of the huge lines that we have in the US.   I would guess we also have many more flights in the US, but at least I was never waiting.

Going through security is also different (and has always been a much shorter wait than in the US, too!).  They have gender specific lines for security.  As I have mentioned in a past blog (http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/weird-things-indians-do-that-i-just.html), Indians are terrible at queuing.  So it is good that the lines are short and gender specific, because, roundtrip, I only had about four people cut in front of me. 

You put bag tags on your carry-on bags, and run them through the scanner.  While they are being inspected (they seem to be a bit more thorough checking here than in the US, but maybe I am just imagining it), the women get to go behind a curtain and get the wand wave and a pat down.  Usually the men don’t get the benefit of the curtain.   Your ticket gets a dated stamp saying you passed security.  The bag tags on the carry-on items also get the stamp.    When you board the flight, there is one person whose specific job is to check that the bags and ticket have been stamped. 

I did have a case of (possible/probable) dishonesty in the airport.  I am getting rather bored of Indian food, so I decided to dine on airport Dominos for a meal.  A cheese pizza was clearly listed as 240 rs (~$5.33) so I ordered that.  The first employee tried to charge me, correctly, the 240, but a second, apparently more senior person, came up and tried to tell me it was 290.  I gave him a dirty look, and looked up at the board.  There were specialty pizzas at that price, but clearly a plain cheese pizza doesn’t count as a specially pizza.  Meanwhile, I had handed a 1000 rupee note to the first guy, and he only gave me 210 back!  Now I was incredibly suspicious, and said rather coldly, “I gave you a 1000 rupee note, give me the rest of my money”.   He gave it to me, apologizing.  He hadn’t even rung up the pizza because he didn’t give me a receipt. I’m sure he was going to pocket the money. After hearing my voice and anger, the other employee suddenly declared he thought I had asked for a chicken bbq (aka special) pizza, and thus gave me remaining 50 they owed me.  So I was shaking mad at that point, but glad I got all of my money back.     The pizza was amazingly good, by the way.  I think they sprinkled parmesan cheese on the crust, under the sauce and cheese.  It was wonderful.  I just hope they didn’t spit on it. 

Anyhow, I eventually went to my gate and waited for the flight.   It seems fairly common, in India, for the plane to land, and, rather than taxi up to a gate, to just taxi to a sort of parking lot.   From the parking lot, the disembarking passengers jump on a bus and the bus takes them/me to the baggage claim.  Of course, the opposite is true, too.  So when I boarded, I actually boarded a bus, which drove me to the plane.  Boarding the plane was easier than in the US, too, because they had the back and front doors of the plane opened.  So it must take half the time to board.  

One thing that really frustrated me was that on TWO flights, a man tried sitting in my seat.  And then I have to tell them it is my seat and to get out.  They always get out, but it really annoys me that they make me do it.   Just sit in your own darn seat.  The first guy sat in multiple aisle seats, and I watched him get the boot from more than just me.  It just wastes everyone’s time.  Every flight has been completely full, so it seems like a rather futile exercise.   Especially when gunning for an aisle seat. 

It appears that most airlines in India still provide meals, even for a <2 hr flight. So that was a pleasant surprise.  They also passed out drinks before the flight even took off.   So I felt quite pampered in comparison to a typical US, 8 hour, absolutely no food, American Airlines flight.  The silverware was metal instead of plastic, too.   Very nice.  And the meals were all fresh (at least, ‘no preservatives’ was written on them) and hot.  And came with a brownie.  Who can complain when they get a brownie?  

Anyhow, eventually I arrived and went to look for my car.  Lines of drivers are all standing outside the baggage claim, with signs spelling out your name.  When you find your driver, you wait while they pull up the car.  And then, for foreigners like me, you begin the dance of whether or not they speak English.  So far it hasn’t been too bad.  Plus, I also carry handwritten addresses with me everywhere, in case I do have communication problems.    

About an hour later, we were circling Uncle’s neighborhood.  A common problem, I’ve found, is that drivers know the general area, but have a hard time finding the actual location.  They don’t have GPS, and the addresses aren’t so simple to understand (our guesthouse address is actually ‘above the Levis store’, to give you an idea of how addresses are written here).  So usually, the car driver will stop, and ask a local.  This happens everywhere.  And he must have stopped multiple times.  And turned around multiple times.  I even gave the driver my cell phone so he could talk to Auntie.  Finally, Auntie sent her driver to find him, and then my driver followed Auntie’s driver to the home.   We wound up being less an a minute away.  It took forever.  But then I was at least there!  

Of course, after the hugs, the first thing I did was eat way too much food!  Auntie knows exactly what sweets I like, and stuffed me full of besan laddu.  After I was sufficiently satiated, we sat with some extended family.   The ‘kids’ (we are all 20-30, but I think that until we have children of our own, we still count as the kids) went shopping that evening, for a new pair of shoes and suitcase for my husband. 

Travel in India seems to be rough on suitcases.   Both of us have had suitcase casualties in India.   And my husband wanted some leather-like ‘fancy’ sandals rather than his plastic Adidas sandals for nicer occasions.  Shopping in India is quite different than the US.  In the states, you’d go to a huge mall, walk from one end to the other, and find what you want.  Even in Chicago, where you can walk outside between stand alone shops, is dominated by huge malls on Michigan Ave.   But here, there aren’t very many malls.  So you walk from store to store, drive to another area, and keep walking.  Eventually we found a good suitcase and pair of shoes, and headed home for dinner.

Dinner, as always at Auntie and Uncle’s house, was delicious.  I ate way too much food, and it was topped off with ice cream.   Stuffed with food, we all went to bed, with plans to resume the shopping trip Saturday.  

We slept in, and by the time we were up, the bandh had started. 
 

bandh(courtesy of Wikipedia):  Originally a Hindi word meaning ‘closed’ is a form of protest used by political activists in some countries like India and Nepal. During a Bandh, a political party or a community declares a general strike. Often Bandh means that the community or political party declaring a Bandh expect the general public to stay in their homes and strike work. The main affected are shopkeepers who are expected to keep their shops closed and the public transport operators of buses and cabs are supposed to stay off the road and not carry any passengers. There have been instances of large metro cities coming to a standstill. Bandhs are powerful means for civil disobedience. Because of the huge impact that a Bandh has on the local community, it is much feared as a tool of protest.

So, anyhow, by the time my husband and I stumbled out of bed, this bandh had already been declared (see my blog list http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/weird-things-indians-do-that-i-just.html).  So we spend the day at home, eating lots of yummy food and playing a card game called ‘Clever Donkey’.  You can guess what you are called if you lose the game!  I finished yet another Ken Follett book on my kindle. I then found a copy of Gone with the Wind, and started reading that.  I’d seen the movie, but the book is amazing, too!  It was a slow day, but good to just hang out with family and not be rushed.

On Sunday, we again ate a lot of yummy foods.  We went to a beautiful garden show.  It had plenty of fun looking plants (have you ever seen a patty pan before?!) and lots of gorgeous flowers.  We watched Indians attempt to queue (again, see http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/weird-things-indians-do-that-i-just.html), but my favorite parts were the rose garden and monkeys.  

The rose garden was huge, maybe about the same area as a football (American football, of course) field.  And there were rose bushes of every color.  For those of you who are Utena fans, I found myself singing Toki ni Ai wa for at least 20 minutes straight.   And imagined Anshi watering the roses. It was incredibly peaceful.

The peace was, of course, disrupted when a family asked to take a picture of me.    This happens constantly if you are blonde and in a tourist location.   You are part of the attraction.  The funny part is that they asked my husband and cousin, not me, if they could take the picture.   Presumably, it is because they knew I didn’t speak Kannada/Hindi, but it sure seems like they could have non-verbally asked me.  I posed with the wife and kids, but refused to pose with the husband. That is just weird.

