Week Eight: I'm a Celebrity .

I keep forgetting that I'm half way across the world. Life is just normal. It really helped that Carlien, Sebastian, Maren and I moved into a small house about a ten minute walk from campus. We've been there for about half a month now and we frequently have others over and make dinners and eat them on our big porch, and sit out at night talking on our swing. I've invested in a rug and bed spread, which makes the our room feel less institutional, with my next goal being curtains. I spent yesterday drawing on our porch listening to music on our little indian boom box. We once carried it around with us and blasted the Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack as we drove around in an autorickshaw, the autowallas got a huge kick out of it. But as much as I feel I have found my place in this bustling Metropolis of about 5 million, there is something about this country that makes me realize that I will never really belong. There are things about the people and the general culture that continue to baffle me, such as India's complete fascination with foreigners.

We travelled to Mandu a few

weekends ago on a school trip. Its a little town with some incredible mughal historical sites. A huge fort, watch tower station, mosques, and hill top relaxation stations. It doesn't see a lot of foreigners but has a large influx of Indian tourists on weekends. I now understand how a celebrity might feel. The first day I posed for a picture along with Sebastian and an older canadian couple for the tour guide of Mandu Fort. The next day I was chased down and recognized from my picture in the local paper. I had my head turned and was behind Sebastian barely in view. Later that day, we were stalked around buildings with men holding out their camera phones. I started turning my camera on them to have them shy away. Pretty soon we were being mobbed by young boys repeatedly asking for "one photo, one photo," Mary and I started demanding ten rupees. They turned to each other "do you have ten rupees?" We later found Sebastian mid-photo shoot with ten people and about 25 looking on. He made the mistake of shaking with one, and then the rest of the them followed, it took him another 25 minutes before he finished. The young boys continually followed Mary and I shouting "Ten Rupees! Ten Rupees!" The mobs would come and leave as they came and left the buildings, watching us as if we would preform or do something exciting.

We moved onto the the next site and Mary and I sat at the bottom of the hill sketching the building far beyond us. As I was drawing I hear footsteps, then running. I looked up to a sea of about fifty faces staring back. I motioned to them to part so I could continue drawing, they parted and continued to stare for a little longer. Shortly after the group of young boys found us, shouting ten rupees and taking multiple pictures while standing behind us. Its a very strange thing to have strangers so attracted you. Mary was very frustrated and asked me how I was sketching so calmly, it was beginning to really piss her off. I've begun to realize there are very different rules about personal courtesy and space, and a different understanding of what is intrusive and rude. They are curious so they stare, and take pictures and ask questions. I just try to hide my curiosity a little bit out of respect and little bit out of fear. We often take pictures camera at hip, to not seem "rude." But doing exactly what the Indian people want to do with us, but we just don't want hundreds of pictures with various Indians to take back home. I've started to just find ways of making it more fun and just indulge there requests. Like happily taking an offered sandwich and happily chewing it as we pose for the picture. There's something wonderful about someone, somewhere in India having a picture of just me and their baby. I hope they frame it. You get kind of used to the strange amounts of attention, it just makes traveling to attractions doubly exhausting. You can't just sit and enjoy the scenery, its impossible.

On my walk to school everyday I've gotten very used to various good mornings and hellos while passing about 5 cows ankle deep in trash eating plastic bags with crows swarming them, a pen of goats made of overturned beds and two camels digging into greens from a cart on the side of the road and of course about 20 different stray dogs. They are everywhere. We have our campus dogs, including mama and her five puppies and Little Girl the campus favorite. You'll frequently see Little Girl being stroked to sleep by one of the caretakers. She's really adorable not quite full grown and with a light brown shiny coat. One day as I was buying our daily ice creams, Little Girl ran whimpering through the canteen with a huge open wound leaving a blood trail. We didn't see her the rest of the day. Later Carlien say the dog at the guard station wrapped in a blanket, they were taking her to the hospital. We have now found out the girlfriend of on our friend Gargan's roommates has forced him to keep the dog in their hostel. They are now 4 boys and a Little Girl.

