Rhiannon in India: Missing Life in Hyderabad

November 22, 2013

Right now, I am on a plane on my way to Kochi, Kerala. As I wrote in my last post, I am spending the next two weeks travelling through the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka, known for their coastlines, mountains, and coconuts. As soon as my Hindi exam ended today, I rushed home to pack my things and headed to the airport, eager to finally escape school life and being an amazing adventure. But this excitement came at a price. I have been so engulfed by exams and planning for this trip, I had not realized that I would be seeing many of my friends for the last time today. When we left the exam room this afternoon, many of my friends and I realized that our end-of-semester travels would be separating us until it was time to go home in December. We said our goodbyes, but it seemed so rushed and unexpected that it left me feeling strange about leaving for my trip. I know I’ll see many of my American friends again, whether it be in India before we leave or once we are back home, but these goodbyes made me realize something even worse. Even though I’ll be in India for a few more weeks, I will never be in the daily routine that I developed earlier this semester. I may never get to experience the little things that became so normal and part of my everyday life, like being greeted by the familiar auto-wallahs in our neighborhood, riding my bike to class with two flat tires, or eating a pound of rice at my favorite canteen on campus. So although I am thrilled to start my two-week trip, it is a bittersweet excitement.

I know I’ll miss every experience, every interaction, and every person at some point when I get home, because it is often the little things that come to mind first when I am reflecting on my stay in India. Nevertheless, there are a few people that I will really miss having as a part of my everyday life once I am home.

The first is my host family – Nivedita, my host mom, and Prerna, my host sister. Looking back on the semester, I feel so lucky to have been placed with this host family. Nivedita and Prerna were always so kind and patient with us when we would ask endless questions about Indian culture. Nivedita would always let us crowd around her in the small kitchen while she was cooking dinner to watch and write down recipes. She would also spend hours after dinner telling us the religious stories about different gods behind all of the holidays we were celebrating, and was the primary source behind many of my blog posts this semester. Prerna was also a very good source of information when it came to understanding the ins and outs of Indian culture. We really got to bond with Prerna when she came with us on a long weekend trip to Mumbai. She had never been to Mumbai before, so we all went together to explore the big city, see some sites, and go shopping for “western” clothes. My favorite part about hanging out with Nivedita and Prerna was when we go on trips with them. Last weekend, Nivedita’s sister and her two kids, Sanskar (12) and Isha (5), were visiting us from Pune to pick up Nivedita’s mom, who we called Aji (grandma in Marathi). While they were all staying with us, we went for a day trip to a town to the north of Hyderabad called Warangal, known for its farmland and historic temples. We spent the whole day hopping from site to site in the taxi while we had the best time hanging out with the family, especially the two kids, Sanskar and Isha. Everyone welcomed us into the family and treated us like we were one of them, especially Isha, who attached herself to Jennie and me the whole day.

Family at Warangal

Our host family at a temple in Warangal

Jennie Sanskar Isha rice field jumping

Jennie, Sanskar, Isha, and I jumping in a rice field near Warangal

I am also fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet the neighbors in our apartment building. One of the first people we met when we moved into the apartment was Moulali, the watchman. A middle-aged Telugu man, he knew very little English (and I knew even less Telugu), but somehow we always managed to communicate about where our host family was, what he was having for dinner that night, where we were going, and when we’d be back. Every time we came into the carport, where he and his family lived in a small room, he would yell, “Namaste!” and fold his hands dramatically. He was always extremely energetic, and my best memory of Moulali was when Jennie and I gave him a flower for him to give it to his wife, Narasimha. He took the flower, then sang and skipped all the way across the carport to his wife to give it to her.

Moulali and Narasimha

Moulali and Narasimha, the watchman and maid for our apartment building

Throughout the semester, we formed a close relationship with the other family on our hall, spending many afternoons or weekends hanging out in their apartment watching TV, or eating lots of snacks, and playing with their two kids Binnu (9) and Quiny (5). Madhu and Sandiya, the parents, were so kind and welcoming to us, and now seem like an integral part of our host family. We also became really close with the family living in the “penthouse” apartment on the roof. They also had two kids, Lalith (14) and Spandana (9), who we also spent a lot of time with. Lalith, a super smart rubix cube master, would always hang out in our apartment and tell us about the things he was learning in school. Spandana loved to come over to color or learn English songs from YouTube on our laptops. As the semester went on, our three families spent more and more time together, sharing meals, going to the park, and even doing sunrise yoga on the roof.

Binnu and Quiny Diwali

Binnu and Quiny in their Diwali outfits

There are many other people I will miss as well. I will miss spending evenings with Jennie doing homework, making cookies, and watching old episodes of Disney channel shows. I will miss traveling to new, exciting places with my friends from CIEE. I will miss meeting with my peer tutor Rajini twice a week to attempt at speaking Hindi. I will miss going to dinner and concerts with my friends from Hyderabad. And the list goes on.

Rajini

My peer tutor Rajini and me at our normal meeting spot in front of the library

Of course, I could list just as many, or more, things that I miss from home right now too, and I’m excited to go back to my family and friends in America. But now that my time in India is coming to a close, I wish that I could stay here for a little longer and prolong the end to these wonderful experiences I have had this semester.

