Saturday, June 27, 2009
Amritsar, etc.
Hello all,
It's been a really busy past couple of weeks, so it's been hard to find time to update here, so this is just going to be one giant super-post so that I get you all caught up on what I've been doing. Work at my Anganwadi has been going really well... It's really interesting to see the interactions between all of the women, as well as to watch how the children behave within themselves. I don't think I was made for a career in young childhood education as I find it gets a little bit tedious and boring just playing with blocks and singing songs all day, but I'm definitely having a lot of fun with it for now, and so many of these kids are starved of that sort of interactive learning. My Anganwadi worker is rarely there, so it's mostly just me and the kids most of the time, which is actually pretty great. It definitely gives me the freedom to do the activities I want to with them, without feeling like I'm being judged for being quirky or spending too much time on art projects :)
About a week we had a traditional Himachali evening at our home base (Himachal is the state we're in right now), which was so much fun. All the female members of our staff dressed us up in Sarees and traditional dress, and we ate the traditional food and learned some of the dances from the area. That was so much fun, and it was even more fun to see everyone all fancy with tons of bangles, and makeup and bindis, so... look for pictures of that.
The other interns and I had a meeting at and a tour of a Governmental High School, which was really very interesting. That was one of my favorite things we've gotten to do so far, and it was really fascinating to hear about their high school experience here in comparison with our High Schools in the States. We saw one of the classes, and it was really different because while the school is co-ed, the classrooms are divided by sex so all the boys sit on one side of the class and all the girls sit on the other. It's also really interesting to see the uniforms they're required to wear because they're sort a combination of the traditional salwar kameez and a British private school uniform... but there, I guess, is another example of the effects of colonialism on the culture here.
I also got food poisoning last week, which was not so much fun, and actually ended up having my very first hospital experience ever in a rural Indian hospital which was... interesting, to say the least. No worrying... it was nothing serious, but they're just very careful when it comes to food poisoning here because it's so common because it's so hot here in the summer, and therefore one of the main summer causes of death is dehydration. Mostly we just had to sit around in this hospital all day getting iv fluid pumped into us, until they told us that they wanted to admit us over night, and we flat-out refused. So then we had to go through this whole legal process of removing them from legal responsibility if anything happened while we were out of the hospital, because they wouldn't discharge us so we were still technically patients. It was definitely an interesting experience, but one that I'm not hoping to have again any time soon.
After the hospital fiasco, I managed to make it to Amritsar for the weekend which is up in Punjab along the Pakistan border. We made it to the border JUST in time to witness the closing ceremony, which they perform every night and was one of the weirder experiences I've had yet. It was seriously like a football game, with one set of bleachers on the India side of the border, and one set of bleachers on the Pakistan side of the border, with all the guards in their fancy outfits trying to outdo the other side with intricate steps, marching, and high-kicks. It was just... a very surreal experience. The thing that I found the most interesting was that regardless of the tensions between these two countries, this border ceremony is completely choreographed and arranged together between the two countries. They both do the same thing in their little dance-y things, and they're wearing matching outfits in different colors. There were cheers where the MC guy would should "HINDUSTAN" and the crowd would shout "ZINDABAR" (meaning long live India), and answering cheers which came from the Pakistani side. It was just so different from anything I've ever experienced before, including the fact that simply for being white we got to sit in the VIP section of the bleachers. Leaving the ceremony and returning to where our cab was parked also clued us in to how we were going to be treated that weekend. I was travelling with my friend Emily, and both of us are well... very very pale white. We had been warned that in this region there aren't very many white tourists who come there, and many of the people in Punjab have never seen someone our color in their life, so we were going to get harrassed more there than anywhere we had been yet. But... even that gave us no clue of how much attention we were going to draw. Walking those few hundred meters we must have gotten asked to be in about fifty pictures with families, young women and men, and children. I've never felt so much a celebrity in my life, and honestly... I never want to be famous. It was just too much. I was asked to marry about eight different people, told that I was the most beautiful woman in the world; the ultimate in beauty, I believe was the exact phrase used, and asked to hold and take pictures with so many babies it was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I understand why. In this country, the perception is the exact opposite of ours in that being tan is not a good thing. The desire here is to be as pale as possible; and example of this would be that they don't sell self-tanner, but skin lightening lotion. So, when they see people like us, we just literally are the ultimate in beauty.