The dogs sometimes freak me out at night they seem to become different animals, often barking until hoarse at anyone that passes. I had to walk by a a group of dogs on my way home, on got on the defense and I kind of started to cower. I hadn't noticed that an old woman who usually cheerily waves at me and then holds out her hand for money was behind me. She hollered at the dogs and they cowered themselves in retreat. She smiled at me and walked on. This morning as I walked to class she came from behind me and got my attention, gave me a big smile waved and said "Bye bye." I think we've bonded. There is also a little boy who greets me every morning chatting at me in hindi he comes up with his little backpack and outstretched hand. We shake he grins and walks on. I am so glad I had the chance to just live in one place.

Animal Count: An owl, a tree full of bats, a few elephants (one of which I rode!), many camels, loads of monkeys, herds of goats and cattle and buffalo in the streets, bunnies and birds in cages, I've become friends with the numerous stray dogs, though I'm particularly fond of one injured puppy and have given up on the campus cat.

Week Two: Christmas in India with 5 Germans

Whenever I told someone I was leaving December 11th there was always the inevitable comment of missing Christmas. I didn't quite realize how strange it would be to have Christmas in India, and it hasn't quite ended yet. As we walked to dinner the other night, we see santa and a giant pink bunny dancing to techno in front of the restaurant. Mind you its Decemember 27th and I don't even know how to explain the Easter Bunny being present. Santa's face is panted white behind his beard and the bunny's mask is really quite frightening; the children loved it. The restaurant itself is pretty strange, you walk in and are immediately hit with the smell of pure sugar. Its bright with neon colors and you're surrounded by sweets counters. Its basically an Indian fast food joint combined with sweet shop. Above the sweets is the actual restaurant with an expansive menu. Every time I order it takes a while. You can either play it safe and order something you recognize, there are certain dishes you'll find everywhere. I often choose the adventurous method, take a risk and get a mystery dinner. I am ever so slowly learning different names of indian dishes and whether or not I like them. For instance I really dislike Indian cheese. Its awkwardly sweet and makes me feel ill. I avoid anything that has the word cheese and now paneer, which is some sort of cheese dish. After dinner we selected random sweets from downstairs based purely on how good it looks. I'm very glad I have no allergies, because I never have a clue what's in them. Indian sweets are loaded with sugar and when made of milk are usually very dense and kind of grainy. Its like nothing I've ever tasted, its good and very interesting. As we left a very tired Santa and Easter Bunny were still going at it to the delight of twenty five Indian children. (I walked by tonight and to my delight there was santa, still going 4 days after Christmas) (The pictured nativity scene was taking place on the CEPT campus on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus was also present for this event.)

Dining in India is always an experience, and the other exchange students and I typically go out most nights. Christmas Eve we went to the lavish "Green House" which is outdoors below a beautiful 1920's mansion which has been turned into a luxury hotel. We ordered 21 through 29 on the Gujarati Snacks section. Named for the state we're in, its the traditional food of Ahmedabad. Between the seven of us, we shared an absurd amount of Indian dishes. Each plate loaded with about 8-10 pieces of some sort of snack. Very good. A few nights ago Thilo, Marianne and I decided to take a rickshaw to a random location and find something. We picked the only street with no restaurants. We got a recommendation from a man on the street and walked back and forth before we realize we had already passed it. Its a neon sign in hindi (they really like neon signs here) with the name of a hotel corporation below it. Hotel, I learned, has the same meaning as restaurant in Hindi. Baffling. We cram into a teeny elevator with its operator and it opens into the restaurant.

We sit down in nice restaurant and realize we're about to be served Thali. Before you sits 8 metal bowls on a metal tray and before you know it waiters are sweeping in pouring a different dish into each bowl, loading your plate with 5 different breads and a few sauces. They keep coming back refilling every dish when it gets low, giving you more of the breads. Its unbelievable, and incredibly delicious. At some point they come around with rice and as a final touch a very yellow porridgy substance which they pour oil on. Oil is a very popular topping on indian food. We were served 19 dishes in all with various helpings of each. We finished the meal by making faces with the remaining yellow porridge and used the other dishes as facial features.