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Rhiannon in India: Ending the semester on a great note

November 19, 2013

I starting to dawn on me that I only have few weeks left in India, and what’s worse, only a few more days left in Hyderabad! All of a sudden, I am scrambling to spend as much time as possible with my friends in Hyderabad, the other students in my program, and my home stay family and neighbors. To add to this busy schedule, I am hurrying to find gifts for my family and friends at home, plus attempting to study for finals and plan for my end-of-semester travelling. Because of all this craziness, it has been hard to find time to blog about my recent experiences, not to mention stopping to reflect on my semester and going back home. Nevertheless, I am happy that, in the past few weeks, I have been able to spend time doing the things that I will miss most once I am back home.

It may sound strange, but one thing I will miss most about this semester is sitar practice. Twice a week, five of my friends and I spent at least an hour in the evenings learning sitar from our wonderful teacher Vinoj, who only knew a few words in English. We learned mostly by watching and repeating what he played, but he would always say, “very good, very good” accompanied by a pat on the head, if we played something correctly, or “WRONG” if we messed up. Although we couldn’t communicate much through language, our teacher was always enthusiastic and supportive of us, and it provided a lot of hilarious moments during practice. Last week, we finally performed in the SIP Cultural Show, playing two songs on sitar that we have been practicing for three or four months now. It was really nerve-wracking to perform in front of a large auditorium full of UoH students and professors, but we were all proud of ourselves for performing only a few months after starting to learn sitar from scratch. As soon as we started playing our second piece, a popular Bollywood song, the whole crowd erupted in applause, and afterward, some of my Indian friends said we stole the show!

Sitar class

Sitar class with our teacher and tabla player

Here’s a video of our performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkGTHHZxlF0

Another thing I will miss a lot is hanging out with the little kids in my apartment building. A few weekends ago, Jennie and I were missing home, so we threw a Halloween party and invited all the families in our building. We decorated the rooftop patio with orange balloons, paper pumpkins and bats, and tissue paper ghosts. We bought tons of candy, a pumpkin, and some art supplies and planned some activities so that all the kids could participate. When the kids showed up that night, they were all decked out in full costumes, masks, capes, and face paint! We wore costumes, turned on some music, and played Halloween-themed bingo, pin the spider on the web, and musical chairs. The biggest hit among the kids was the “brain bowl,” a pumpkin full of noodles with prizes in the bottom that kids had to find by reaching their hands in the “brains.” Usually, we are constantly asking questions about Indian traditions, so it was nice to share a little bit about our culture in return, while getting to spend time with our neighbors too.

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The kids in their costumes for the Halloween party

Halloween weekend also happened to be Prerna’s birthday and Diwali, so the whole weekend was full of celebration. On Saturday, Prerna decided to celebrate her 15th birthday at an orphanage in Hyderabad that she had visited before with her school. We loaded up the car with toys and headed to the orphanage with our host family and some of our “extended host family” as well. Going to the orphanage was one of the many eye-opening experiences I have had while being in India. When we arrived, I thought it was a girl’s orphanage because almost all of the children I saw were girls, ranging from infants to pre-teens. However, I realized that it is only because many families in India can’t afford having daughters that the orphanage was so overwhelmingly female. It is illegal in India to determine the sex of a child before birth, so many baby girls are abandoned after they are born. To add to this problem, the social stigma around having children out of wedlock and the discrimination of children with divorced parents causes many mothers to abandon children regardless of their gender. This was a sad reality to witness firsthand at the orphanage, but while we were there we met a few of the children that had been adopted, including one girl who would be leaving the orphanage with her new family to live in London in just a few weeks.

The next day, we celebrated Diwali, one of the biggest and most widely celebrated holidays in India,with our host family and neighbors. We feasted all day on white rice, lemon rice, curries, daal, roti, vada, peanut chutney, and tons of sweets like laddus, gulab jamin, and kheer. Then we spent the evening setting off fireworks and playing with sparklers. There aren’t many regulations on fireworks here, so it was actually quite frightening how many explosions were going off in the small alleyways and streets between the apartments in our neighborhood. Apparently Diwali is one of the most dangerous days of the year in India, and we even saw an apartment building on fire in the distance. We went up on the roof to watch the 360-degree view firework show going on for miles around us, but as the night went on, we all got headaches from the booming noises and smoke inhalation. Overall, my first Diwali experience seemed like a mixture of Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and Blitzkrieg.

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Our Diwali feast

In just a few days, after I finish exams, I’ll be heading to South India with my friends to explore the backwaters of Kerala, tea plantations in the Western Ghats, and the luxurious palaces of old kings in Karnataka. I’m anxious to start these adventures, but the excitement is bittersweet. When I leave for this trip, I’ll be saying goodbye to Hyderabad, the wonderful city that I’ve called home for the last five months.

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Diwali decorations – rangoli and diyas

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Diego in Brazil: A day in Ipanema

November 8, 2013

It’s been exactly three months since I first came to Rio de Janeiro. Before starting my study abroad program I had spent the last half of July working in Lima and the Peruvian Amazon. On August 5th I finally took a bus to Lima’s airport and flew during the night to the Galeão International Airport in Rio. Just yesterday I was having dinner with my host family and we talked about that first day when I moved into their apartment.

Three months and today is the first day I post an entry about a trip in Rio! As I have written several times before, one of my main goals for my program was to avoid becoming yet another tourist in this city. I understand why many friends tend to disagree with my goal, but having this objective in mind was a mix of previous experiences in other regions of Brazil, some geography and sociology classes, and the desire to have a different approach towards one of the world’s most dynamic metropolis.

After countless conversations with my host family, classmates, professors, and many people I have met so far, I finally felt ready to visit and write about some of Rio’s neighborhoods. So here it goes.