Of course, immediately after that all the adorable grey monkeys, with red faces, showed up in a bamboo stand.  And I stood there, gawking, just like Indians gawk at me.  So I found that mildly ironic.  But those monkeys are so darn cute!   There were tiny little baby ones, too!

We eventually meandered down to a lake and peacefully walked along it for a while, watching the ducks heads bob rapidly to eat grains buried in the grass.   Eventually we headed home, but it was such a nice, peaceful day, away from the constant sounds of cars, and far fewer people than normal. I would have loved to just sit there with a good book and read the day away. 

Of course, once we were home, we ate again.

I did want to mention one difference here in India in comparison to the US.  The showers.  First, to heat water, you have to turn on a switch.  There is a tank of water (usually  attached to the wall/ceiling directly above the shower) that will then be heated.  So whenever you want to shower, first you have to wait for the water to heat up.  

Most people here (at least in the past) took a shower with a bucket.  You fill it up with water, soap up, and use a smaller bucket to rinse off.   Nowadays, the guesthouses, hotels, and my Uncle’s house have a showerhead.   So there is very little adjusting/inconvenience.   Except that it is always too hot, then quite cold.  You have to really master that switch and change it continuously as you run out of heated water.  The only other difference is that, quite frequently, there is no shower curtain/wall divider.  So you take your shower and the entire bathroom floor, sink, toilet, etc. get wet.  Most people also have maids, so they clean all the water up.

Also different are the towels.  Some places have towels like we have in the US.  However, most homes do not have clothes dryers. So the towels are just hung up to dry.  They are hung up to dry outside, over the window, or on the roof.  Once, my towel had pigeon poop on it….   So that is the risk you take, I guess.    At my Aunt and Uncle’s home, the towels were more like bed sheets.   They worked just as well, which surprised me.  I would have guessed that sheet-like towels wouldn’t absorb as much.  But that was another interesting surprise.   

My flight back was quick, but it was also very disappointing.  I have always been told to keep a lock on my suitcases during international travel.  I use a TSA approved (of course!) combination lock.  Now, you can only CLOSE the lock if you have it set to the proper combination.  After I close my lock, I always set it to 3-3-3 when I travel.   When my baggage rolled off the carousel in Mumbai, the lock had clearly been broken open, and they had attempted to disguise this fact by re-setting it to 2-2-2, a whole number off. That, and they couldn’t actually close it since they didn’t know the true code.  So the lock dangled, open, from the bag.  It was very frustrating to learn that even with a lock your stuff is not safe here.  I have never had anything stolen (in the US) in all my years of travel.  Although I did lose a gorgeous watch in Costa Rica this year. 

 Regardless, they didn’t steal anything (that I can figure) from my suitcase.  Which is good, but also kind of sad that my stuff is obviously not worth anything!   Anyhow, I got home, disappointed at the world in general, and then, the next morning, discovered that I was also missing 1000 rupees from my wallet (~$22).  Which means that either my Uncle’s trusted servants, or one of the maybe six people in the guesthouse, where I have been living for two weeks, stole it.   So that was another painful eye opener.  I guess the overall moral is don’t trust anyone with your possessions. 

But it sure is a depressing thought.  

An experience in a typical Indian household

Background: I am teaching with a program that helps low-income students in India learn English and math.  It occurs after their regular school day, from 3:30 until 6:00 pm.  The students mostly speak Urdu at home (and in their school), and Hindi with their friends. So for many of them, this is the only time they speak English.  Apparently, their home schools are also awful.  The other day, I read in the newspaper that, on any given day, 25% of teachers in India just don’t show up to work. Not even a phone call so they can find a substitute teacher.  For the teachers that do show up, apparently many of them don’t actually teach… And for children like my students, who are at a very poor public school, it is probably even higher fraction of teachers not showing up to do their job.  So the students’ 2.5 hours with me might be the only time they are learning throughout the day.  When I am in control of discipline and they are actually listening to me, that is. 

The program teaches students from all over Mumbai (population: 14 million people) and has roughly 60 centers throughout the city.  Because the program is non-profit, and has very little money, they do not have their own buildings for teaching.  Instead, they utilize empty classroom space in various schools/buildings throughout the city. For example, my students live near a very nice school (I think it is a private school), and they walk 10 minutes each day between the two. 

 It is a very big contrast- the school in which I teach is absolutely beautiful.  Well-manicured lawns, amazingly clean, good facilities (still no toilet paper in the bathroom, though), clean classrooms with white boards, etc.  Yet the students are from a completely different world.   They are very low income, and while they don’t live in slums, their living conditions are not very good. I wonder what they think coming there each day.   Maybe they don’t think about it, simply because that is the way things have always been…. But as a foreigner seeing the differences for the first time, it seems like such a clash of environments that there must be some emotional feelings about the situation.  

One of my students, let’s call him Student M, is the second smallest kid in class. But he probably has the biggest personality.  He loves Michael Jackson, and thus can moonwalk, break dance, and even stand on his head.  He is very good at math, too.  Anyhow, his mom, let’s call her Mommy M, is the school aide. She comes off as a very stern, organized, and clean person.  She walks the students to the school, walks them back, makes copies of the day’s worksheets, and is quite good at making them stop talking, which is very, very wonderfully helpful.   Mommy M doesn’t speak a word of English.  But we still get along well.  On Thursday she invited me (via the students pulling on my arm and excitedly translating for me) to dinner at her home the next day.

Friday after class, around 6:30, I walked back with the students and Mommy M, rather than taking my usual cab ride home.  Mommy M had tied her red and green dupatta (scarf) in a sash-like, Miss America-style, which I thought was incredibly practical.  Usually the long dupatta is draped over the neck, with the two ends hanging loose down the back.  I have yet to manage this with style.  I always wind up with one end dragging on the floor, or it slips over my shoulders.  Or falls down in the front.  There are endless ways to mess up that dupatta.  The students were wearing their matching, bright yellow school t-shirts with a various array of shorts and pants on bottom (I should say trousers, as pants = underwear in British English).  I had on loose black pants and a long blue shirt that sort of resembles a salwar kameez.  I wore a white t-shirt under it to be more modest, so it looked remarkably stupid, but everyone here wears t-shirts under their tank tops, so I was hoping I didn’t stick out too much. 

Now, I knew the students were low-income.  But knowing and seeing/experiencing their living environments are two completely different concepts.  We walked to their apartment complexes and it was quite dirty.   The uneven roads were covered in dirt, trash along the road.  I walked inside, and the walls of the building were splashed with stains of various food items. They were covered in every spot possible.   Mommy M’s apartment was on the first floor (Indians says Ground Floor-1^st floor- 2^nd floor, etc., as opposed to the American 1^st floor- 2^nd floor, 3^rd floor, etc.). So we took one flight of stairs up to her home. 

Her home consists mainly of one large room, which acts as a living room, dining room, and bedroom.  It was 8 by 17 floor tiles (I counted).  So probably 136 square feet of space.   There was a tiny kitchen, a small toilet, and a cement-covered tiny room adjoining the main space. 

The tiny room was about the size of a couch.  On the floor, they kept big bottles (green, but they looked similar to the red containers we use in the States for gasoline) of what I am guessing contained water.  On a small table, a large steel basin sat.  It was full of water and had a small plastic bucket beside it.  Those small plastic buckets are ubiquitous in this country.  Every single house/apartment/hotel I have been in has them in the bathrooms.   To wash your hands, you scoop a bucketful of water, soap up, and then rinse by pouring the water over your hands. The water is then just poured onto the floor, which is permanently damp.  They told me to put someone’s flip-flops on to walk in the room, but everyone else just stood in their bare feet.  

