half-time

we've had a pretty busy week. monday we went to see a mosque, a hindu temple, and a sikh temple. the mosque is not only the largeset mosque in delhi, it is also one of three in the world to have one of muhammed's beard hairs, which we got to see. they also showed us one of his sandals and a stone with his footprint.





at the hindu temple i learned that the swastika, a symbol of power and perfection, has been a part of hindu culture for thousands of years which explains why india seems to be covered in them. it really freaked me out at first to see a swastika on a car's bumper or a store's sign, for obvious reasons. i mean i'm still not really comfortable with seeing them everywhere, but now at least i understand why they are there.

one of the staff members is a religious sikh, so he explained the religion to those of us who were clueless and told us about some of the rituals and customs as he performed them. there were 10 gurus whose writings were compiled into a book, to be revered as a g-d after the last guru died. each temple has a copy of this book for sikhs to honor and pray to and fragments of it are chanted in each temple all day every day.



tuesday we had a speaker come and talk about the women's empowerment movement and the gender issues pertaining to india. ultimately, at the core of most of india's problems today is the struggle between staying traditional and adapting to modern life.

yesterday we were led through the national museum by one of the museum's first curators and today, some of us are going to see the qutub minar tower. it was built between 1193 and 1369 to symbolize Islamic rule over Delhi. at its foot is india’s oldest mosque and in its corner stands an iron pillar, bearing 4th century sanskrit inscriptions of the period.

our india trip is officially half over. luckily we have another two and a half weeks left!

rishikesh

last weekend we took another excruciatingly long train ride, this time we went north to rishikesh - the yoga capital of the world. it is a beautiful city divided by the ganges river, united by a couple narrow, over-crowded bridges. the first thing we did when we got there was walk down to dip in the ganges (to purify our souls). it was absolutely freezing so we settled for dipping our hands in. that was all the purification any of us needed :)



while the three gents of the group did their own thing, the six of us ladies walked around and shopped. i found myself spending a large part of the afternoon in a jewelry store getting my palm read. he started out with some lame statements that could apply to just about anyone, but then he started saying things that were so true it was creepy. like that i can't drink wine (i'm allergic to sulfites in wine), and that i shouldn't smoke because i might get asthma like my mother. now i'm fascinated by palmistry.



we all met back up again at five to go to a yoga class right by our hotel, in a floor to ceiling window-paned room overlooking the ganges. our teacher was unbelievable- even the boys enjoyed the class. actually, i think they liked it more than the girls did.

at night there was a wedding party going on right in front of our hotel, so we got to see the groom ride in on a white horse and all.
on sunday rachel and i did more exploring while most of the rest of the group got massages. then we had a lovely seven hour "express" train ride home..

republic day pictures

republic day

january 26th, known internationally as Dani's birthday, also happens to be a national holiday here marking the transition of India from a British Dominion to a republic. India gained its independence on august 15, 1947, but it was on january 26, 1950 that India ratified its own constitution and swore in its first president.

there's a republic day celebration at our mobile creches tomorrow, so the older kids have spent the past couple of days making decorations and painting pictures of the flag in preparation. the seven and eight year olds of the bunch usually aren't included once the ten-twelve year olds take over, so we've been focusing our attention on them.

it took us most of last week to figure out how to pronounce all of their names, but now i finally feel like i can comfortably call on each one. they prefer to call me "boochi" or "boocha," neither of which are endearing. one means 'girl with boy's hair' and one means 'boy with girl's hair.' jr.high boys are mean.
the rest of the kids call rachel and i "didi" which means 'older sister' and they call phil "bhaiyya"(baya) which means 'older brother.'

PICTURES

Photobucket Album

pushkar

while most of the rest of the group went on a day trip to agra this weekend to see the taj mahal, phil, rachel, and i spent the weekend in pushkar. there's some sort of programming for us every afternoon (usually feedback, sometimes a speaker)including fridays, so we took an overnight train late friday night. we made friends with the two business men sharing our unit who had almost as many questions about american culture/values as we did about those of india. once we got to ajmer, at 4 in the morning, there was a gaggle of obnoxious rickshaw drivers trying to overcharge us for the miserable half hour ride we would have to take to get in to pushkar. dismal, to say the least. they dropped us off at a gate and after a lot of frusterating confusion we realized we would have to walk down and find our hotel. it was unreal. if it weren't for the wandering cows and stanky messes of trash, i would have felt like we were on a movie set. in the cold dark of the night, with only a map sketched out on the back of a packet from another volunteer as our guide, we had a depressingly hard time finding our hotel.