Last weekend I packed a backpack and left my apartment early in the morning. I took a bike (every month I pay about $4.00 to have access to one of Rio’s biking programs) and began my trip to a neighborhood in Rio’s southern area: Ipanema. I had planned to visit a number of places that my host family had suggested, but I mainly wanted to spend a day walking around Ipanema’s streets without a set destination.

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A small market with great fruit in Ipanema.

You may recognize the name Ipanema. The song “Garota de Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”), written and composed by João Gilberto and Stan Getz in 1962, made the name of this neighborhood widely known (here’s a version of the song for you to enjoy:

I biked for about 25 minutes before reaching Ipanema and left my bike to start walking. My host family truly wanted me to visit the Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz and the Igreja Nossa Senhora da Paz, so that is where I went first. Thinking about this entry I stopped to look for “good” pictures but in the end decided to submit the ones with cars, buses, and people walking through the church and park. In my experience, contrasting images of nature, people, and culture is one of Rio’s main characteristics.

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Not a great picture of the Nossa Senhora da Paz church, but the contrast is certainly common in Rio’s streets.

I bought two oranges from a street market and sat in the park to read “Perto do Coração Selvagem” (Near to the Wild Heart) by Clarice Lispector – a fantastic writer. Unfortunately it was a rainy day so reading outside was not a great plan. I entered a small shop to buy water and asked if they had any suggestions for my trip. The guy in the shop sent me to visit the theater Rubens Correa and the cultural center Laura Alvim, and of course I followed his instructions. As I visited these and other places I kept asking people if they had any suggestions for my day in Ipanema. I ended up having lunch in a sandwich-shop with incredible natural juices and a nice couch to read.

I finished Lispector’s book in the afternoon and kept walking. The weather had not improved much but several people were now in the beach (my guess is that the temperature never dropped below 70 degrees.) I knew friends and family would appreciate a picture or two from Ipanema’s beach so I walked by the beach for about forty minutes. When I finally reached the end of Ipanema (where Copacabana starts) I took another bike and began my trip back to my apartment.

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And of course, Ipanema’s beach on a cloudy day.

As I walked through this neighborhood I kept thinking about my “don’t be a tourist” goal. Was it worth it? Did it make any sense to wait some time before going on these trips? Would reading Lispector’s book in a sandwich-shop have been any different two months ago? Well, I suppose any “evaluation” of my goal will have to come from my overall experience in Rio de Janeiro. Two months ago I wouldn’t have known that, following a common cultural dynamic in the country, Lispector’s modern language had been widely criticized throughout Brazil as an attempt to move away from other more traditional styles. It may seem as small detail, but understanding why different literary circles in Brazil reacted differently to “Perto do Coração Selvagem” is the result of countless conversations during these three months.

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Mel in Chile: Missing Richmond

October 8, 2013

Here it is!

I cannot accurately chronicle my time abroad if it didn’t include a post about how I am starting to miss Richmond. This also comes a couple of days after I decided that I would will go back to Richmond in lieu of another semester abroad.

Maybe the blog about missing UR and being excited to come back and the nostalgia that starts to hit me, would be more romantic or fitting if it were my last blog. But I will break with tradition here and talk about how I miss the red brick and grassy heaven that is the University of Richmond only a month and a week into my program.

Evidently, I am not the only one who feels this way. Our program director walked in today and said “Look, I imagine the month long excitement of being in a different country has waned by now. I know you all want to eat hamburgers again and are getting tired of eating so much bread (NEVER!). But this will pass. I promise it doesn’t last.”

After the one-month mark, I get the feeling the excitement of being abroad turns into a routine of waking up, having class during the day, hanging around a bit before going home, and finally coming in for dinner at 8 pm. After this, I start with homework/skype/reading news/reading things that don’t matter/answering emails until all this culminates into a trip downstairs for some pan con aji pebre (bread with the best spicy salsa concoction to ever be put on the market). I will be bringing 5 bottles of aji pebre upon my return to the states. This will probably last me a month or so and then I will suffer through a withdrawal phase. I could write an entire blog post about aji pebre.

The title of this post is “missing Richmond” and before I wrote the main body, I thought I was going to write about how much I missed Richmond, what I missed about it, and how I am so excited to come back.

All of this is certainly true, and I was going to write about it all without being too “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” –ish

But then I decided not too. I will be back in Richmond and “have” all of what I miss in a couple of months.

So instead, I decided to write some things I love about living in Chile.

Pebre

Aji

Aji Pebre

How it is socially acceptable to eat a copious amount of bread

The movements for social progress

The people who perform in front of rows of cars stopped at red lights

The hot dog with fried potato chips around it

THE HOME MADE ALFAJORES BY THE LA MONEDA STATION (I can never buy just one)

The colorful stones the country has

The friendly Chileans

Chilenismos (Spanish words used exclusively by Chileans)

The Human Rights Museum

The National Library I go to study in every day after school

My walk to the university

The Andes.

The Andes.

The Andes.

San Pedro de Atacama

That good pizza place I went to on Tuesday after visiting Pablo Neruda’s house

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda’s houses

Especially the one in Isla Negra

$2 Yoga classes at the studio close to my house

My host family

The delicious meals they cook
But most of all, I love sitting in the kitchen at 1 in the morning, when everyone is asleep, doing my homework while listening to a radio station that plays old Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French classic songs, with the volume super low.

The kitchen at night is my favorite place in all of Chile.

The list could be long enough to circle around the equator at least 13 times.

But nobody has time to read that!

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One of the most memorable days in Santiago! Neal, a UR student studying in Valparaiso, Chile, came to visit me for the day. We stopped for dinner at my favorite bar/restaurant “The Clinic”

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This view is from Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra. I can definitely see what he loved about the place!