I didn’t go into the bathroom or kitchen, so I can’t describe them.  

The main room had newish, cream floor tiles.  The walls were painted a yellowish color that had a layer of dirt over everything.  Even up to the ceiling. The only furniture in the room were the two standard plastic lawn chairs, just like my folks have at home.   After a season or two in the Michigan outdoors, the lawn chairs are covered in a layer of dirt that is difficult to remove.  These chairs, indoors in India, were much dirtier.  They were just covered in a thick layer of grime.  If you have a wooden handrail on your staircase- you know how dirty it becomes after 15, 20 years?  And then you scrape off the years of grime and realize it was actually several shades lighter in color?  That is what the coating on the chairs resembled.   Parts were solid black. One chair contained thick blankets, used for sleeping, and the other had a pile of all the family clothing.  A clothesline hung along one wall, and, hung on the wall opposite, a pair of backpacks and a cockeyed clock.    A haphazard pile of sandals surrounded the door. 

Mommy M is always very clean and orderly and I would have never guessed that all of her clothes are piled on a chair.  I don’t understand how the family keeps their clothes so nice and clean.  Her son, too, might have a rather odd selection of clothes (it must be a universal characteristic of children to wear weird, mismatch clothes), but they are always clean, neat, and tidy. 

When I arrived, they ceremoniously brought out a big standing fan and pointed it directly at me to make me feel nice and cool.  It was very sweet of them, but it is also awkward for me to feel like I am the center of attention and that I am getting nicer things than the rest of the people.  I know it is just the way things are done, but I’d much rather just share whatever they have, and not have my own personal fan.  

Mommy M’s family are Muslims, but she doesn’t dress in black or cover her head.  In fact, I had thought she was a Hindu because of her clothing, which has always been a brightly colored salwar kameez. She even wears a mangalsutra, which I had naively thought was something only Hindu women wear, as it is a necklace (like a wedding ring) given during the Hindu wedding ceremony. 

A young neighbor came over to visit, and she was wearing a more typical outfit that adorns the female Muslim, but it was a light blue-gray color rather than black.  And the headpiece was white. I had never seen that before, so it surprised me.  I didn’t realize the attire came in colors.  It almost reminded me more of a nun habit.   It is like when you go to Shipshewana and you expect to see the dark black colors of the Amish, but then see all the colorful attire of the Mennonite women instead.  

So we all spent some time comparing our toe rings (what married Indian women also wear) and our mangalsutras.  They kept asking me why I kept my mangalsutra hidden (I wear it beneath my shirt), and I told them that I was afraid people would steal it.  I didn’t know this until recently, but mangalsutras are ALWAYS made with real gold.  And it just dangles there invitedly.   I’ve even had a stranger question me about it.  So it seems like a better idea to just keep it hidden when I am out.   Of course, the goal is to keep the gold pendant hidden, but not the black beads around my neck.  If people see the beads, they know I am married, and I HOPE that means people will talk to me less.  I don’t that is true, though.  Mostly now I just get confused, “you are married?” questions, since it is obviously a Hindu, not American, tradition to wear the mangalsutra. 

Mommy M has four children, ages 19, 18, 17, and 9.  The 9-year old is my student.   The 18-year old, a boy, was sick.  He was lying on the one rug in the room.  He didn’t talk, since he was feeling ill, and mostly slept through my visit.  He was in jeans, and several inches of his underwear were showing.  It is such a contradiction that women cover up so much and it didn’t matter that a perfect stranger, a female besides, saw so much of his underwear.  It was rather awkward to me.  Anyhow, around 9 pm he went to see the doctor (who lives in the same building) and got an injection.  He sat up, at least, after that point.

The 17 year old, a bright-faced, cheery girl, seemed quite nice.  She thinks I say ‘thank you’ way too much, so that was funny.  Especially after she told me that, because then I would laugh every time I unconsciously said it.   She, the other girl (in the blue-gray outfit), and Student M and I played a few variations of those hand-slap games we all played as a kid.   The games were a bit more brutal, though.  Every time you lost, the winner got to hit the loser as hard as they could.   

Eventually the 19-year old brother came home from work.  He seemed quite nice, too, though his English wasn’t as good.  He even asked me for my phone number, which struck me as odd for this particular society, where women can only have female friends.  I think he was the only one of the four children who owns a phone, so it might have been more for his mother’s benefit (so I told myself). Right when I was leaving the father came home.  He had big hair, blow-dried 1970’s style, which made me smile.  It reminded me of a Bollywood movie star. 

When I first arrived at their home, Mommy M shook out a weaved rug-like item for us to sit upon.  We sat cross-legged.  Everyone else sat on the floor.  She pulled her money holder out, and had her son go buy me a Coca Cola. I felt so guilty about that.   I’m sure they don’t normally spend money on such items, just based on the appearance of their home.  So I tried to drink it as slowly as possible, so they wouldn’t feel obligated to buy me another.  It was called ‘thums up’ (note the spelling of 'thumb') and came in a glass bottle, like a classic coke.  It tasted just fine, though I am not, in general, a pop fan. 

When people ran out to buy items (the pop, vegetables for dinner, medication, milk) they only had to go down the stairs.  There were vendors within the building selling the various items.  So that is nice and convenient, at least.     

I had been worried about conversation, so I brought my wedding album to start the conversations.  That was a great idea because everyone wanted to look at it and see my sari, etc.  So I’m glad I did that.  Of course, it brought endless questions on whether Sandeep was American or Indian.  Usually those aren’t difficult to answer, but it is much harder with the language barrier!  It also brought the inevitable, “why don’t you have children yet?” which was impossible to explain, as I am pretty sure birth control is non-existent in this particular home. 

Speaking of birth control, I read in the newspaper that only 12% of the women in India can even afford sanitary napkins (I’ve heard that basically no one uses tampons).  So instead, they use rags, which are often dirty.  So there are very high rates of infection.  It is easy, when in the states, to know we are lucky to have TVs, video games, cars, etc.  But is even more amazing the things we take for granted that we don’t even know we are taking for granted.  Who would have thought people can’t afford sanitary napkins? 

Eventually we started dinner. I asked to help, so they let me chop the potatoes (Mommy M peeled them for me), parsley, tomatoes, and cauliflower.  They refused to let me cut the chilies, onions, and garlic, because they would make me cry and burn my hands.  That was quite nice of them.  I am such a dork that I tried to chop with the knife upside down!  So that was great fodder for them to tease me for the rest of the evening.  I kept saying that it looked different from my knives in the States, but in reality, it was so dull and kind of grimy looking it was hard to tell which edge was which.  So I actually tried, multiple times, to chop with the wrong end.  They must think I’m a complete idiot.  When we were done chopping, the remaining material (onion peels, etc), were just left on the floor. 

Dinner was aloo gobi and chapattis, pretty typical, standard Indian food.  Aloo gobi is a cooked veggie dish (see the poorly chopped veggies described above) and chapattis are the standard food with which you eat the dishes.  It is a flat piece of bread.  You tear the bread with your RIGHT hand (the left hand is used for wiping yourself in the bathroom, so NEVER touch food, etc with the left hand) and pinch off some of the veggies in the bread and eat it.  Repeat.   All Indian dishes seem to use a TON of oil in their foods.  In the shopping bag, the bag of oil (I am guessing it was actually ghee, which is clarified butter) was larger than the pile of veggies.  So the aloo gobi and chapattis were pretty greasy, but I’m fairly certain that is considered good here. 