Christmas day we decided to do a secret santa. And Christmas rolled around and Marianne and I had nothing. We set out to cheer ourselves up and also attempt to find something really special for our secret someone in the heart of old city. By something special I mean something rather cheap, useless and weird, very difficult with the vast selection in india. We get off the autorickshaw and are almost immediately attacked by women with henna stamps. It was terrifying. They grab your arms and start stamping away and before you know it your arms and hands are bleeding with brown designs in a very random and ugly pattern. We bowed our heads in shame as we weaved through stalls of merchandise, knowing we'd been had with the evidence stinging our arms. Everyone was pushy buy this, buy that. We were tired and weary of all of their sales pitches and questions :"Which country? Which Country?" As we wandered deeper it became quiet and calm with people awaiting costumers in there little stores and colorful fruit displayed under sheets of white. The streets in old city are very narrow; the bottom floors of all of the buildings open up into an endless maze of shops with a canopy of strung sheets above them just below a wonderful hodgepodge of architecture. Windows and doors, balconies and staircases, all colors, all sizes, its really quite incredible. We discover a courtyard with a huge tree and a brightly painted hindu temple. India likes to do this. It suffocates me and then let's me breathe. As we wandered on, we were calm and chipper. The henna, which was now rubbing off on our clothes and bags, is almost, almost forgotten.

That is until we run into Thilo and his visiting Finnish friend waiting on the steps to go into the city's main mosque. They quizzically point, we pathetically shrug, they laugh, so does everyone else. We are always being watched. We decide to visit the mosque too, but have to wait for the afternoon prayer to finish, a crowd forms around us. Six boys that were about ten giggle in the background. An old woman persistently sticks out her hand her presumed granddaughter shyly tries as well. A little girl comes and shakes my hand and tells me she likes this, talking to foreigners. An old woman welcomes me to India. Eventually we remove our shoes and leave them in care of a woman at the door (we'll pay her a few rupees when we leave for her services). Our feet on the warm bare stone we enter the courtyard of the mosque. People pray at a fountain in the center and we wander around and watch the kids flying kites on roofs up above. The sun feels good and the city seems to have disappeared. Eventually we take a seat and try to sketch. Another crowd of about ten boys of various ages forms behind us, "which country?" "what's your name" "are you an artist?" "What are you doing here?" "Photo?" With one boy and then another, and then just me, and then they move onto marianne, her and the boys and then just her and then marianne with me in the picture behind her. We are the walking attraction, always a cause for a photo op. In some ways it evens the field, their country is our attraction. Its a much better situation being seen as someone interesting as opposed to intrusive. It becomes a simple exchange of culture and memories.

Animal count: One peacock (see him every morning), a tree full of bats, one elephant, many camels, loads of monkeys, herds of goats and cattle in the streets, bunnies and birds in cages, I've become friends with the numerous stray dogs (and witnessed a new regime come into power over the land of the bungalows) and am still attempting to befriend the campus cat. She's a tough one.

Week One: I like it.

Today, today is a good India day. I woke up from my first full night's sleep since I arrived, made my breakfast and sat in an old rickety chair in front of our house and enjoyed my granola and milk. As I sat there, a peacock waltzed through our gate and did his daily parade through our little community of bungalows. A little later two monkeys galloped through beneath the drying laundry. Our yard dogs were missing, four of them hang around, two of them bullies and two of them sweet and shy. One of which has a tendency of dancing with one of my roommates when she gets him all riled up before feeding him a biscuit in the morning. The dogs recognize her on our walk to school, she takes everyone's extra food and puts it in a doggie bag after every meal. Every night they whine and bark and fight. As I lie in my bed I usually imagine two gangs heading toward one another like something out of west side story, only instead of music, they make awful obnoxious noises. I currently live with five other exchange students: two from Slovakia, two from Germany and one from Holland. Three of us are getting kicked out in the beginning of january and are moving into a little flat elsewhere.

This morning four of us went to the Sunday market in the Old City below a bridge. Loads of people swarm carts full of things, so many things. Goats, bunnies in cages, tons of clothes, metal pots, bike seats and wheels. As we wandered we became like a walking attraction. Crowds of men would form around us, everyone wanted pictures and handshakes. It was so strange. Ahmedabad doesn't see many tourists, a few only pass through because its where ghandi began his march. Everyone is yelling at you and trying to make you buy the most ridiculous things (like tiny little boys jackets, only 20 rupees?!?! I'll take it!) One woman jokingly tried to sell us her son. Everyone laughed. When you do buy something, everyone around you helps out. However it was a pretty stressful venture, I had to shoo away a little girl was trying to get into my bag, her mother behind her, encouraging her. It can be really hard here sometimes.