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Picture from a section of the Museum of Memorial and Human Rights in Santiago. This is a museum dedicated to the 17 years of dictatorship (1973-1989/1990) in Chilean history

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This is the porch in my Chilean house. Now that summer is coming, it makes for a lovely place to spend a Saturday morning. We will start to have many barbecues here as well!

Hasta la próxima (until next time!) 🙂

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Rhiannon in India: Indian Cuisine

October 2, 2013

If there’s anything that deserves the dedication of an entire blog post, it’s food. So far, I have loved the food here, and making the adjustment at the beginning of my trip was surprisingly easy. Some of the “dangers” that people warned me about still ring true, like drinking tap water or eating too much street food, but my friends and I have been here long enough now that we have adjusted to a lot of the differences. Sometimes I even go to a roadside stand with my host sister, Prerna, to eat a delicious snack called pani puri. When you go to a pani puri stand, the vendor takes a hollow fried ball out of a bag, pokes a hole in it with his thumb, throws in some mashed chickpeas with spices and cilantro, dunks the whole ball in a large vat of spicy broth, and hands it to you. You have to throw the whole thing in your mouth immediately before it disintegrates – and before he throws the next one your way.

As a disclaimer, my experience with food in India could never do justice to Indian food in general. Every state in India has its own trademark dish, and many people say that there is a new signature cuisine every 50 kilometers. This is because regional produce and ingredients almost always dictate the traditional dishes of an area in India because it wasn’t too long ago when India was made up of smaller localities called princely states. For instance, dishes in Kerala (the southern-most state, at the tip of India) always include coconuts – coconut oil, coconut water, coconut milk, or dry coconut mixed into curries, chutneys, and sweets. Hyderabad is known for its spicy rice dish called biryani, and everyone here is proud of it. Biryani is typically eaten for special occasions, is made in very large quantities, and can be made “veg” or “non-veg” with mutton or chicken. Biryani is made with a variety of spices, or masala, including cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.

Biryani

Nivedita preparing biryani for the Ganesh festival

There are also many religious beliefs that dictate the way people eat in India. The ancient Hindu religious texts say that eating a strict vegetarian diet makes you peaceful, so being “veg” is a religious tradition and is also a symbol of caste identification. However, many people eat “non-veg” too, especially the Muslim and Christian communities, so finding a non-veg meal isn’t difficult. The ayurvedic texts also describe the health benefits of eating with your hands, like that your fingers correspond to the five elements, so using them to eat helps with digestion.

My host family is vegetarian, but Jennie, my friend who is also living at my home stay, is vegan and gluten-free, so now all of us eat that way at home. Unless I am traveling or my friends and I go out to eat, I mostly eat home-cooked meals by our host mom, Nivedita. In the morning, Nivedita makes us breakfast to take to school, usually consisting of fried rice and vegetables or dosas with chutney. Dosas are like super thin pancakes made of rice flour, similar to crepes in French cuisine. Chutneys can be made of virtually any vegetable, peanuts, or even coconut and are pureed with oil and spices. For dinner, we always eat together on the floor in the living room and usually have rice with daal (lentil soup) or a vegetable curry using okra, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, or carrots.

Dosas

Dosas with carrot chutney

 

For lunch, I usually eat at one of the student canteens on campus. These canteens are all over campus and range in size from full restaurants to little shacks behind the school buildings. At the campus restaurant, called Gops, you can order tons of different curries, rice, noodles, and breads like naan or roti. The smaller canteens serve chai (tea) and fried snacks like samosas throughout the day and serve meals only around lunchtime. When you order a “meal,” you get a huge pile of rice and unlimited amounts of the curries and chutneys that they have made that day.

Integrated Canteen

My favorite canteen on campus

Another important meal of the day in India is “tiffins,” which is like the Indian version of teatime. This includes chai of course, but also a variety of snacks that are all deep-fried and incredibly delicious. I have been to two cooking classes to learn how to make some of these snacks, and the cooking instructors tried to teach us healthier ways of making them, but that didn’t mean they spared the oil and salt. We learned how to make mirchi bujji, pakora, chickpea sundel, and chiwada. I won’t explain these in detail, but they are all fried in oil and a variety of Indian spices. These are also typical dishes to eat during the rainy season. As my cooking instructor put it, “When Indians smell rain, they also smell pakora.”

Tiffins

A tiffins meal on the train – idly, vada, and chutney

As you can see, there are so many different types of Indian food that it would be impossible to describe them all here. I always enjoyed Indian food before coming here, but I have realized that what I thought of as Indian food at home barely scratched the surface. One of the best parts about traveling to new places in India is experiencing just how different the cuisine is from region to region. It really shows what a diverse and interesting country India is!

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Preparing pakora at the cooking class

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Rhiannon in India: Ganesh Chaturthi

September 20, 2013

As I mentioned in my last post, the past week was full of celebrations in honor of Ganesh’s birthday, called Ganesh Chaturthi. People in India celebrate by putting up statues of Ganesh in their homes or on the road and do pooja (ritual) around the Ganesh every day for anywhere from 3 to 11 days, depending on different traditions. At the end of the week, they put the Ganesh statues in water for Immersion, symbolizing Ganesh’s journey home to heaven. Because everyone puts the Ganesh statues in natural bodies of water during this holiday, it has been a huge source of pollution that adds to the issue of clean water in India. Recently, people have started using clay statuettes that naturally dissolve in the water, but many plastic and painted statues are still used every year. In Chennai, when we visited the temple to make an offering to Ganesh, we saw men making the clay Ganesh statuettes on the street for people to buy instead.