There was also a bowl of rice and a bowl of dal, a sort of yellow soup of lentils.  As far as I can tell, dal and rice appear on every single lunch and dinner table, every single day, in India.   Usually, they are served at the end, when you are finished eating the rest of the food.  You put some rice on your plate, pour the dal ‘gravy’ (it seems that gravy, in this country, describes any liquid food, regardless of the viscosity) over the rice, mix with your right hand, and eat with your right hand.  I vaguely remember some grade school lesson that beans and rice, combined, are a good protein substitute.  Perhaps that is why it is served at every vegetarian table.  They are also always served in a metallic container.  Everyone seems to serve their food/drinks in this material. I think it might be stainless steel.  I guess you can’t break that, at least.  

Dinner was a bit awkward, because they only served me the food.   Eventually Student M also ate, but he only ate the rice and dal (the cheapest of all the Indian foods) whereas they gave me the aloo gobi and chapatti, which cost much more to make.  So it left me wondering if they only had bought the vegetables for me.   Which made me feel incredibly guilty.  I don’t want them wasting their hard earned money on me…  Mommy M told me she makes 1500 rs./ month, which translates, in American dollars, to about $33.  I know her husband and son has a job, too.  But it sure isn’t much money. 

Now, in India, you have to eat a LOT so people know you like them, like their food, etc.  It is very important.  So after two chapattis, I tried switching to rice, so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about eating all their nice veggies.  Rice in India makes my belly hurt, by the way.  I’m just so sick of it.  I don’t see how it is possible that something as bland as rice is causing the ache, but once I stopped eating it with my dinner the belly aches went away…. I started to scoop the rice myself, but Mommy M took the bowl and spooned it for me. She spooned a HUGE amount.  At least two full cups of rice.  And then drenched it with the dal.  There was no way I could finish all of it.   I sat there, trying to decide if it was ruder not to finish it, or to finish it and be so full that I would get sick and throw up in their house.   I decided I’d take my chances with their wrath and not finish it.  I don’t enjoy rice, save the fried rice at Joy Fong in Kalamazoo, and I will be honest, it was the worst rice I have ever had.  And they put SO much rice on my plate.   I ate as much as I possibly could, and gave the rest of the plate to Mommy M.  She ate it without hesitation.  So I wonder just how hungry they are.  

The whole family (well, most of India) is incredibly skinny.   Earlier in the day, the medical staff came to the school to check the students’ eyes, teeth, health, etc.   So they were all weighed.  The students all asked me to climb up on the scale, and I found out I weighed 62 kg.  I had no concept of what that number was.   But later Mommy M told me they asked her to do the same, and she was 40 kg.   When I looked it up, that meant she was only 88 lbs.    She is obviously shorter than me, but not much.  I really hope that 40 lbs was just an error in translation, because I think that means they would truly be starving, if that were in fact her true weight. 

During the evening, Mommy M’s family spent a long time trying to teach me various Hindi phrases, which was fun.  They would laugh, because when we were practicing the word ‘eat’, I mimicked it with my left hand, realized my mistake, and quickly switched to the right.   It is good that non-verbal communication works so well, regardless of language barriers.  

Obviously, the family has no TV.  So at one point during the night, I asked Student M. where he learned all of his Michael Jackson moves.   He is OBSESSED with Michael Jackson.  He wrote a paper about America, and said he was going to move there so he could dance with Michael Jackson.   Student M got his oldest brother to pull out his cell phone with the tiny 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch screen, and show me the video of Michael Jackson dancing to Billy Jean.   Student M was so excited, and described every move before it happened.  So apparently he learned the moves by watching that tiny screen.  Amazing. 

I think this point was the saddest point of the entire night for me.  Here was this incredibly smart, loving kid, and he taught himself to dance from this one image from his brother’s cell phone.   Imagine if he was in the US.  He’d have the wii, or a playstation.  His parents would have bought him that new dancing video game, and it would be projected on a big screen TV, so he could dance to all of Michael Jackson’s dances.   He’d have a DVD player, so he could listen to the music.  He’d have that glove and hat so he could dress up like him.  I’m not saying he’d inherently be any happier- he seemed like such a happy kid- but it seems so unfair that some people just have nothing while others have so much.  And really, by Mumbai standards, I think he still has a lot.  He has a roof over his head, and it is a real roof, not a tarp.  But still, he’s just a kid.  I hope he can stay that happy when he grows up.  

I left around 9:45 pm.  I was holding back yawns.  I asked them what time they usually went to bed.  I was told 2:00 am.   And that they wake up at 6:00 am.  Every single day.  Can you believe that?  I really, truly thought this was another translation error, but I asked the question a few different times, and always got the same answer.  And they looked wide-awake…  If this is true, it makes me totally re-think this whole 8 hours of sleep a night thing.   Maybe if you started as a kid with only 4, you just get used to it?  

When it was time for me to leave, Mommy M, Student M and I walked to where cabs are usually lined up and waiting.  It is maybe a 4-minute walk.  It was semi-scary because we were walking through what looks like (to me) a fairly rough neighborhood, and I know that there were a lot of men loafing around.  At one point, some men got off the curb and sort of got closer to us, and I don’t know what they were saying, but Mommy M started to respond angrily and so I just grabbed her hand and pulled away.  We were holding hands, anyway. Everyone (same-sex) holds hands in India, no matter the age.  So I was semi-jumpy for the rest of the night (good use of foreshadowing here).   

Fast-forward 40 minutes or so and I had just gotten out of the cab and was walking to my guest house.  The cab had dropped me off half a block from my guest house, due to my annoying habit of saying, “stop soon”, rather than yelling stop right at my house.  I was walking rather quickly because I didn’t want to be annoyed by strange people (it was about 10:30 pm at this point).  Our building has a narrow hallway, maybe 30 feet long, and at the end of the hallway is the elevator and stairwell. 

The elevator is one of those old-school numbers with the metal doors you manually open and close.  Plus, the elevator plays the song It’s a Small World, After All, every single time you ride it.   Which, as I am sure you can guess, is incredibly annoying.  The staircase is a wide, sweeping affair, but our guesthouse is on the fourth floor, so I usually take the elevator.  

So as I was standing there, waiting for the elevator to creak its way down to the ground level, a guy came into the hallway, and walked toward the elevator, too.  It is sort of an isolated hallway, so it creeped me out and I decided to take the steps, just in case.  I was still a bit jumpy after the night walk with Mommy M and Student M. But then he started up the stairs, too!  So I got scared, and RAN up the steps, even though I had my heavy schoolbag on my back.  I reach the top, panting, and ringing the doorbell (we don’t have keys to the guest house, someone has to let us in), and he comes up behind me.

I start to calm down, since I know the door will open soon, and thus I feel safer, and so I look at him, and he says, “I’ve got a key”.  It was the cook!  I felt SO embarrassed!  I’ve been living in the same house as him for 2 weeks, and I didn’t recognize him.  To be fair, I’ve always seen him with a chef hat and chef’s coat on, peeking from behind the kitchen door, and today he was wearing a t-shirt. I still felt awful for running from him.  So I kept apologizing.  But I still feel bad.    I know if it were daylight, I would have recognized him. 

Weird things Indians do that I just don’t quite get…

      Now, as a disclaimer, I would like to remind everyone that there are many, many things that I truly enjoy in India.  All of the food (save that $9 garlic bread) has been amazing, and EVERY SINGLE person that I have taken the time to actually meet and speak with has been incredibly nice.  And then tried to stuff me with very good food and tea. Mumbai has a beautiful skyline, the people here have all sorts of fun ring tones for their phones (my driver today had Jingle Bells) and people are very generous.  When I tried to use a credit card at a shop, and their credit card machine was broken, they told me to just come back and pay another day.  But let’s face it, those topics don’t make for nearly as interesting reading as the quirky weird stuff.  For the most part, the things on this list are things that, to an American, are considered incredibly rude/weird, but are apparently not rude/weird at all in India.   

