so. india. yowzuh. FRICKING INTENSE. it's SO humid. i mean it's hot too, but the humidity is what really kills me. I am currently on my first day of being able to remove my wrist splint thing (i re-read the notes and stuff from the OT--now that i'm NOT puking--and saw she said i can take it off "when at home" --which means now) and it feels AWSOME! the ceiling fan is blowing, and i can almost forget that i got shat on by a Indian crow (they're like squirrel furtive+pigeon everywhereness+eagle size+seagull ballsy+rat hygiene) and that i spent three hours with my 11 companions at one of MT (mother theresa's) homes trying to register to do service there only to find out that they can't take any of us, and to experience nun rudeness. HOLY HELL. BUT. lest it sound as though i'm complaining, allow me to continue: my roommate, and Indian MBA student named Rekah is really sweet, funny, and has an ethernet cable in her room that i can borrow sometimes. Three other IPSL students like me are in this house too. Dan, from Beloit who's AWESOME, Jenny, a californian 3-week student (imagine all the stereotypes but add a brain and a dirty sense of humor) and Josh a smart though sometimes napoleonic-complexed gentleman from St Louis make up the gang, and we have a great time. Every meal-- curry! potatoes! okra! rice! pita! and that's all but it's so good i don't care!-- we have very intense conversations about the taboos: sex, religion, money, politics! and we have a good time almost dying in the indian traffic. Cars pick us up for classes, but eventually we'll learn the subway, which is oddly clean, and it's always the same two cars. the red car, that seats 5 (but we put 7 in there) driving by the young guy who speaks NO ENGLISH, and the silver car where everyone else crams in with the old english-speaking driver. in any case. there are stop signs and traffic lights and traffic cops. but i have not yet seen any of them heeded. the drivers seem to honk as if only to say "hey! I'm still here!" (I suspect this is the main reason why i wake up at 6--it's too loud to sleep more!)
we've been driving around to the different service sights to see what our options are, but the program is very disorganized. we entered the hospice yesterday to be told after ten minutes of awkward waiting that it was a bad time, that they were closed, and then when we got back outside to the cars our "heroic leader" Prof A. Ray was missing! so. we got accosted by beggers for about 15 minutes while we waited. this was not our first encounter with the city's countless homeless and poor. There was the man who everyone now knows as my boyfriend. he was a toothless man who followed me (though I was not alone in the group) down the street for about ten minutes laughing, singing, clapping, and pointing at my butt, the little boy who i stupidly handed my umbrella thinking he wanted "to look at it" (he tried to run away with it...) and the others who makes their homes--whole familes--infront of the petrol station, or under the tarp at the corner of the street with the sweet shop and the store with the vodaphone store (we can't find street signs anywhere. crap.)
the other places we visited were MT's children's home today (the epic fail of them being full....) a school for street children called the "rainbow school" run by a fearsome irish nun, an NGO (non gonvernment organization) for young adult literacy (english. It's really a necessity here.) and on tuesday we'll visit one more place, a women's union. but, as usual, we don't really know what it is, or what it does. (I was told ahead of time by previous participants in this program that communication and organization were a joke. it's pretty frusteratin, considering how much i'm paying for this program, but then again, i'm in INDIA, and the toddler at Shishu Bhava today who spent 15 minutes just running in a circle around my feet, using my knees as a handle (and didn't mind falling down every two roations) is completely worth it.
as far as the host family goes. it's a woman, Mo, who is a dancer, and divorced. but dancing to Hindus is not an art form, but rather a philosophy, and she is considered a scholar. her bother was in town, but left today. he lives in New Jersey, and her son was also in town. he goes to brown. so. obviously a very unintelligent family..... it's actually two aparments on a single floor, and we (dan, Josh, Rekah and I have one to ourself. Jenny is in a servant room in Mo's, but she's only staying for 2 more weeks.) SO. it's good. the servants are funny. Aunty, who speaks decent english, we rarely see, and Mo's bother's old nanny, who speaks NONE and it ANCIENT (she actually left for jersey with him today-- she goes every year for a month) and then the cook, who's name we don't know, who jabbers at us in Bengali and no one knows what he's saying. ever. even when Mo says he's speaking english... oops.
we haven't really started classes yet.
eeep! dinner time! curry!
as far as the host family goes. it's a woman, Mo, who is a dancer, and divorced. but dancing to Hindus is not an art form, but rather a philosophy, and she is considered a scholar. her bother was in town, but left today. he lives in New Jersey, and her son was also in town. he goes to brown. so. obviously a very unintelligent family..... it's actually two aparments on a single floor, and we (dan, Josh, Rekah and I have one to ourself. Jenny is in a servant room in Mo's, but she's only staying for 2 more weeks.) SO. it's good. the servants are funny. Aunty, who speaks decent english, we rarely see, and Mo's bother's old nanny, who speaks NONE and it ANCIENT (she actually left for jersey with him today-- she goes every year for a month) and then the cook, who's name we don't know, who jabbers at us in Bengali and no one knows what he's saying. ever. even when Mo says he's speaking english... oops.
we haven't really started classes yet.
eeep! dinner time! curry!
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