Clay Ganeshas

Men at the temple making clay Ganeshas

As soon as we got home from our Chennai trip on Monday night, the weeklong celebration began in full swing in our apartment building. While we were in Chennai, our host mom, Nivedita, and some of the other women in the building had put up a pandal, similar to a shrine, that included a large stage, elaborate decorations, and a 4-foot tall Ganesh statue in the car garage beneath our building, colorfully decorated with flowers and other small statuettes. Every night for five nights, all of the families in the apartment building (about 65 people in total) would gather around the pandal for pooja, singing, games, and dinner.

First, around 8 p.m., all the women would sit in a circle in front of Ganesh and chant Vedic mantras together. Then, a pujari would arrive and begin the formal ritual by chanting loudly, apparently instructing us to do certain actions, although I could never understand what he was saying. Instead, I would mimic the actions of the people around me, throwing rice on the Ganesh, drinking coconut water, spinning around three times to the right, and many other things. Although I never fully understood what was going on, burning incense, breaking coconuts, and listing the names of our neighbors were among the usual things done during the pooja. After the pujaris were finished, we would begin playing games and singing. Most of the children – and there were a lot of them – were very interested in Jennie and me and wanted to talk and play with us constantly. During the Friday night pooja, the families wanted to do something special so Jennie, Prerna and I sang a Taylor Swift song and played guitar. It turns out Taylor Swift is just as popular here as she is in the US, if not more!

Finally, around 9 or 10 p.m., we started dinner, which was prepared by some of the women in the apartment. It always included an enormous vat of rice, lots of fried snacks, and a dessert. The dessert was the most important part of the meal because Ganesh is known to love sweets. In fact, all of the statues of Ganesh show him holding a laddu, a sweet ball-shaped dessert, in one hand. The dinner usually went on until 11 or 12, and even after we came upstairs, we would go to the neighbors’ apartments and chat for another hour, so we were always exhausted by the end of the night.

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Our apartment’s Ganesh pandal and food for the potluck

The most exciting part of the whole celebration was on Saturday, when we did the Immersion. As soon as we got up on Saturday morning, we started making biryani with Nivedita and Sandia, our neighbor down the hall. Biryani is a spicy rice dish special to Hyderabad – and we made 11 pounds of it for the potluck that day. When we gathered for the feast that afternoon, I was so surprised to see that there was even more rice, curries, snacks, and desserts that other people had made for us to eat. It was like Thanksgiving, but with more food than I could have ever imagined.

After eating, we started the procession of cars to the lake, displaying the large Ganesh statue in the back of the first car, like a parade float. The car had been decorated like the pandal, complete with flowers and all of the small Ganeshas from each apartment. After our neighbors blessed the journey by doing a ritual in front of the car with water, fire, and breaking coconuts, everyone drove their cars and two-wheelers slowly all the way to the lake while banging on pots and yelling “Jai! Jai!” The cheering didn’t stop until the last Ganesh had been thrown into the water.

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Blessing the travel of the Ganesh procession

The best part of this celebration was getting the chance met all of our neighbors. Now that Jennie and I have gotten to know them, especially the kids, we haven’t stopped hanging out with them since. Now, we have started eating meals on the rooftop with some of the other families. When the power goes out (which happens every day), we go to the neighbors’ apartments to pass the time together. A few of the kids come to our apartment every day after school to play games or ask for help with their English homework. Some of the kids have even made it their job to teach me Telugu, the local language, although I am hopeless at pronouncing the words.

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In the procession to the lake with the Ganesh statue

I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such a great community of people and that I have been able to form relationships with them over the past week. Not understanding Telugu, spilling the coconut water, or turning left instead of right during pooja didn’t seem to matter at all. Spending time with my host family and neighbors makes our differences melt away, and it has made a world of difference.

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Our family and neighbors on the day of Immersion

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Rhiannon in India: A Trip to the Beach

September 17, 2013

This weekend was another holiday, so Jennie, Romi, and I took a long overdue vacation south to Pondicherry and Chennai. After traveling north to the bustling capital a few weeks ago, we wanted a more relaxing destination – and we got it!

After we finished classes on Thursday, we boarded another Sleeper train with a 14-hour ride to Chennai ahead of us. Now, if you know anything about Bollywood or Indian pop culture, you are probably wondering if we traveled on the Chennai Express. Chennai Express is a very popular movie in India right now featuring two of Bollywood’s most famous actors – and it takes place on a train to Chennai. Unfortunately, our train was called Charminar Express rather than Chennai Express, but we took a few movie-like photos anyway.

Chennai Express

Before our trip to Chennai, we had a Chennai Express photo shoot

Even though we were in the most budget option of Sleeper compartments once again, the whole trip was very enjoyable. Truthfully, we were delighted to have seats on the train at all because, when we booked our trip online, we received RAC tickets (sort of like waiting list spots) and didn’t get our confirmed seats until two days before our trip! If we had boarded the train with RAC tickets, we would have had to share our bunks for the entire 14-hour ride, and we may have been separated. Luckily, after two weeks of watching our waitlist numbers get closer to zero on the website, we finally received our confirmed tickets and boarded the train to find three full bunks just for us.

One of the best parts of the train ride was the company we had in our compartment. An older Telugu-speaking couple sat across from us and, although we could barely communicate using English, somehow we shared food, laughed, and interacted with each other and had a wonderful time that night. There was also a young man in an RAC seat nearby that spent over an hour giving us suggestions for things to do in Pondicherry and Chennai. He seemed really enthusiastic to share information about temples, beaches, and festivals with us. Even after everyone had gone to sleep in their bunks, the old man and a younger man nearby, although strangers before the trip, sat up and chatted over chai for half the night.