So here they are, in no particular order, but numbered none-the-less. 

1.   QUEUING. The people of India have a complete inability to properly and patiently queue.  Maybe this is just due to the fact that there are so many more people here, but it drives me absolutely batty!  For anyone that has ever traveled on an airplane in India, you must be aware of this fact.  In America, after the plane lands, finishes its two miles of taxing on the runway (only in Chicago), and the seat belt sign turns off, you might have one or two people who try to push to the front immediately, usually apologizing for a short connection.  But for the most part, people stand up, and then impatiently the people in row 2 wait for the people in row 1 to clear. Then row 3, and so on. Well, actually, those rows are  typically in first class, and I have no idea how they behave. But in coach, that is roughly how it works out.   In India, (I’ve only been on a half-dozen flights, so who knows how true this actually is), it appears that the average person's goal is to jump up and elbow and push his or her way as close to the front  of the plane as they possibly can.  Even if you have to stick your backside right INTO my face (which has happened twice now), it doesn’t matter.   Push them over, and reach the front. As fast as you possibly can.  Maybe this wouldn't bug me quite so much if it wasn't for #6 on the list....  Ironically, you usually have to get into a bus after alighting the plane, to be driven and then roped off at the baggage claim area…so that pushing doesn’t really do anything useful, as the whole bus has to fill before it goes, anyway.  

      As a side note, I was wondering this weekend if it is this push-to-the-front mentality that causes so many stampedes/trampling deaths in India.  A hundred plus just died at a religious event last week when a stamped started.  Everyone is trying to decide whom to blame.  Now, the closest thing to a huge flock of devout people in line in America is Black Friday.   And yes, sometimes there are stampedes to get that $200 laptop. But, for the most part, people wait in the -10°F weather for 2 to 24 hours rather patiently.  They don’t even have to be herded.  You just show up to Best Buy, and walk around three quarters of the building until you find the end of the line.  Then you pitch your tent and set up your mini grill to heat water for hot chocolate.  There are no velvet ropes surrounding all four sides of Best Buy, herding you in.  People just politely (for the most part) stand in their sleeping bags and wait.

      This contrasts sharply with our weekend visit to a garden (http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/bangalore-visit.html), which was hosting a horticulture show.   There was a huge, outdoor line to get inside to view the flower display. Think Cedar Point sized-line, but straight rather than zigzagged.  Now, this line was very well contained, for the entire length, between horizontal steel  (or some sturdy metal) fences.  So people managed to stay in line fairly well.  However, the line was so long, that the end poked out of the fences.   And of course, the Grandma we went with, being a Grandma, thinks that she owns the world (as they do in India), and promptly cut in front of all the people right at that point of the line not contained by steel.  And no one says a word, because, as my husband pointed out, she is a Grandma, and thus above the law.   

      Personally, when this happens to me, EVERY SINGLE TIME I’m in line for a bathroom (any adult, not just Grandmas), I shoot them a very dirty look and they back off.  Maybe this is why Americans are considered rude…. But if you don’t shoot that dirty look, they cut right in front of you.   Multiple times during a bathroom visit.  You will never get to go if you just wait patiently for people to stop cutting in front of you.  In fact, they  will catch you unaware, cut in front of you, then you have to rush  when a stall door opens, and cut your way back into your proper line position.  It is apparently the standard way to do this.  Or I just haven't learned the proper way yet.

      Anyhow, Grandma trying to cut wasn't the worst of the line at the horticulture show.  Again, it was encased in metal, so you couldn’t cut in line.  But there was one point where the steel bars were gone, and just a chain-linked fence remained.  At that point, people were POURING in to cut in line. It wasn’t one or two people.  It was a constant stream of people, trying to cheat their way in front of the people who’d already been waiting for some time. We watched that for a bit, but then things got heated, and some yelling and pushing started, so we walked away, to the back (where Grandma decided to try her cutting technique).    

       Anyhow, it is just considered so rude in the States, I doubt that I’ll ever, even a year later, get used to that. It just makes me angry each time I see it.  So I wonder if people get angry with me for giving them dirty looks when they cut in front of me in the bathroom….  I’d expect chagrin… or at least feel it if it were me…

2.  BANDH.  This is the weirdest concept yet.  We were in Bangalore this weekend (http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/bangalore-visit.html), and a bandh was declared.  This is when a political party decides to act like complete jerks and make an entire town shut down for the day as a form of political protest (well, I'm sure there is much more meaning to it, that just happens to be my interpretation).  So all of the shop owners, restaurants, buses, etc have to close/stop running, b/c otherwise people will throw stones in their shops.  Or burn their buses.  General mischief.  So all the average, non-freaky political people have to stay home from work/school/shopping because they (1) have no transportation or (2) nothing is open or (3) don’t want stones thrown at their vehicles/persons.  That isn’t to say America does any better with their political shootings.  But it is just SO weird to me that this can happen in this day and age.   This particular weekend, they were too slow to ‘officially’ declare a bandh, so a bunch of kids got stuck at school when the bandh was ‘officially’ called.  And many had no way home since the buses, etc weren’t running.   I wasn’t born here, but I just don’t see how this works to change the way the people vote if all it does is annoy the average person.  

3. STARING.   This MIGHT be the creepiest of them all, because it affects a white woman every single time she goes outside.    Especially when she is outside alone.   So in America, it is perfectly fine for a little kid to be curious and stare at someone who is a bit different looking.  But when you are an adult, you need to stop that, and advert your eyes when caught staring.  In India, it doesn’t matter if you are caught.  If there is a white woman around, it is perfectly acceptable to stare right at her and keep staring.  And why (note the heavy sarcasm from here to the end), if you feel the need to look at her some more, then just turn right around in your step and walk next to her, and stare at her for 3 or 4 blocks.  Go for it!  It is apparently perfectly acceptable behavior.  It is also, again, apparently perfectly acceptable behavior to ask a complete stranger, if she is white, to take a photo with her.   Even if you are a full grown, adult male.  I don’t mind the little kids asking.  But I’m sorry; you are just creepy if you are a grown man asking to take a photo with me.  And the guys almost always have a wife, too.  It is sooooo weird.   It isn’t as though they have never seen a white person.  Sure, it isn’t exactly like America, but you always see one or two white people when you go to big places.  So I’m not that rare…. I felt like the poor monkey (see http://updatesfromindia-emily.blogspot.com/2011/01/bangalore-visit.html) that we kept looking at for pictures.   It just wanted to get away and eat the discarded corncob on its own….   Can’t people just politely not stare at me when I’m looking in their general direction?   

 4. TAXI DRIVERS and TAXIS.  The usual here. Some drive like maniacs.  Not all. But the scariest part, to me, are the ones that drive on the Sea Link.  Most of the traffic in Bombay is very slow.  But they can go quite fast on the Sea Link.  60 km/hr or so. Today, on the way to the airport, the driver was going 130 km/hr (80 mph).  The Meru cabs have an automated voice that yells at the driver when they go above 50 km/hr, so that is useful.  At least those drivers slow down. And it is SO scary because the vast majority of the taxis don’t have seat belts.  If they had seat belts, it wouldn’t be much different than the US.  But at 80 mph, it is terrifying not to have a seat belt.  In traffic congestion, it doesn’t bug me as much, because they are driving so slowly.  But when they are fast, it is rather horrifying.   The driver today was also one of those heavy on the breaks-type people that make me want to throw up.   Needless to say, it wasn’t a fun trip. 

