Delhi Part I

(Edit: Meant to post this a couple days ago after arriving to Goa but got the most insane case of food poisoning so didn't leave the room for a while...)

Not really sure where to start. I could start with the gorgeous visit to Taj Mahal, with the overcrowded, overwhelming, overbearing yet absolutely brilliant Chandni Chowk market, with a cool trip to Jama Masjid Mosque, with the high-end restaurants and shopping at Connaught Place, but I think I'll just be incredibly corny and cliche and start from the beginning. I’m typing this about 30,000 feet up in the air on my flight from Delhi to Goa (via Mumbai). I’m exhausted due to the extreme lack of sleep over the past couple of days but oddly jittery thanks to a yummy milk coffee. 

About a week and a half ago I found out that Noble School has an exam week that starts on November 15th (my birthday ftw). I talked to the principal and he said that I really didn’t need to be around for the week since I wouldn’t be teaching classes and I would basically just be kickin’ it in the library all day. I jumped on the chance to take a little vacation and to get to know some other parts of India. I had an incredibly frustrating, irritating, annoying, difficult time trying to book my flights. It took 5 days to book the flights because, well because I’m in India. Things here just never go smoothly  which can sometimes make you feel like crossing your arms, pouting and stomping your feet. Most of the time I am pretty good at taking everything in stride and laughing it off but this past week definitely fell into the category of the former of the aforementioned. I had hit somewhat of a wall at school because of the lack of classes given to me. I had fever followed by a cold. And I just didn’t feel like I was making as big of an impact or difference as I had hoped to be making. Needless to say, I got in touch with my inner emo and now my ipod has 2 or 3 new melodramatic playlists to show for it.

After finally getting some help from Thafeaa’s aunt, I was able to book the flights. November 12th is the 25th anniversary of the Lotus Temple, which is in Delhi, and the main reason I chose to go to Delhi before heading to the highly praised beaches of Goa. I booked a flight for the 11th and made a “reservation” at a hotel I found online. I tried to reserve it online but they wouldn’t accept my credit card because it was issued in a foreign country-- one of the reasons I had so much trouble trying to book my flights. I ended up emailing them and we made some arrangements which included an airport pickup. As far as Delhi was concerned, I didn’t really have any plans other than visiting the Lotus Temple on Saturday. I’m not one to really make arrangements or plan anything ahead of time which generally results in nothing ever going according to plan. I guess that especially happens to be the case when you don’t have much of a plan to begin with...

I was about to go through security check at the Madurai airport when I happened to run into another volunteer from Projects Abroad, Sofia. Sofia is a Danish girl that has been in India for a couple weeks longer than I and is volunteering at a hospital. As chance would have it, she was also going to Delhi for a few days. We quickly found out that neither of us really had any concrete plans so we decided to stick together and tag team Delhi. The flight was delayed a bit which led to me missing the airport pickup (I found out later via dozens of missed calls that I must just have seen his sign and assumed I missed the pickup altogether) so I decided to skip on my reservation since they didn’t pick me up and we headed downtown to Connaught  Place to find a hotel. We wandered over to the taxi area and after some bargaining we found a cab to take us downtown, or so we thought...

The man who we had bargained with then ushered us  about 50 meters away from the rest of the cabs and called a cab driver to pick us up on his cell phone. I had a funny feeling about the whole thing but I am almost always pretty uneasy around taxi and rickshaw drivers here because they are so damn aggressive. The cab pulled up and it looked a heck of a lot like just a regular van. I felt like this was weird but it’s not particularly uncommon for taxis to be unmarked in India. As we were about to load our bags in the van, a man comes out of no where and starts shouting and shoving our cab driver away from us. Sofia and I had NO idea what was going on and we were pretty confused and scared. The man that came out of nowhere happened to be an undercover cop and, as he was escorting us back to the airport, went on to tell us how that the guy was a “fraud man” and to stay away from him. Now I have no idea what he  meant by “fraud man” and probably never will. I don’t know if it was something as simple as him not being a licensed driver, or that they would take us to th wrong destination and then demand more money from us (incredibly common here), or something much more serious. I’m glad we never found out though.