After sleeping through the night in my little bunk on the train, I woke up early, waved good morning to the old lady across from me, then looked out of the little crack of the window visible from my bunk. I could not believe my eyes. The scenery was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! We were in the middle of green patty fields and marshlands, and every once in a while we passed through a village of small houses and huts. We passed people in the fields playing an early-morning game of cricket, and others in the villages getting ready for work. The train was following the coast, so in the distance I could see the Bay of Bengal, dotted with colorful sailboats. The best part was that the sunrise was reflected in all of the water collected in the fields and marsh from the monsoon rains.

When we pulled into the Chennai station, we had a quick breakfast and headed straight to the bus station to catch a three-hour bus south to Pondicherry. Pondicherry was a French settlement until the 1950s, so there is still a lot of French influence there (now mostly in terms of tourists), especially in the French quarter, a quaint little neighborhood on the beach. As we drove into Pondicherry, I noticed lots of flags that were a mix of the French and Indian flags. In the French quarter, all of the street names were French, many people spoke French, and people even said “salut” or “bonjour” to us on the street. We also had plenty of French food, coffee, and chocolates in the many French cafes all over the area. It was like we were in a totally different India! Being there reminded us of how many different cultures there are to see in India, and how no two are alike.

Colorful Pondicherry

All of the streets in the French Quarter were lined with colorful houses and hotels

Without a doubt, my favorite part of Pondicherry was the beach. In the French quarter, the coastline is mostly rocky, but still has a few sandy spots as well. We spent our first afternoon walking along the waterfront watching kids play in the water, although it is technically not allowed because of the strong current and pollution. We didn’t swim there, but our hotel owner told us about a cleaner beach seven kilometers south of the French quarter called Paradise Beach, so on Saturday we hopped in an auto and went there for the afternoon. We were a bit unsure about what we would be doing because it is uncommon in India to swim at the beach, but we left the hotel with open minds and lots of food for a picnic. But to our surprise, Paradise Beach was almost completely deserted, so we jumped in the water for a swim! We picnicked and played Frisbee for a while, but all of a sudden black cloud started rolling in from over the ocean. Within 15 minutes, the wind picked up, the sky got dark, and it began to rain so hard we thought it was hailing. We ran back to our auto and got back to our hotel safe and sound, so now we can say that we survived a monsoon on the beach at the Bay of Bengal!

Rocks in Pondicherry

The rocky coastline of the French Quarter

On Sunday, we went back to the bus station and caught a bus back to Chennai. The next day was Ganesha Chaturthi, the beginning of a long festival to celebrate Lord Ganesha’s birthday. Ganesha is the Hindu god whose head resembles an elephant, and he is the god whom Hindus pray to first because he takes away obstacles in life. The story of Ganesha (as told by my host mom) is that his mother, Parvati, wanted a son so she made Ganesha out of sandalwood while her husband Shiva, the destroyer god and Ganesha’s father, was out of the house. Parvati put life into Ganesha and put him in front of the door to protect the house from intruders. When Shiva came back from hunting, Ganesha wouldn’t let him in, and not knowing that Ganesha was his son, Shiva cut off his head, which flew into the jungle. When Parvati realized what had happened, she explained to Shiva that he had killed their son and ordered that he go into the jungle to find Ganesha’s head. Shiva went out and returned with an elephant head instead and brought Ganesha back to life.

To celebrate on Monday, we went to a temple in Chennai and offered some flowers to Ganesha. During the festival, statues of Ganesha are put up in neighborhoods all over India, and people put small statues in their houses as well. There were six- to ten-foot tall Ganesha statues on all the roads and vendors were selling small clay statuettes in all the market areas. While we were in an auto on our way to the temple, a parade of people passed by with a mobile Ganesha shrine, so our auto driver parked the auto and ran over to receive prasadam (offered food and coconut water). When we returned to Hyderabad that night, we were surprised to find our neighborhood transformed with large, colorful Ganesha shrines on all the street corners complete with floodlights and loud music.

Mobile Ganesha Chennai

The mobile Ganesha passing our auto in Chennai

The trip this weekend was so relaxing and beautiful, but now I have a busy week ahead of me. Our apartment building will be celebrating for the Ganesha festival every night this week with poojahs (devotions) and lots of food. I will post soon about all of the festivities going on right here in Hyderabad!

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!

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Rhiannon in India: Orientation Week

July 17, 2013

After 3 flights, a night in the Mumbai airport, and a harrowing cab ride (traffic here is crazy!), I arrived at my dorm in Hyderabad at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I am staying at the International House on campus with 13 American students in my group and many more from around the world. The dining hall at the house prepares authentic Indian food for us, but thankfully holds back on the spiciness and gives us purified water that our sensitive stomachs can handle. I love the food and all of the unique spices here! A local restaurant owner came to talk to our group and explained that Indian food is unique because of its many spices that must be mixed in a specific order, much like chemistry. He told us that, historically, widows in India were often confined to communal homes (watch Deepa Mehta’s Water to see it in action), so they spent time experimenting with spices and came up with these scientific mixtures. According to the restaurant owner, an Indian meal usually includes between 5 and 50 different spices!

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Hyderabad was that the weather is wonderful! May is the hottest month of the year in this part of India, so by now, it has cooled down to a temperate 84 degrees Fahrenheit. To make it better, the monsoon rains don’t hit Hyderabad nearly as badly as they do up north.