So, once we left the border and re-entered the city of Amritsar, we went to the Golden Temple because we wanted to see it at nighttime. It was really just, absolutely gorgeous. I don't think any of the pictures I took can really do it justice. Here, we still got stared at a lot, but not harrassed quite as much, or at least so we thought until we got back in the morning and got in line in an attempt to actually go inside the temple. This experience was... well, honestly, kind of gross. So we're waiting in this huge line at 4:30AM when the temple opens because we want to see it at sunrise, and you can go inside the walls of the temple complex no problem, and see the temple itself and the surrounding lake and the marble walkway, but to actually get inside the temple you have to wait in this giant line of Sikh pilgrims. So we're in this line, and there's absolutely no sense of personal space, and these two young men behind us start getting really touchy feely towards parts of us that I would usually smack someone for getting fresh with, but we're completely compacted into this line so we can't even move. After literally about twenty minutes of this, I give up, elbow the two men in an area that they definitely didn't want to be elbowed in and just ploughed my way out of that line. It was just... It's too bad that I didn't get to see the inside of the temple, but I don't think I could have stood another hour and a half in that line. However, it was still really great to see the temple and to witness the mass of pilgrims that make their way to this temple every single day.
Amritsar was hotter than anything I had experienced up until that point, and it was such a good thing that we had been advised to both get an air-conditioned taxi as well as an air-conditioned hotel room. We also went to go see Jallianwala Bagh which was the site of a huge massacre leading up to the revolution. It was a really interesting place to see, and it was kind of morbidly fascinating to be able to see the bullet holes in the walls of the garden, but we had to leave pretty fast due to a combination of the heat and the inability to actually soak up any of the history because we were being followed around by large groups of people who stopped us every five feet to ask for "just one snap!" (aka take a picture with me!). It was... sweet, I guess but we could only take so much of it so we headed back towards to hotel, stopping on the way to get some shopping done but eventually just getting out of the heat and the staring as quickly as possible.
This past week the six-week people left, and now there's only Meredith and I left from the original group of people that we came with. I don't see anything too big coming up in the next week and a half, and mostly I'm just starting to really look forward to coming back home pretty soon.
It is, however, supposed to be monsoon season here, and yet it's only rained once in the past three weeks and everyone is starting to get really worried. The electricty here is hydro-electric, and we're down to about 7 days of power left in the dam, so.... We're hoping it's going to start raining soon. Mostly it's just unbearably hot to a level that even the people here aren't used to, and it's getting concerning because people's agricultural work is failing due to the complete drought that we're experiencing right now. We're hoping that it's going to rain sometime this week, but who really knows so... Keep your fingers crossed for us.
We also had a meeting at the Government Ayurvedic Hospital which was a really interesting experience as well. This is basically a hospital which offers an alternative to modern medicine, and instead they treat less serious cases (usually of chronic pain, like arthritis) through natural herbal remedies.
Not much else to say... Just, again, hoping it's going to rain and break the heat, because it's getting hotter every day and honestly 120F gets a little bit unbearable after about an hour.
More later :)
It's been a really busy past couple of weeks, so it's been hard to find time to update here, so this is just going to be one giant super-post so that I get you all caught up on what I've been doing. Work at my Anganwadi has been going really well... It's really interesting to see the interactions between all of the women, as well as to watch how the children behave within themselves. I don't think I was made for a career in young childhood education as I find it gets a little bit tedious and boring just playing with blocks and singing songs all day, but I'm definitely having a lot of fun with it for now, and so many of these kids are starved of that sort of interactive learning. My Anganwadi worker is rarely there, so it's mostly just me and the kids most of the time, which is actually pretty great. It definitely gives me the freedom to do the activities I want to with them, without feeling like I'm being judged for being quirky or spending too much time on art projects :)
About a week we had a traditional Himachali evening at our home base (Himachal is the state we're in right now), which was so much fun. All the female members of our staff dressed us up in Sarees and traditional dress, and we ate the traditional food and learned some of the dances from the area. That was so much fun, and it was even more fun to see everyone all fancy with tons of bangles, and makeup and bindis, so... look for pictures of that.
The other interns and I had a meeting at and a tour of a Governmental High School, which was really very interesting. That was one of my favorite things we've gotten to do so far, and it was really fascinating to hear about their high school experience here in comparison with our High Schools in the States. We saw one of the classes, and it was really different because while the school is co-ed, the classrooms are divided by sex so all the boys sit on one side of the class and all the girls sit on the other. It's also really interesting to see the uniforms they're required to wear because they're sort a combination of the traditional salwar kameez and a British private school uniform... but there, I guess, is another example of the effects of colonialism on the culture here.