After the little incident, Sofia and I decided to go through the cab company that is linked to the airport. We were pretty rattled to say the least. We took a half an hour cab ride to New Delhi and after checking out a few hotels and bartering with the receptionists (who knew you could barter at a hotel!) we found a pretty clean and very reasonably priced place. We were really hungry at this point and headed to Cannaught Place for some food. Cannaught Place is a massive shopping complex that revolves around a huge park. There are a ton of western outlets there and some really good eateries. We at a really nice western-fusion restaurant that unfortunately had some western prices. We hung out at Canaught Place for about 4 hours and had a really good time before heading back to the hotel. We decided to meet up for an early breakfast the next day and went to bed.

My computer is dying and the coffee rush has faded so I’m going to stop this right here. There are so many other things that I want to write about but I’m not the best writer and I’d probably end up boring you even more, so I’ll just jot down some other random thoughts and then write another entry in a few days.

• Caffeine is awesome. I really miss coffee from back home but I’ve, seemingly overnight, really become fond of milk coffee. It has come in handy because I don’t think I’ve had more than 3 hours of straight sleep over the past 3-4 days.
• Delhi is wicked! I really expected not to like Delhi but it’s killer! The people here are really friendly and helpful. The culture is much more western which makes it a little easier to get used to and the food, wow the food... I really don’t enjoy southern Indian food but north Indian food is phenomenal. Naan bread 4 life <3
• India has a slight issue with overpopulation...
• Your attitude really dictates how good or bad of an experience you’re going to have. I think everyone knows this but it’s really more apparent in a country like India where you’ll never have an experience that you are indifferent towards. You really know where you stand on everything here, you either love it or hate it. And starting off with the right attitude can often be the difference maker.
• When in doubt, smile and nod your head. It's easier than and more enjoyable than huffing and puffing. 

Some pics from the weekend (I'll keep the Taj Pics for part II):

Right after playing some football with the grade 6 class. 

My boys-- take the bus with them every morning.

Four of my main dudes. Mannar, Vishnogandhi, Pragadeesh and Sunil Dev!  

One of my favourites, Aakash.

View of Delhi from atop the Jaya Mosque.

The Mosque. It has a capacity of 25,000.

Some really good street food at Chandni Chowk. 

Ran into a monkey while doing some shopping... 

Diwali/ Kollam

As they say in India, “Ai yo yo”... I have been meaning to update my blog for the past two weeks but every time I’m finally ready to sit down and write something, I remember that I have some laundry that needs to be done, or lesson planning to do, but mainly I just end up flexing in front of the mirror for hours on end... 

A few more random facts or things that I have noticed in the past couple weeks:

1. One of my students has 72 letters in his name. Fortunately, his nickname is "XL".

2. Everyone here is obsessed  with 6 packs and they think all white people have one. They asked me if I had one and I replied with "Nah, just one big pack", to which one of the students said, "Oh like my Dad, a family pack!". hahaha

3. We had a surprise birthday for Dani that was a lot of fun and ended with a cake fight.

4. Diwali, the "festival of lights", is insane. You essentially buy a new outfit, eat special sweets and blow up firecrackers ALL DAY. It felt like we were in a war zone, the crackers started going off at 5am and didn't end until about the same time the next day. We had an insane amount of firecrackers and there were some pretty huge ones, it was pretty scary lighting them because some of the "bombs" would blow up really quickly and you could literally feel the explosion even from 20 feet away. Later on at night we went and set off a bunch of huge ones from the top of the roof. (See video)

5. The kids here call me "NJV Boss".

6. I played a real cricket match with some older kids and had a blast. It's a pretty fun game and definitely more action packed that it appears. I still prefer most other games though.