Orientation this week has been a whirlwind of lectures and excursions around the city. We have already discussed many interesting topics such as food, transportation, and living as a woman in India. After learning about transportation in Hyderabad, we split into small groups for a hands-on navigation exercise. Lead by our language peer tutors (Indian students who will be helping us with language practice this semester), we spent the afternoon taking auto rickshaws, buses, and direct autos all over the city to get used to navigating and bargaining. This just happened to be an afternoon when the monsoon was in full force here in Hyderabad, but splashing through puddles on the auto rickshaws made the day even more exciting! My friend Jennie and I, with our peer tutor Salomi, took two “sharing autos” to a restaurant for lunch, then a “direct auto” to the mall to shop for some Indian clothing. Both types of autos are open-air rickshaws, but sharing autos are cheaper because the drivers pack as many customers in as possible as they drive along a set route. Direct autos will take you exactly you want to go, but they are more expensive.

Auto Rickshaw

Here’s an auto rickshaw

Inside Auto Rickshaw

The view inside an auto rickshaw

One of our trips that stood out most this week was to the Old City, which is often considered “downtown” Hyderabad. Because Hyderabad was never fully colonized, there is no trace of urban planning as there is in other Indian cities. The bustling streets of the Old City seem too narrow for traffic, but somehow cars, bikes, motorcycles, and pedestrians seem to pile on top of one another between never-ending rows of shops. Local women say that the Old City is the best place to shop for anything shiny or sparkly, including saris and bangles.

Old City

The Old City of Hyderabad

While we were in the Old City, we visited its most prominent landmarks: Chowmahalla Palace, Charminar, and Mecca Masjid. Chowmahalla Palace is an estate with four palaces, which were home to the Nizam monarchy from the late 1800s until Indian independence in 1947. The palaces, now turned into museums, are magnificent and reminiscent of a time much earlier than when they were actually used. The high ceilings are covered in ornate carvings and chandeliers, and in one of the main rooms there is even a large thrown where a prince may have sat less than 70 years ago! As we walked through the gardens of the estate, we could hear the call to worship being played over loud speakers from the Mecca Masjid mosque near by.

Chowmahalla Palace

Me at Chowmahalla Palace

Chowmahalla Throne

Chowmahalla Throne

Mecca Masjid

Mecca Masjid

Although I am staying on campus now, I will be moving into a home stay next week! I will be living with my friend Jennie and an Indian mother and daughter in an apartment about 30 minutes from campus. I am anxious to meet the family because my program directors say they are very welcoming and exciting to live with. I was a little nervous about the commute at first, but now that I am getting used to using autos and busses, I’m not so worried. Hopefully Jennie and I will have similar schedules and will be able to ride to and from campus together most of the time.

Tomorrow I will go to my first class at an Indian university! I will be “shopping for classes” at first, so I’ll just go to a few different ones each day until I decide which ones I like and which professors I can understand. I am excited to start classes because it will give me an opportunity to meet Indian students and hopefully engage in some events or clubs on campus.

I can’t believe I have only spent one week in Hyderabad! I have seen and done so many things this week that it is difficult to put it all into words, but hopefully as the semester continues, it will all get easier to process. Despite what a great week I have had, my semester really has yet to begin!

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Posted by rhiannoninindia

Profiter (posted by Pierre en Suisse)

May 16, 2013

Hello, once again, from Switzerland. A few weeks have passed since my last journey outside of the country, which means that recently my time has been spent en profitant de la Suisse. The title of this blog, Profiter (pronounced like prof-eet-ay), is the French verb to mean to benefit from, or to take advantage of. In adding de la Suisse, I mean to say that I have spent the past few weeks in Switzerland  taking part in more of what my European home has to offer. From bake sales to road races and group hikes, the past few weeks have been pretty action packed, but I am not complaining one bit.

Two weeks following the Monument 10k in Richmond–a race I have always wanted to partake in–I ran in the Lausanne 20km, which I ran instead as my first road race. It is called the 20km because the main race is that distance, however I only ran 10km because I was running it with my University team, the Social Erasmus Committee. If you are like me and thought at first that Social Erasmus meant organizing social events, well, this is only partially correct. I serve on this committee here in Lausanne, which is responsible for organizing community service and volunteering events for exchange students. Together, we decided to run as a fundraiser, and it turned out to be a great event. While this was my first time ever competing as a runner, I grew up a swimmer, so I am very familiar with racing. What I wasn’t familiar with were French motivational expressions, since I had never heard any before. That changed during the race when I heard spectators who lined the streets shouting out to everyone, “Allez! Voici! Allez!” It was a shock at first to hear my name called out several times, but then I remembered people could read it from my number on my shirt! I must say, I quite enjoyed hearing the cheers in a foreign language.

The weekend following the race, the committee put together a bake sale, or vente de patisseries as it is called in French. We sold different desserts and delicacies from all around the world, and collected money for a children’s association here in Lausanne. I must say, we had quite the spread before us. We had fresh, homemade tiramisu, a “tarte aux pommes,” which is basically an apple pie of sorts, but different from our American version, and my contribution of chocolate chip cookies, just to name a few. Since I am quite accustomed to at least saying hello to people as they pass by when I am working a stand, a few of the other volunteers and I began to say bonjour to people in the streets. We were quickly stopped by our Swiss friend who was working with us. She explained that she felt like it wasn’t a good idea because she thought it would be bothersome to people and make them feel uncomfortable rather than more willing to stop and look at what we had. This wasn’t really something that people did in Switzerland, she told us. Instead, we ended up gathering everyone’s attention with, I kid you not, a mix of amateur musical performances orchestrated by our iPods and own voices with words on the screen, which was met with many laughs, and smiles, and even the participation of some kids who passed us. At first I was puzzled by the idea that we couldn’t say hi to people, but instead could dance in the streets. But, because we were all having so much fun and bringing people to our stand, I didn’t question it.

