First Day in India!

My trip has been wild so far---and I haven’t even made it to the city where we are going to be for the next three weeks (Madurai). Right now we are in Chennai. Everything on this trip has been so unexpected, in good ways and in bad. In total, from the time we left to the time we arrived in Chennai, we spent 3 days traveling in the air, on bus, and waiting for different flights. We are 11 ½ hours ahead of you and a LOT warmer. It was just hot enough at noon today when I went exploring to break a solid sweat. I think I even got a tiny sunburn. About the travel here…Our plane was huge, a 500 person plane. We were served meals every few hours, some traditional Indian food, like vegetable curry and some things I had never seen, like a poppy seed/mayo sandwich served with ketchup. I watched to see what the Indian people did with the ketchup and they smeared it all over the sandwich so that it dripped out when they ate it—it reminded me of Em. (There is a Chelsea and Emily on our trip!! Both in my group of 12!!) Also, we were given hot rags throughout the flight. I was like….ummm….what am I supposed to do with that, and people wiped down their faces. It was so weird, especially since they handed me the steamy rag with a pair of tweezers. Also, the flight attendants were absolutely beautiful and dressed in traditional Indian clothing.

On the plane, I watched an hour of Bollywood music videos and can’t wait to find a CD that I can buy! When we arrived in the first Indian airport (Mumbai, largest city in India) there was so many soooo many strange smells. A cute boy on our trip, Tim, said it smelled like a variety of baby diaper smells. They were potent too. At that airport, we had to go through a lot of security, which was wild, let me tell ya. First, women were separated from men, so that women could check women and vice versa. People were crazy and fighting to push past you in the line to go through security. Everyone thought they had something more important going on. Once we finally got through security we were late for boarding, but when I went to get on the bus to get to my plane, I found out that they hadn’t stamped one of my bags when it went through security so I had to go BACK and do it all over again! I’m talking about at least an hour process, by the way. So, the rest of my group was already on the bus to the airplane, so I ran back to security and, to make a long story short, went through security three times while the men yelled at the woman who forgot to stamp my luggage and argued over if my solution for my contacts was actually for contacts or not. I was breakin a sweat I was so nervous. I was alone in a city of almost 12 million people while these guards were screaming at each other in a language I didn’t understand. Anyways, once I had finally gotten back to check on to get on the bus, the guards just ignored me for a solid 20 minutes. A professor from another group waited for me and we just sat there while the guards ignored us and when we finally got to our plane, we were 50 minutes PAST takeoff time, thank god they waited for us. When we arrived in Chennai a bouquet of roses and the person from Iowa who started the program greeted us. I forgot to mention---on the plane to Chennai, there was blood on my seat and mosquitoes in the cabin of the plane!! For those of you who don’t know, mosquitoes carry a LOT of disease in India, predominantly malaria, so it was scary to fall asleep.

I was so blown away when I walked out of the airport. It was 4:30 AM and there were people sleeping everywhere. Some had earmuffs to try to block out the obnoxious sound of traffic. Some were sleeping on tops of rocks and rubble, which is everywhere here---this kind of mess that looks like the whole city is under construction. Even in front of the nicest buildings. Once a couple of random Indian dudes loaded our luggage onto a straight truck looking thing, we got on a ‘top notch’ bus to our apartments. This top-notch bus would be very crappy, by western standards, and when we got on the roadway---Mom, you would have CRAPPED!!!! By our ideas, we almost wrecked like 5 times! There is only lane dividers on some parts of the interstate and the only way people have any guidance of where or how fast to go is the size of the vehicle and honking. That’s why so many homeless people wear earmuffs (maybe?) Or is it just because it’s the coldest time of their year?.... Most everything has no doors, including vehicles. So, during travel you get very dirty. The apartments are weird. They, also, have no doors. It’s weird because there is no separation between the inside and outside, rich and poor, and dirty and clean. Everything just kind of meshes together. When we got to our hotel we got ‘mosquito bats’ which are literally electrical tennis rackets to wack at mosquitoes with. Raj said they explode with fireworks when you kill them with it, but I haven’t got one yet J. After we got to our hotel we had idlis and naan for breakfast and then showered. First off, we can’t open our mouth while showering, and second off, all we had was running water and a bucket. When I showered I basically just squatted so my head could fit into the bucket and then just dumped water on me to rinse myself off. There is no doors or shower curtains or anything. I also didn’t have any shampoo or conditioner because they yanked it from me at security so I borrowed some shampoo from a friend and used hand lotion as my conditioner. Also, the bathrooms here are very gross. They are holes in the ground, with a nozzle to spray yourself off. No toilet paper, for the most part. Some places don’t have water so I just use bottled water.

Today we went shopping in the bazaar (street type vendors), visited a huge church, spent some time on the second largest beach in the world, got wonderful Indian desserts, visited an art emporium, went to an Indian opera, and had a huge vegetarian meal. First off, people look at us as if they have never seen a white person before, especially the little kids. They will point and you can tell they are asking their moms something about us. All around, people just stare. When we went to the church a girl our age asked my friend Page why she was so white and asked if she could take her picture. Some people pretend to be taking pictures of other things, but are really taking pictures of us. While here, I have only seen two other white people that aren’t in our group. The bazaar had a lot of amazing clothes, jewelry, etc. In general, people try to take advantage of you when they see you are white. They will try to do something that costs money and then after you do it, make you pay. It’s strange, because it’s so cheap to us anyways. I got a banana at the market for 5 cents and a soda for 25 cents. I got a new shirt for $2 and some of the things I got for you guys for cheap too. Some of the stuff I feel guilty about paying so little for, especially really beautifully crafted things. The highlight of the afternoon was the beach. You could look all ways around you and see only the beach, people, and the ocean. It is 1 km wide and 13 km long. I couldn’t believe it. Once we made it to the water there were tons of people selling things. I went on a horse ride for 100 rupee, which is about $2. A little boy also had a pet monkey that he had taught to do tricks. It was dressed in a salwar and kameez outfit and had earrings in too. That, for some reason, reminds me of the beggars in the streets. Most people speak Tamil on the streets and there are beggars everyone. They are awfully dirty, so so skinny, wrapped in a piece of cloth, and they just touch their mouths to beg for food. This beautiful little girl begged me for money, so I went into a store and bought her some candy. After I gave it to her she started talking in Tamil and wouldn’t stop touching me and begging me for money. There are unusually large amounts of people with physical deformities that are beggars. I saw a person today with no hands, a person with one huge and one that looked dysfunctional, and several people with leg problems. It’s very sad, but if you give them money they follow you and just keep begging for more. This morning at about 7 AM there was really loud music outside of our window. It was a man pulling a cart that was blaring music out of two megaphones and then when people came to their windows to see what it was, he would beg them for money from the ground level. I only slept 4 hours in our 25+ hour journey here and didn’t sleep last night. The boys want to go to the bars, but I am already delirious! I’m going to get in a good nights sleep and get ready for our journey to Madurai tomorrow. I am doing really good and can’t believe everything I see. I, unlike most the people we are with, have done fine with the food so far. By done good, I mean, not shit my brains out. The next few days we will be visiting our sponsoring organizations and finalizing our proposals with them. I will let you know what I am going to do! Mom and Dad and whoever, if you want to skype me, let me know!