I also got food poisoning last week, which was not so much fun, and actually ended up having my very first hospital experience ever in a rural Indian hospital which was... interesting, to say the least. No worrying... it was nothing serious, but they're just very careful when it comes to food poisoning here because it's so common because it's so hot here in the summer, and therefore one of the main summer causes of death is dehydration. Mostly we just had to sit around in this hospital all day getting iv fluid pumped into us, until they told us that they wanted to admit us over night, and we flat-out refused. So then we had to go through this whole legal process of removing them from legal responsibility if anything happened while we were out of the hospital, because they wouldn't discharge us so we were still technically patients. It was definitely an interesting experience, but one that I'm not hoping to have again any time soon.
After the hospital fiasco, I managed to make it to Amritsar for the weekend which is up in Punjab along the Pakistan border. We made it to the border JUST in time to witness the closing ceremony, which they perform every night and was one of the weirder experiences I've had yet. It was seriously like a football game, with one set of bleachers on the India side of the border, and one set of bleachers on the Pakistan side of the border, with all the guards in their fancy outfits trying to outdo the other side with intricate steps, marching, and high-kicks. It was just... a very surreal experience. The thing that I found the most interesting was that regardless of the tensions between these two countries, this border ceremony is completely choreographed and arranged together between the two countries. They both do the same thing in their little dance-y things, and they're wearing matching outfits in different colors. There were cheers where the MC guy would should "HINDUSTAN" and the crowd would shout "ZINDABAR" (meaning long live India), and answering cheers which came from the Pakistani side. It was just so different from anything I've ever experienced before, including the fact that simply for being white we got to sit in the VIP section of the bleachers. Leaving the ceremony and returning to where our cab was parked also clued us in to how we were going to be treated that weekend. I was travelling with my friend Emily, and both of us are well... very very pale white. We had been warned that in this region there aren't very many white tourists who come there, and many of the people in Punjab have never seen someone our color in their life, so we were going to get harrassed more there than anywhere we had been yet. But... even that gave us no clue of how much attention we were going to draw. Walking those few hundred meters we must have gotten asked to be in about fifty pictures with families, young women and men, and children. I've never felt so much a celebrity in my life, and honestly... I never want to be famous. It was just too much. I was asked to marry about eight different people, told that I was the most beautiful woman in the world; the ultimate in beauty, I believe was the exact phrase used, and asked to hold and take pictures with so many babies it was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I understand why. In this country, the perception is the exact opposite of ours in that being tan is not a good thing. The desire here is to be as pale as possible; and example of this would be that they don't sell self-tanner, but skin lightening lotion. So, when they see people like us, we just literally are the ultimate in beauty.
So, once we left the border and re-entered the city of Amritsar, we went to the Golden Temple because we wanted to see it at nighttime. It was really just, absolutely gorgeous. I don't think any of the pictures I took can really do it justice. Here, we still got stared at a lot, but not harrassed quite as much, or at least so we thought until we got back in the morning and got in line in an attempt to actually go inside the temple. This experience was... well, honestly, kind of gross. So we're waiting in this huge line at 4:30AM when the temple opens because we want to see it at sunrise, and you can go inside the walls of the temple complex no problem, and see the temple itself and the surrounding lake and the marble walkway, but to actually get inside the temple you have to wait in this giant line of Sikh pilgrims. So we're in this line, and there's absolutely no sense of personal space, and these two young men behind us start getting really touchy feely towards parts of us that I would usually smack someone for getting fresh with, but we're completely compacted into this line so we can't even move. After literally about twenty minutes of this, I give up, elbow the two men in an area that they definitely didn't want to be elbowed in and just ploughed my way out of that line. It was just... It's too bad that I didn't get to see the inside of the temple, but I don't think I could have stood another hour and a half in that line. However, it was still really great to see the temple and to witness the mass of pilgrims that make their way to this temple every single day.
Amritsar was hotter than anything I had experienced up until that point, and it was such a good thing that we had been advised to both get an air-conditioned taxi as well as an air-conditioned hotel room. We also went to go see Jallianwala Bagh which was the site of a huge massacre leading up to the revolution. It was a really interesting place to see, and it was kind of morbidly fascinating to be able to see the bullet holes in the walls of the garden, but we had to leave pretty fast due to a combination of the heat and the inability to actually soak up any of the history because we were being followed around by large groups of people who stopped us every five feet to ask for "just one snap!" (aka take a picture with me!). It was... sweet, I guess but we could only take so much of it so we headed back towards to hotel, stopping on the way to get some shopping done but eventually just getting out of the heat and the staring as quickly as possible.