5.TIME. Nothing opens until 10 or 11 am.   And I am much more of a morning person than night owl.  I feel like I’m just wasting SO much time each day.   Especially as I have to leave around 2:15 pm each day for teaching.  All of a sudden, rather than 5 hours of time to do stuff, I have 3, and during that time I also have to squeeze in lunch.   Of course, my Uncle in Bangalore is the exception.  He was seeing patients at 7:30 this morning when I was just getting out of bed.... this is clearly something to which I should just adjust.  But it is hard to sleep when the sun is shining...

6. The SMELLS.  Most everyone stinks in close contact.  I haven't had to shop for deodorant  yet, but I think basic showering skills are not quite the same as they are in the US.  Plus, tires and trash are being burned constantly all over the city.  So if it isn't the stench of a non-deodorant  coated armpit it is the stench of burning rubber....  And this is winter! Imagine how smelly it will be in the sweaty summer...
Anyhow, I'd be curious to see an Indian's list of weird things Americans do that they just don't get....

School stuff

The last few days have been very busy, but quite good.  

On Tuesday, I went to breakfast with some friends.  We had this amazing donut-equivalent meal that was basically puri and mango sauce.   It is a little puff of fried dough, slightly smaller than your palm, and you add sugar and salt to it.  Then you dip it in this mango blend of goodness.  It was amazing.  Plus the cook (who happens to be our future cook, yeah!) kept making and making them.  So you really have to learn to exercise self-control and stop....    

I started teaching on Tuesday completely differently than I had on Monday.  I started by asking them how they behaved on Monday.  Once I had guilted them into saying they were quite bad,  I wrote four rules on the board (very polite ways of saying sit down, listen, and be quiet) and ask them if they thought they were fair.  Once everyone agreed, they really got into the rules.  The next day, they even added a 5th rule. When people would do something wrong, they'd say, 'so and so isn't respecting you', etc.   So that was good, although bordering on tattling.  But to really bribe them, I wrote the number 50 on the board.  I said I'd give points for being good, following rules, and doing well, but I would take points away if they broke the rules and were noisy.  If they reached 100, they'd get a snack.  At 0, they'd get extra homework.

So they had top notch behavior for the rest of the day (yesterday and Tuesday).  Oddly enough, I don't think they know what 'snack' means, because one kid came up after class and asked me.  I think I could have given them nothing, and the points would have sufficed.   Oh well.  Thank goodness they are listening now, at least.   They also like to give me high fives, but I don't mind that.  They are currently at 92 points.  It will be interesting to see if they can behave themselves, or if they will get so excited to reach 100 that my plan backfires and they can't concentrate anymore....

I am having a very hard time learning their names- I really need to see something spelled, rather than hearing it, to learn it. So the students who have names I have heard before (like Osama, he is easy to remember!), I can learn just fine. But the rest are just going in one ear and out the other.  I am having the same problem with learning Hindi- I have to phonetically write everything out, and then I learn it. But hearing it doesn't work at all.   Anyhow, I bought some tag board (well, it is really like thin card stock, but I'll take what I can get with the language barrier here) and am going to have them all make standing name tags for their desks.  So that should make it a lot easier for me.   I'll let them give me a quiz at some point to check on my learning skills.

They are still exhausting, though.  How do you full-time teachers do this for an entire day?   2.5 hours is enough to wear me out!   Plus all the grading and lesson planning....  when do you ever sleep?

Tomorrow I have a break, though.  This weekend we are going to visit my husband's family in Bangalore!  He is already there (his current case happens to be in that city), so I am leaving tomorrow and coming back on Monday.  So that should be a lot of fun.  Not sure what we will do yet, but it will be nice to see family!

I met a very nice cab driver on Monday, too.  He seems to be a cross between a normal cab driver and a personal driver.  He drives this German fellow 2-3 times a day, so now he's driving me to and from school each day, too.  So that is very nice because (1) he drives well; (2) he speaks English decently; (3) he knows WHERE the places are that I am going to/from; and, most importantly (4) he has a newer car so my head doesn't hit the ceiling.  Most of the cabs are too short and you have to slouch/hunch when you are in them. It is okay for a 5 minute drive, but quite a pain for an hour drive.   

I am completely exhausted

Today was my first day of teaching.  There are exactly thirty students, and, like a one-room school house, some are at very different skill levels than others.  Which I knew going into it. What I didn't know was that the lower the skill level, the more eager the student is to talk and not even attempt to listen to you.  Perhaps that is why their skill level is so low in the first place.

We were doing long division (something like 6432 divided by 7, for example), and 20 kids get it.  10 kids just don't.  So I gave the 20 kids that get it a ditto on averages, and had them work on it.   I had 20 kids working (perfectly quietly!) and sat right next to the 10 kids who didn't know the division and they still didn't learn one thing.  The 20 kids finished, I gave two of them the answer sheet, and had them work out the answers, quietly, with the other 18 kids.  So all 20 kids learned another math topic, by themselves, in the 30 minutes it took me to teach 10 kids zero new material on division.   It is so frustrating- any teachers out there with pointers on how to get them to listen?  They were pretty loud, but again, it was mostly the 10 kids who are struggling the most.  They really need someone to sit next to them, one-on-one, and work it out with them.  They don't want to share attention. 

They have an exam on math in two months, and haven't learned most of the topics yet.  So I'm going to be really pushing math for the next few days.  Say hello to converting fractions into decimals! 

I think it will help when I learn every name.   Today I had a 'good' and 'bad' list on the board, and couldn't spell anyone's name to put on the 'bad' list.   They were eager to help me spell their name if it went on the good list, but much less eager to help when it went on the bad list.  But apparently this list works wonders with these kids when I can spell their names :) 

Wish me luck for tomorrow!  I've got some homework to write!

Back in the Guest House

It makes me so incredibly happy to be back in the guest house!  It is a bright, happy room, with the nice cold marble floors that make your feet feel so good when the air is warm.  PLUS I no longer have to make toast by balancing a slice of bread on a  knife and roasting it over an open flame....  not to mention the much better television...  and no band waking us up at the crack of dawn...and, of course, I have even heard that the best ice cream shop in town is right next door... I'll have to check that out this evening!

The guest house has another couple staying at it, too.  They have an adorable little boy who's greatest fascination in life is staring at the pigeons, so that is pretty cute to watch.  I personally loved to watch the pigeons in Chicago, so I'm not too surprised by his obsession.  My all-time favorite pigeon was the one that stubbornly stayed right in the middle of Randolph/Michigan Ave intersection to snack on what must have been a delightful little pile of vomit.  There were cars flying all around it, but it was completely oblivious to them.

Today, rather than observing, I am going to teach in my classroom.  I hope the students understand my accent okay.  We are going to learn how to make predictions and take averages.  I predict it will go quite splendidly.  I will start full time in February (when we move into our permanent apartment, which is much closer to the school) and they are going to become pen pals with my mom's students!  So that will be fun.

I went to my husband's office today.  They had very graciously loaned me a computer with (the Indian equivalent of) a sprint card, so I could use the Internet.  But we are now in the guest house, which has an ethernet cord, so I was returning the computer. And asking for help mailing Carrie's b-day card.   I met my husbands's executive assistant, who seemed quite nice.  And the office has a party once a month or so, where it sounds like we play games or do other fun things, so that will be fun to go to (I've been trying to stop ending sentences in prepositions, as I am teaching English, but it is difficult).  The office smelled like paint today, though.  I don't quite understand why the odor changes constantly, but I guess I could make it a game to see what the flavor of the day is next time I am there. 