7. Despite being here for a month now, I still cannot understand the Tamil accent. I'm also not picking up any words in Tamil :(

8. The caste system is prevalent in southern India and really comes up in day-to-day situations between Tamilians. It's really quite disgusting and sad.

9. The weather has cooled down significantly and generally hovers between 25-30 degrees now but we are getting significantly more rain.

10. The 10th and 12th graders here have statewide exams later on in the year. In order to prepare them for these exams, Nobel school's curriculum consists of an examination period of 50 days!!! It's pretty mind blowing to be honest.

I just returned from a weekend trip to Kollam,  a small town on the backwaters of Southern India. The trip was pretty short but extremely exhausting. Dani and I set out from Aruppukottai on Friday at 8am to meet up with the rest of the volunteers at the train station in Madurai. We ended up making really good time and there was a bit of a misunderstanding on our part and we were  there earlier than we should have been by an hour and a half or so. We reached Kollam after a few bus rides and a 3.5 hour train ride, for a total of 13.5 hours of travel time. We all ate at a pretty good restaurant and I finally got to have some real(ish) pizza for the first time in over a month! We arrived at the hotel at 10:30pm and after checking in, about 8 of us started passing the football around and it turned into an impromptu soccer match. Most of the volunteers are from Europe so it was a pretty intense but really fun game. It lasted so much longer than expected and we didn't finish until well past midnight. It was one of the highlights of the trip for sure.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then made our way to a house boat that we rented out for the day. We ended up cruising around the river for about 6 hours and it was an awesome way to get to know everyone, listen to some music and hang out while seeing a different side of India. We had some some surprisingly good food on board and a few guys went swimming. The water was pretty rancid so most of chose to just watch. We got back just as it started sprinkling and by the time we got into the hotel it was PISSING rain outside, so we got really lucky with our timing. We headed to a real mall later on but, unfortunately, almost all of the stores were closed because I guess they are still celebrating Diwali, even though it was Saturday and the holiday fell on a Wednesday... Oh well, that's India! We ended up having one of the most random nights back at the hotel that I really don't fully know how to describe. It was a pretty hilarious night but it ended with Yujiro (think that's his name), the happiest/liveliest person I've met to date, breaking his tooth while doing the worm. It was pretty surreal because he was incredibly nonchalant about it and just put it in his wallet and really didn't make a big deal out of it at all.

We had to get up really early the next day and after some trouble with our ride- the boat that was supposed to pick us up to bring us to the bus stop just decided not to pick us up- we made the long trek back.

I almost forgot, on our way to Kollam we were waiting for our bus for about an hour at the bus station in a pretty dingy town. A few of the guys were passing the football around and I was talking to Ian and Rose, two of the coordinators at Projects Abroad, and a few local women approached us with a tupperware container full of a green powder and a couple of stamps. She wanted to give me a temporary tattoo of some sort and I was kind of laughing while politely declining and then she just stamped my arm. It was pretty funny but then it started to sting like hell, in fact it hurt for the next 5-6 hours or so. I obviously forced to pay her but I received a nice big wet kiss on the hand so well worth it! I then told her I thought we could round her up some more business and within a few minutes we got all of the other guys tatt'ed up! Eventually a crowd of at least 60 people formed around us and began to photograph the foreigners getting tattoos. It was quite a hilarious experience.

That's it for now, I'll leave you with some pictures from the weekend.

Noah

One of the two boxes of firecrackers that our host family bought for Diwali.

Bruno getting a tatty.

One of our lovely tattoo artists!

Backwaters of Kollam.

Our Boat.

Lunch!

Jaya's uncle and I at his farm for Diwali.

Jaya's relatives at the farm.

  

Vanakkam!

So, if you are reading this you undoubtedly fall into one of two categories:

1. You have absolutely NOTHING else to do, or
2. You are my mother.

Either way, thanks for reading. I have been wanting to get started on a blog for the past few days or so, but every time I sit down to write an entry I have no idea where to start. Although it’s only been two weeks since I left Canada, it seems that so much has happened. In order to get caught up to speed I’m simply going to write down in bullet form any thoughts or observations I’ve made about India thus far:

-A family of five can easily fit on a scooter.