This past week the six-week people left, and now there's only Meredith and I left from the original group of people that we came with. I don't see anything too big coming up in the next week and a half, and mostly I'm just starting to really look forward to coming back home pretty soon.
It is, however, supposed to be monsoon season here, and yet it's only rained once in the past three weeks and everyone is starting to get really worried. The electricty here is hydro-electric, and we're down to about 7 days of power left in the dam, so.... We're hoping it's going to start raining soon. Mostly it's just unbearably hot to a level that even the people here aren't used to, and it's getting concerning because people's agricultural work is failing due to the complete drought that we're experiencing right now. We're hoping that it's going to rain sometime this week, but who really knows so... Keep your fingers crossed for us.
We also had a meeting at the Government Ayurvedic Hospital which was a really interesting experience as well. This is basically a hospital which offers an alternative to modern medicine, and instead they treat less serious cases (usually of chronic pain, like arthritis) through natural herbal remedies.
Not much else to say... Just, again, hoping it's going to rain and break the heat, because it's getting hotter every day and honestly 120F gets a little bit unbearable after about an hour.
More later :)
Friday, June 12, 2009
Sorry!
Hello all,
I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've updated. Things have been ridiculous busy here, and I've mostly been trying to catch up on sleep during my free time. Last week was my last week at my primary school, and this week has been my first week at an Anganwadi (something sort of like a daycare). The Anganwadis are basically daycare plus for both children and mothers, and are funded by UNICEF and run by the Indian Government. The purpose is not only to give the kids (between the ages of 1.5 and 3) a foundation for their primary school education, but also to acquaint them with social and emotional skills, and to give their mother's a break so they can do the things that they need to do with their day. In addition to this childcare element to the Anganwadis, they also have a women's empowerment aspect in which women can come and spend time with other women from their village, and work on their English, and the Anganwadi workers help them with banking and medication and contraception, as well as the facilities provide lunch for both the children, mothers, and pregnant women. It's a really interesting idea, and I'm enjoying talking to all of the mothers, as well as getting to spend my days playing with these kids :)
Not this past weekend, but the weekend before, we went to a town called Manali, which is about a seven hour drive North of Dharamsala. I'll say this much--I never get car sick, but this time I did. That drive was absolutely terrifying, and I never want to experience something like that again. Take Indian driving... which consists of never using the brakes, and only using the horn and flashing your highbeams in order to let people know that you're coming, and add that to single lane roads winding around mountains, surrounded by both extreme cliffs crashing into a rapid-y river, and cliffs looking up towards highly landslide prone boulders... Goooood times. Not only do you have the windy cliff roads of death, but you have a tunnel that must be at least twice the length of the Holland Tunnel cutting underneath the mountiain, with a complete lack of any type of ventilation system. But... Manali was worth it. It was much cooler there... I was actually fairly freezing the entire time I was there, which was definitely a nice break from the constantly humidity and heat we have here. We saw a temple which still practices blood rituals, and I got to hold a lamb, and there were yaks everywhere that you could pay to sit on to get your picture taken. We did some shopping, and went to a good Italian place for dinner, and just had a good time enjoying some western food, and amazing views. On the way home (on yet again... the windy death drive), we stopped to spend about an hour white-water rafting which was so much fun. Although... It was a little bit gross when the completely clear river we were rafting in, the Beas, merged with another river and we saw a dead cow carass in the river, and then from then on the river was completley brown and smelled like... well... you know... :-/ All in all it was a really fun weekend, and I'm so glad we ended up going because the following week all of our 3-weekers left us to go back home, so it was a nice time for us to spend together before they all left.
The week before we went to Manali, we went on some pretty cool excursions. One of these excursions took us to the capital of the exiled Tibetan government, where we went to the Tibetan library in order to discuss the situation in Tibet with the director of the library. He was so cool, and actually had been the Dalai Lama's interpretter for 15 years before he started working to preserve Tibetan culture through this institution. He was a very interesting man, and had a lot of really insightful things to say, so that was a really interesting discussion to have.
We also stopped by the Norblingka Institute which works to preserve Tibetan culture, and saw many of the traditional crafts of Tibet, and watched people make different things, and got to look around in their store where they sell the items they make there. The institute was amazingly gorgeous, with water and trees everywhere, and this absolutely amazing Buddhist temple, with the most incredible artwork I've seen yet.