Random, Unimportant, and Disjointed Thoughts

I bought my sister a birthday card.  I was hoping for something very Indian, maybe with elephants and sparkles and dangly tassels.  The only cards I could find at the big department store (which has great reviews online) were cards that looked like rejects from America.  And based on the quality of greeting cards in America, it must take a lot to be rejected as a  card.  Anyhow, I decided to pick an appropriately gaudy card, and found one that, among other things, tells my sister she is evergreen.  I'm not quite sure what it means, as a human, at least, to be evergreen, but I figured I could look it up in the urban dictionary when I got home.  Apparently, evergreen means marijuana.  And thus, a person who is an evergreen has ' A condition stemming from profuse marijuana use'.  The card also tells her that she is a magician who's wand makes worries vanish.  So maybe that is code for describing the hallucinations.  Oddly enough, the pictures on the birthday card are a lot of very dressed up porcelain dolls hugging teddy bears, and they do have very odd expressions.  Perhaps they are suffering from evergreen.

The employees at Baskin-Robbins are very nice.  They are trying to teach me Hindi, although I have already forgotten what they taught me.  But they do know (and tease me) about my order each time- that bucket of mint chip.  Today, they ran out of mint chip before it reached the required 530 grams (it is something close to that, they measure it out on a scale).  I told them to fill the rest with whatever they wanted, and they put 'milk chocolate chip' aka vanilla chocolate chip.   It is amazing how boring that flavor tastes after the mint... I wonder who would voluntarily get it...

I also bought a loaf of bread, and some really yummy looking pieces of chocolate flake cake.  I found a bakery, so I didn't have to buy it in the disgusting store.  And it all added up to less than $2.  CAKE and bread.  Only $2...amazing.

It is our 5 month anniversary today (which is, of course, the excuse for the chocolate flake cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream).  My husband is going to work in the office until at least 10 still.  But Rocky is on tv, and I've been working on my lesson plans, so I've been keeping busy.

The curriculum provided for this school is interesting (I will be teaching 5 days a week for 2.5 hours).  I mean, it all looks quite good, until you take a close look and then it is quite obvious that it was all written by a non-native speaker of English and it is full of grammatical errors.  Now, my blog is probably full of errors, too, but this isn't a teaching guide.  I think the worst error was the lesson on haiku poetry.  It states the 5-7-5 syllables rule in a haiku, and then promptly gives an example that is 5-8-5.  I don't want to start criticizing all the hard work that has been put into the text, because it is good.  I have also only been working for one day...and already had an argument over how to do long division... that have this dumb 'add a friend concept' rather than just saying 'add a decimal' so I don't want to be a trouble maker right off the bat.  But they now, thanks to me, have to add two friends- they were forgetting a zero in all the problems...

The accents here are very difficult to understand sometimes.  When driving to and from Bandra, there is a new bridge, called the Worli Sea Link (Worli is a neighborhood), and it costs Rs 50 to cross.  So each time I take a cab, they ask me 'sea link?' to make sure I will pay for it.  And I get so confused because it sounds, to me, like a Russian saying ceiling.  Sort of like 'ceilingk'. Every single time.  You'd think I'd be ready for it now.

It is a big no-no to have public displays of affection here.  My husband and I walked past a couple holding hands the other day, and the couple was stared at more than me.  And I am stared at constantly.  I noticed two nights ago, while on the way home from the volunteer work, that apparently the place to 'park' in Mumbai is right along the sea link!  There must have been 20 motorbikes parked, with very intimate couples on each bike.  I thought that was funny.

I tried to watch Glee on Fox.com.... But Fox  blocks all the good video for India :(  So you can't watch TV on the networks here.  Isn't that sad? I want to send them an e-mail telling  them I'm an American so they should give me a magic password so I can still watch... maybe Carrie's magic wand can do that....Seriously, though, I just wonder what else I am missing.  And now, all the darn computer keeps switching me to google India instead of just google.  So when I start to type words, all the search words that come up are Indian phrases instead of American.  Who knows what I am missing...I never had really thought about it before (with the whole google and China thing) but it is just so WEIRD that you can block this stuff that is out in public domain like that.   Well, block, not make it come up in a search, etc.  But it is all odd.

Military time.  It drives me nuts.  I know that it makes more sense, as you don't have to worry about whether or not your alarm has the am or pm selected, etc., etc.  But I'm American, and so I still uses feet and miles, so I'm just stubborn and sick of the military time on everything (well they call it 24 hour clock here, not military time).  I know it isn't even hard to convert between the two.  It is pretty much automatic.  Much fast and easier than Fahrenheit to Celsius, but still.  It drives me crazy for no reason, really.  Well, to be fair, it only drives me crazy for half the day. The first half of the day I am perfectly content.  That's all I have to say about that :) I am unreasonable.

The First Two Weeks- Entertaining Ourselves & Finding a Home

I'd say my main activity has been eating ice cream.  In in the last days 7 or 8 days, we have gone out for ice cream 3 times, and I have brought home two buckets of Baskin-Robbins mint chip.  Their chips are fabulous, by the way. Sometimes mint chip just doesn't have enough chips, or they are those skimpy little rectangular boxes of chocolate. But this is loaded with chips of chocolate.  All sizes and shapes.  I can just imagine someone shaving a large block of chocolate to put in that ice cream. Plus, those buckets are doubling as tupperware.  

Other non-healthy activities have included watching a lot of television.  Our current temporary apartment has only three english stations- the Indian version of the WB; a movie channel that is in an odd full screen mode that stretches everyone like Mike Tevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and a channel that basically plays the junk you didn't watch in the States anyway (it is always gossip news or Rachel Ray or David Letterman early in the morning).   But the WB plays Friends twice a day, so that has been nice.  We've seen The Matrix twice already...  Cats & Dogs wasn't too bad.... but thank goodness I brought the complete set of the X-files.  I've already watched eight episodes!

As a side note, I would like to point out that one of the Indian stations was playing 1960s Bollywood films.  It is amazing that you could just look at the cuts of their Indian attire and hair and STILL know it was a film from the 1960s.  I had no idea that trends were so global.  

Anyhow, slightly (if you don't count breathing the air-I learned today that the fire smell was burning garbage) healthier activities include walking around.  We've done that a lot, as the weather is beautiful right now.  Plus, you have to walk to get to those ice cream shops.  We've mainly been walking along Marine Drive, which borders the Arabian Sea. And I do have to say that the Mumbai skyline is the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen.  You can drive for miles looking at it.  And it all curves around the sea.   So that was quite nice to walk along.  Just don't look at the individual buildings too closely.  That spoils the picture.

Other activities of course include working (for my husband, at least), frustrations with trying to get a phone that actually works (neither of us have an Indian number STILL), apartment hunting (a universally painful subject), and job hunting for me.

Apartment hunting is done now, thank goodness.  It is very different from hunting in Chicago.  There we'd make our own schedule, with the appointments 30-60 minutes apart.  You show up, they talk a lot in their office, showing you the different floor plans and prices and floor levels.  Do you want a city view or lake view? they force candy and coffee on you. Then you go up and see the perfectly decorated and painted show rooms that no one has actually ever lived in (which inevitably already had the light on before you arrive, what a waste of electricity) before rounding it off with a tour of the amenities.   Here, you hop in a car, drive to a building, and wait for that particular apartment's cook/maid/driver to arrive with the key.  If you wait for more than a minute, you can be sure your broker is on the phone yelling at said cook/maid/driver to hurry up, even if they clearly said they wouldn't be there for another 10 minutes only 1 minute before. When they do arrive, you go up an elevator that still has the metal grill bars that you manually shut, wince at the terrible paint jobs in the hallway, take a look around the apartment (which may been completely nice & clean, or more likely, covered in dust and dirt and bugs crawling in the freezer when you open the door), and hop back in the car.  So you'd average one apartment every 15 or 20 minutes rather than every hour.   We looked at 37 apartments by my count.  In Chicago I think we looked at 7 or so before picking.   And Chicago is a heck of a lot cheaper.