-Rickshaws are both terrifying and amazingly fun at the same time.

-It is freaking hot here! Generally somewhere between 35-38 degrees during the day and it “cools down” to about 30 at night. Eeek!

-The poverty here is truly overwhelming. The amount of things that we take for granted in North America are almost infinite.

-Doing laundry by hand sucks!

-The kids at the Nobel school (where I am volunteering) are insanely stoked to have us (Dani and I) there. I literally walk down the halls hi-fiving people, shaking hands, waving and talking to a mob of students.

-The thunderstorms here are amazing! The lighting just lights up the sky and they go on for about 30 minutes every night before it inevitably pours rain and we have a power outage for an hour or so.

-Men and women can't interact with each other once they are over the age of 13 or so, unless you are related or married. Dani and I always get asked if we are bother and sister or if we are married whenever se sit together on the bus.

-When we asked where to throw away our garbage, we were told to “walk to the end of the road and throw it as far as you can”.

-The bureaucracy that goes on here for the most minute tasks is unbelievable. Nothing gets done on time and you have to jump through hoops in order to get there.

-Indians are the most hospitable people you will ever meet.

So now that we are somewhat up to speed, I thought I’d share my day with you. Yesterday, Dani and I got together with about 10 kids between the ages of 7 and 8 and learned how to play cricket. I am still not 100% sure how to play but it is a ton of fun and the kids had a blast too. We played some badminton after that and then had to leave early because Jeha, our neighbour, invited us to her college reunion. Jeha (random attempt at spelling her name) is definitely one of the most amazing women I have met. She has a son, Vishvan, who we’ve gotten pretty close to as well. Jeha has insisted on showing us around town and really goes out of her way to invite us to different functions or get togethers. So, after a quick shower, we hopped on a bus and headed to her college.

We arrived a little late and therefore the reunion had already begun. We found out later that this was more than just a reunion, it was a way for all the Seniors (alumni) to give advice and words of encouragement to the Juniors (current students). The four of us walked into the auditorium to find seats near the back and listen to some of the speakers. The moment we entered the room, the entire auditorium basically fell silent, even the speaker stopped his speech. EVERYBODY was staring at us and murmuring and whispering ensued. A member of the faculty immediately rushed towards us and escorted us to the front row of the auditorium, kicking out people in the front row so we could sit there! The speaker continued on his speech and the entire room was buzzing, we could literally feel everyone’s eyes on us. After the speech was over there was some polite clapping and then another member of the faculty went on stage and grabbed the microphone. He went on to say how excited everybody was that we were there as their special guests of honour and insisted that I go on stage to introduce myself and pass on  some words of wisdom to everyone that was there. This is probably the point where I should be telling you that half of the people there had a PhD of some sort and the other half was on their way to majoring in Physics. I was forced on stage where I introduced myself and then basically blacked out for the rest of my speech. It was insanely embarrassing and awkward but I got some sort of applause at the end. Dani went up next and did the same deal. It’s worth mentioning that she got an additional round of cheering midway through her speech, so I’m pretty jealous about that. 

After that we sat there and laughed off our embarrassment for the next 20 minutes of so as we heard everyone else speak. We were trying to leave after that but they kept on insisting that we have lunch with them, there was no other choice but to surrender and stick around for another couple hours. The head of the Physics department took me on a private tour of the campus and then we had lunch. It was a pretty weird and surreal experience to say the least.

Dani and I are going to plan a big Halloween party for the kids on the block here since they don’t even know what Halloween is, and that’s just plain unacceptable! I have played cricket about 3-4 times over the last day and a half and am really enjoying it! The kids have basically adopted me and are showing me around town. I have a badminton match scheduled to start in a half an hour so I better get a move on!

Noah

                            
                                                                       My new crew!

                                                                                                      Vishvan.