In addition, we met with the director of the Anganwadis this past week, and got to talk to her and ask her questions about their procedures, and their shortcomings, and their training, and anything that we were interested in. The project is really a very interesting idea, especially when juxtaposed with the pre-school/daycare system in our own country. The kids are really sweet, and I think that at least at my Anganwadi, the workers really care about the kids and the women, and are actually very interested in giving them the foundation for their primary education that is necessary. I think in seeing the educational state that many of the children are in in the primary schools, I'm going to focus a lot on teaching these kids the very basics in order to better prepare them for when they do transfer into the higher schools in a year or two.
Ok, that's all for now, but if I remember anything, I'll post again and add to this one.
Much love :)
I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've updated. Things have been ridiculous busy here, and I've mostly been trying to catch up on sleep during my free time. Last week was my last week at my primary school, and this week has been my first week at an Anganwadi (something sort of like a daycare). The Anganwadis are basically daycare plus for both children and mothers, and are funded by UNICEF and run by the Indian Government. The purpose is not only to give the kids (between the ages of 1.5 and 3) a foundation for their primary school education, but also to acquaint them with social and emotional skills, and to give their mother's a break so they can do the things that they need to do with their day. In addition to this childcare element to the Anganwadis, they also have a women's empowerment aspect in which women can come and spend time with other women from their village, and work on their English, and the Anganwadi workers help them with banking and medication and contraception, as well as the facilities provide lunch for both the children, mothers, and pregnant women. It's a really interesting idea, and I'm enjoying talking to all of the mothers, as well as getting to spend my days playing with these kids :)
Not this past weekend, but the weekend before, we went to a town called Manali, which is about a seven hour drive North of Dharamsala. I'll say this much--I never get car sick, but this time I did. That drive was absolutely terrifying, and I never want to experience something like that again. Take Indian driving... which consists of never using the brakes, and only using the horn and flashing your highbeams in order to let people know that you're coming, and add that to single lane roads winding around mountains, surrounded by both extreme cliffs crashing into a rapid-y river, and cliffs looking up towards highly landslide prone boulders... Goooood times. Not only do you have the windy cliff roads of death, but you have a tunnel that must be at least twice the length of the Holland Tunnel cutting underneath the mountiain, with a complete lack of any type of ventilation system. But... Manali was worth it. It was much cooler there... I was actually fairly freezing the entire time I was there, which was definitely a nice break from the constantly humidity and heat we have here. We saw a temple which still practices blood rituals, and I got to hold a lamb, and there were yaks everywhere that you could pay to sit on to get your picture taken. We did some shopping, and went to a good Italian place for dinner, and just had a good time enjoying some western food, and amazing views. On the way home (on yet again... the windy death drive), we stopped to spend about an hour white-water rafting which was so much fun. Although... It was a little bit gross when the completely clear river we were rafting in, the Beas, merged with another river and we saw a dead cow carass in the river, and then from then on the river was completley brown and smelled like... well... you know... :-/ All in all it was a really fun weekend, and I'm so glad we ended up going because the following week all of our 3-weekers left us to go back home, so it was a nice time for us to spend together before they all left.
The week before we went to Manali, we went on some pretty cool excursions. One of these excursions took us to the capital of the exiled Tibetan government, where we went to the Tibetan library in order to discuss the situation in Tibet with the director of the library. He was so cool, and actually had been the Dalai Lama's interpretter for 15 years before he started working to preserve Tibetan culture through this institution. He was a very interesting man, and had a lot of really insightful things to say, so that was a really interesting discussion to have.
We also stopped by the Norblingka Institute which works to preserve Tibetan culture, and saw many of the traditional crafts of Tibet, and watched people make different things, and got to look around in their store where they sell the items they make there. The institute was amazingly gorgeous, with water and trees everywhere, and this absolutely amazing Buddhist temple, with the most incredible artwork I've seen yet.
In addition, we met with the director of the Anganwadis this past week, and got to talk to her and ask her questions about their procedures, and their shortcomings, and their training, and anything that we were interested in. The project is really a very interesting idea, especially when juxtaposed with the pre-school/daycare system in our own country. The kids are really sweet, and I think that at least at my Anganwadi, the workers really care about the kids and the women, and are actually very interested in giving them the foundation for their primary education that is necessary. I think in seeing the educational state that many of the children are in in the primary schools, I'm going to focus a lot on teaching these kids the very basics in order to better prepare them for when they do transfer into the higher schools in a year or two.
Ok, that's all for now, but if I remember anything, I'll post again and add to this one.
Much love :)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Long post soon...
So so busy... sorry for the lack of communication... I just posted new photos on the same site as before (click the link below... They're in an album called "Dharamsala Weeks 2 & 3). I'll update my blog hopefully either later today or tomorrow.
Much love to all :)
Much love to all :)
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