We took apartment number 37.  It was apartment number 56 for last year's ambassadors (the people who, in 2010, have my husband's current 2011 job).   We had no desire to look at another 20 apartments to see if we could top their choice.  It is actually a great apartment, located in Bandra (ironically enough, not far from where that 1960s movie was probably filmed).  When we find our camera cord (MIA since the beginning of the trip), I will take pictures to post.  But until then, rest happy knowing we have a good place to live come Feb 1 (ish).  Especially good since it has that coveted washer and dryer!

Trying to Sleep

Is completely and utterly impossible.  There are just too many people.  I wake up everyday at 4:00 am, which is when the dogs (there are a gazillion stray dogs all over the city) start barking ferociously.  Then the car horns start around 4:30 am. Usually the dogs have stopped barking by that point. Yesterday it was all accompanied by the sound of someone getting sick. Over and over and over. It sounded as though it was in my room. Today it sounded like someone coughing up a lung.  The walls are quite thin.  At 6:00 am, the neighbors TV turns on- loud enough for you to actually hear what is being said.  This causes you to worry that the house is on fire- because the bedroom stinks of smoke.  After two days of feeling the walls for heat, I've finally figured out that this is just the lousy air quality of the city.  Promptly at 7:00 am (after struggling to sleep for the last 3 hours) a band starts playing.  With a LOT of drums. In our backyard (or whatever you call the cemented area separating our building from another). It is the drums that finally make me get out of the rock hard bed.  

Of course, those are just the sounds in the current, temporary apartment in Churchgate.   At the guest house in Chowpatty, the dogs and cars were louder (the dogs must love hanging out at that beach), but there was no band. I would still wake up at 4:00 am, though.   It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to sleep through all of the sounds.    Or to give up and sleep in the ear plugs...

The First Two Weeks- The Food

To recap: We have been moving about in temporary housing while we do our apartment search. We move to our new apartment around Feb.1.

The guesthouse (like a bed and breakfast in the US) in Chowpatty had a cook, so we had eggs and toast for breakfast, and various Indian foods (names currently  unknown) for lunch and dinner.  It was all amazing.   Not too spicy, and, hours later, your belly didn't protest, which, of course, we both appreciated.  We move back to the guesthouse this weekend, thank goodness, because for the last week and a half, we've been at the apartment in Churchgate.

The Churchgate apartment is simply an apartment, so we didn't bother to hire a cook yet.  Thus, we have been subjected to my attempts at Indian food.  My attempts at Indian food are hindered by a few things:  (1) I have no idea how to cook any Indian food.  (2) My cooking utensils are the absolute bare minimum.  (3) The grocery store where we buy food is utterly disgusting.

To expand (2), I would like to point out the items we have for my fabulous cooking:
* 2 cups (had been left here)
* 2 yellow Tupperware containers (had been left here, but were in a random drawer and not utilized until recently)
*1 plastic plate (had been left here)
* 1 Pyrex measuring cup (my husband teased me like crazy for bringing it, but it has clearly been THE most useful item that either one of us packed)
* 2 plastic bowls (thank goodness I packed bowls)
* 2 knives, 2 forks, 2 spoons (also packed by me)
* 1 flimsy cheap pot (purchased at the nearby 'department' store)
* 1 microwave (incredibly useful for that oatmeal we've had for every meal)
* 2 gas stove top burners

So our typical breakfast is me microwaving 1 cup (thank you again, Pyrex) of water and mixing it with instant oatmeal. Maple and Brown Sugar flavored, if you are interested.  Each packet has a fun 'fact' written on it for my amusement as the microwave does its job.  For example, did you know that the Skipper would call Gilligan 'Little Buddy'?  I do, it is on every other pack of oatmeal and we've gone through three boxes....

 Our typical dinner is me, with our one pot, first making rice or dosai (from a box, it is kind of like a pancake/crepe looking thing) then cleaning out the pot and using it to make a filling (from a box, of course, usually something with potatoes in it).  Then we top the meal off with a trip to another ice cream shop.  the ratio of ice cream to other shops is incredibly high here.  Maybe I'll do a study of it.

Or we just eat peanut butter and jelly.  I balance the bread on a knife and toast it over the open stove flame...  it usually burns. There doesn't seem to be a 'low' setting on the gas burners in this house.

Anyhow, the starting material for dinner isn't so great, either.  The grocery store where we buy our food is dirty, crawling with ants (and lizards, but those don't bug me as much), and three-quarters of everything inside of it is expired.   Plus, I get yelled at for doing something wrong each time I walk into the store, which doesn't make me particularly fond of it.   For example, apparently, though they don't give you bags for the groceries, and you bring your own, you can't put your groceries IN the bag until after you purchase them. So I was walking along, putting things in my big cloth grocery bag, and an employee came up to me, forced a basket into my hands, and made me put each item into the basket as he watched and admonished me in Hindi..  Isn't that strange? I don't know if he thought I was trying to steal the stuff, or if he thought I was too dumb to figure out the purpose of a basket.

But it is okay- only a couple more days and we are back at the guest house with real food!  And then into our real apartment, where we'll have a cook.

The First Two Weeks - The Flight & Housing

We landed in Bombay on 12/30/10 (although here in India I should more correctly say 30/12/10).   It has been a very quick two weeks.  My husband has already started his job, and I will start my volunteer work very soon.   Here are some quick details of the past two weeks:

The flight- I am just way too old and twitchy for such long flights.  Despite the great food and movies (okay, I watched Twilight, but still, it was fun), I was still that person standing in the aisle while everyone else was asleep. It is just too boring to sit for that long.

We had a layover in Dubai.  That airport is incredibly confusing.  It managed to have two flights to Mumbai, at the same time, same gate, same flight numbers.  Apparently, we went to the wrong terminal. So they were different flights...just in different terminals with everything else the same.  I still don't understand it.  So that was pleasantly annoying.  We ended up going through security four different times.  The airport also doesn't have a map on the wall to tell you where you are going.  So take that as a lesson, and actually listen to the captain when they tell you to check The American Way Sky Magazine to see your terminal (or Etihad Way Sky Magazine, or whatever their particular air magazine is called).

We arrived at the Mumbai airport around four in the morning.  Our bags, naturally, were the some of the last ones out of the shoot.  But by that time, the line through customs wasn't too bad.  A driver was waiting for us....he had no idea where to take us!  Isn't that hilarious?  Fortunately, a la the Indian way, I had written the address on a huge piece of paper and duct taped it to each of our suitcases.  So we found the guest house just fine.

The guest house is located in Chowpatty, one of the neighborhoods of Mumbai.  It is right on the biggest beach, and along Marine Drive, which is absolutely gorgeous.  Just miles and miles of of skyline and the Arabian Sea. Unfortunately, it is also coated in a thick layer of smog, which you notice instantly. So that was a bit of a downer.  Especially today (1/11/10) where the smog was so bad you couldn't SEE the buildings across the bay, and you thought your house was on fire from the terrible smell...but that is a digression...

Anyhow, the place in Chowpatty is great- beautiful marble floors in the guest room, and great cooks to make the food.  Plenty of ice cream shops nearby.  But we only stayed there for a few days, and are now (temporarily) in an apartment recently vacated by Sandeep's co-worker.

The new place is in Churchgate, again, another neighborhood of Mumbai.  It is just a mile or so down the road from the place in Chowpatty. It is big and spacious, but ugly as anything.  I'm quite glad to be leaving it this weekend! The walls are bubbling off in multiple places, the ceilings have mold, and your feet turn black from dirt faster than they do walking outside in the yard barefoot. I did, in the apartment, find a pair of new slippers, with the year 2000 emblazoned on them, so they have cut down a bit on the disgust.   But it does have a washer and dryer, so that is the extent of my complaining about the physical appearance of the apartment. Dryers are quite the luxury here.