we got a couple of hours of sleep in our dinky bathroom-less hotel room before waking up to see the beatufiul sunrise over the lake. we spent the day making our way around the lake, shopping and exploring temples. pushkar is famous for the brahma temple- the only temple in the world where lord brahma, creator of the universe, is worshipped. the lake is considered holy water, so there are bathing ghats surrounding it where hindus (and curious travellers) bathe, pray, and meditate. you have to take your shoes off to walk down there and you're not supposed to take pictures (but we did anyway from the porch of our hotel). alcohol and meat are also illegal, which i think is because pushkar is a pretty orthodox city.



while walking around everyone kept shoving flowers in our hands to put in the lake and pray. we had been warned against accepting the flowers and going to the ghat because they're only after our money, but we were all curious enough to not mind. one man, nandu, sat with me by the lake and instructed me through the rituals with a lot of repeat-after-me's, helping me pray to the god vishnu to keep my family healthy and happy and something about me getting a husband. before this wonderful little cultural exchange was over he asked me to pledge a donation. shocking. i gave him 100 rupies ($2.50).

our train got back to delhi late sunday night. oh how i had missed the head-splitting honking and jaw-clenching traffic. in india they joke that you can survive without breaks, but without a horn- you're done for.

m is for the m in mobile creches

sooo there are two groups of kids that we're working with at our placement, the three to five year olds and the seven to twelve year olds. apparently the grammar schools here work in shifts; the morning shift for girls and the afternoon shift for boys. as a result of that system, the boys who went to day care at mobile creches as tiny tots come back in the morning before going to school.
for the first hour we're there one of us goes to review english and math lessons with the boys while the other two play with the twenty-ish pookers. then all three of us work with the big kids until noon when we're picked up for lunch. they already know the alphabet and some basic phrases so we're there to reinforce what they've learned and to help build up their vocabulary. with the toddlers we'll be doing a lot of educational games and arts&crafts-y activities, which my costa rica experience has definitely prepared me for. i feel a lot less secure about my ability to control 15 rowdy boys, so we'll see how that goes...
they haven't yet given us permission to take pictures there, so i won't be able to show you how unbelievably adorable these kids are until they do. it's winter here (comparable to a mild fall in chicago) and they're in a cement building all day, so the teeny tiny little kids are all bundled up and just precious.
promise i'll post some good pictures just as soon as i take them!

by the way

the time here is 12 1/2 hours later here than it is in chicago.

today was sort of an observational, introduction kind of day. rachel, phil, and i are working together at one of the Mobile Creches, which are temporary (and ocassionally permanent) day care centers set up for the children of migrant construction site workers all around india. one of the ccs staff members came with us today to introduce us there and to help the teachers explain to us what sort of help they're expecting from us.

there's a line behind me for this computer (a communal ccs house computer hooked up to the currently-working internet) so i'll write later :)

INDIA

we've been in india only a day and a half and i love it already. rachel and i got in at noon on sunday after 30 or so hours of traveling (that includes a lovely 10 hour layover in london heathrow) to an empty flat. another volunteer, jennifer, came in from boston at the same time as us so we spent the terrifying 45 minute drive from the airport talking to her.
the staff at our flat explained that there's somewhere around twenty of us living here in this gated apartment complex separated between 3 flats. we spent our lonely first couple of hours unpacking, eagerly waiting for phil (and everyone else kind of) to come back from their sight-seeing tour. after our blissful reunion with phil we passed right out (at like 5) and slept through the night, missing dinner and the Lorai celebration.
yesterday was pretty jam-packed with boring orientation lectures that, as semi-experienced ccs volunteers, we could've given ourselves. when we were all good and antsy, the head program coordinator, bella, sent us out in groups on 'missions' to force us to get out into the town and talk to people. my group had to buy food from a market (to practice our bargaining skills), hand it out to people on the street and engage people in conversation. we ended up in a small temple on the side of the road where we learned it was the holiday of the sun and therefore also a day of donations.
they took us out to lunch for real indian food, which is nothing like the indian food i tried with my family before coming here. it was way too spicy for me, but gabe would certainly love it.
our last excursion was to a boutique to buy appropriate attire to wear to our volunteer placements. i can't wait to go to the markets and buy loads more dresses and shawls aaaand to get some henna tattoos.
i've got to go get ready for my first day at my placement, wish me luck!

p.s. the Internet here is not so reliable so i'm not sure how often ill be able to update this