The view from our stand at the bake sale

The view from our stand at the bake sale

While still staying in Switzerland, it was about time to take a quick journey out of Lausanne. The following weekend the exchange association had organized a hiking trip to a location north of Lausanne. We headed up to a place called Creux du Van, a rocky circular formation that was cut into what appeared to be some form of a mountain that became a complete plateau on top. We would stand just along the edge and be able to look down into what was an abyss of trees and straight, vertical rock from the top, in addition to seeing the valley and surrounding villages and very small cities in the distance. It was absolutely gorgeous. Although we weren’t very high up by the standards of other Swiss mountains, there was still some snow at the top in the middle of May. It was an incredible sight for me to see snow this late in the year. I did learn that this winter has been particularly snowy and cold across Europe (much like I read happened in the United States), so this too was abnormal. However, being the winter enthusiast that I am, I was not saddened by the sight.

View from Creux du Van

View from Creux du Van

While exams are now beginning to approach, my time in Switzerland is still not complete. I have about two more months here, as my exam schedule extends pretty late in the semester. I guess this means only one thing: I will have more time to continue exploring this wonderful country I have come to love so much. I will be sure to profite bien from every opportunity that comes my way, as a reward for getting school work and studying done. Until next time…

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City of dreams! (posted by Pierre en Suisse)

April 26, 2013

Salut tout le monde! If you remember reading my last post, Voyageur du monde, you may remember that I hinted at another upcoming voyage, but I did not reveal my destination. My country count is now officially at four, as I just returned from a trip to Paris! What a weekend that was! Before heading off, I had quite a few expectations of the city, all of which are possibly the most cliché images one could produce of the city. This included wanting to eat crêpes at the Eifel Tower, hearing accordion players at various street corners, and going on long walks through the city’s gardens and famous streets, namely the Champs Elysée. But against all the stereotypes, I was most excited about just being in the presence of such history and culture. Not to mention the fact that I’d be able to visit a European capital city with such importance for politics, finance, and culture.

As always, the first thing that I was super excited about upon arriving in Paris was the fact that I could speak the language of the country. I didn’t have to ask someone at an information window to speak English, but instead, me and my friends who traveled together (other exchange students at UNIL) could all pose our questions in French and continue practicing our language skills. I also have to say that knowing the language definitely enriched the experience for me. The first site we visited was the city catacombs. Buried 45 million years under the Earth, the catacombs are the city’s former stone mines where the materials to build structures like Notre Dame Cathedral were taken from. As a more touristy twist, they have been turned into the burial site of more than six million people. Posted throughout the catacombs were writings, in both French and Latin, with very thought provoking quotes about human nature. Without knowledge of French, I would have missed out on what became my favorite part of the catacombs!

The entrance into the tomb area of the catacombs, underground in Paris

The entrance into the tomb area of the catacombs

Of course, our tour of the city moved above ground after our first stop. We later found ourselves visiting an old train station turned museum, le Musée d’Orsay, where we saw the works of some famous artists I had first learned about in elementary school, such as Monet! My group and I had all decided that it was a necessity to go to a museum in Paris, even though not all of us were crazed for looking at art, just because it was such an important part of the city.

Right in the heart of the city, Paris, with the Louvre and the river Seine in sight

Right in the heart of the city, with the Louvre and the river Seine in sight

We found ourselves right downtown in the city when we left the museum, and by that point we all had food on our mind. After meeting up with a friend from France who had studied abroad at U of R last semester, we went off for our first real adventure into French cuisine. Luckily, our local was able to help us out with choosing some of the more traditional French dishes. I definitely branched out when I chose a duck dish for my dinner, and tasted my friend’s dish. She had ordered something called tartare de boeuf, which is essentially raw, ground meat with various seasonings for flavor. If you thought sushi is a terrifying concept, think again. I was at first really hesitant to try this, since all of my prior food knowledge was telling me something like this needed to be cooked, but I figured if French people can eat it, so could I, so I decided to be open and try it. I rewarded myself afterwards with crêpes, and then we finally made our way to the Eifel Tower.

And of course Paris' most famous site, the Eiffel Tower!

And of course Paris’ most famous site!

That being just our first day in Paris, it would require a much longer post for me to recount everything that we did during this trip. Four days in the city gave us the opportunity to see and do so many things, from just aimless touring to visiting some historical museums as well, notably L’Hôtel des Invalides, a a military hospital that Louis XIV ordered to be built for his forces in 1670. In some of the areas where the walls were newly renovated, it became so easy to place yourself in this time period, and feel like you were a part of it for a moment. It was an amazing feeling, when looking up at all of the stone walls and blue roofs. We also got to see the tomb of Napoleon in Les Invalides, which for a history nerd such as myself was pretty exciting.

Did Paris live up to my expectations? It certainly did, and then some. In the end, I don’t think that I embodied the clichés that I felt like I would before heading off, minus the fact that me and my group all bought berets the very last day and wore them through the airport and all the way back to Lausanne. I do count on the fact that I will be back there one day, but as always, coming back to Lausanne a third time from a trip abroad helped to solidify just how special I regard this city and country, as my first ever home away from home.

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