I arrived after spending 15 hours in a plane over an 18 hour period at a run down airport. I was met by workers in doctor's masks who held up a device to my forehead, they however did not steal my brain, but were checking my temperature, to make sure I did not infest India with swine flu. After being herded around through various fences in one big room I finally arrived at the baggage claim. People were swarming the luggage, which seemed to belong to no one, as giant hard black suitcases endlessly circled. After about 30 minutes, I managed to be one of the first to leave, I walked out of the airport onto a ground of sandy dirt to a wall of Indian faces behind a metal barrier. Lindsay (my gaurdian angel for the first few days) called out my name and we caught an autorickshaw for the ride home. (This is the main form of transportation, these little green three wheeled vehicles.)

I don't think I blinked the whole way to her flat. Swerving through mazes of bicycles, motorbikes, rickshaws, cars and people, the autorickshaw honked its way through ahmedabad. Everyone is swerving to not hit each other. There are no lights, the right of way is given to which ever side has the most cars. I got stuck in a 15 minute complete gridlock once. We passed walls of concrete buildings plastered in advertisements in half english and half hindi (or possibly guarauti, not that I can tell the difference, but there is one). I managed to sleep a few hours and woke to the muted sounds of honking and pigeons cooing. I opened the doors of the lindsay's balcony to a red sun rising over towers of balconies with buildings as far as the haze would allow you to see.

It smelled different, the air felt different, it sounded different. I liked it. There are days when India feels like it may suffocate me with all of noise and the dust and the new, and there have been days were I cease to be amazed and delighted by everything. I feel like the week flew by, but it feels like its been months since I left. The first day I saw my first bollywood movie in theatre. A father-son acting pair switched roles and the son was the father of the father who played a boy with an aging disorder. With the few snip-its of english I got the gist of the entire movie. I also took my first bucket shower, the Indian way of washing. My hair may be dreads by the time I leave. The next day I visited the campus, I knew then, that I would be okay. Its like a green island in the middle of the dense bustling city. The buildings are incredible, designed by doshi (who is a contemporary of le corbusier and kahn, who have done so much work here as well). Its green hills, and endless outdoor seating areas along with its big open studios, is a retreat to say the least. Its also got a wonderful canteen, (where I can eat for about a dollar a day) which acts as the watering hole where everyone always is. I'm lucky to be in a city with SO much to see, especially in terms of architecture. But I like how it isn't tourist central, people try to screw you over less, and its a lot safer.

Its dusty and dirty everywhere. There are no addresses you find things by names of crossroads along in combination with asking people and following gestures. My lazy tongue gets me in a lot of trouble, I am so bad at remembering and repeating the names of things. Eventually, I hope, I'll get the hang of it. Luckily the weather is incredible, it rarely rarely rains here so everyday is bright and sunny, midday it gets to about 85-90 but the mornings and evenings are refreshing, it'll get cooler still and then heat up around the end of february, by the time April 25th arrives, I'll be ready for the cool air of Germany. Besides the people selling seriously creepy santa masks and hats on the street, there is nothing to remind me of Christmas. But I did pass one of the few posh shopping malls here to see it decked out in decorations. I went to one that was slightly less ritzy, my jaw dropped, Indian style western malls are ridiculous. Around a big open square are five floors of stores, It just felt so strange being there, there's a mcdonald's and papa john's and an Australian cookie shop (I didn't know they specialized in cookies) and Apple Computer Dealer. Nothing here is ever really western, its all a little off. I like it in that way, our professor told us shopping malls have failed here. India refuses to be branded in such a way. Every street corner is a mall. you'll find two of everything at one junction. Two photo Stores, Three shops with plasticwares, four atms, ten cafes, two coffee shops, and god knows what else. In every row of food vendors you'll find at least two signs that are exactly the same.

Animal Count: one elephant, one peacock, four camels, loads of monkeys, multiple goats, bunnies and birds in cages, I've become friends with the numerous stray dogs and am still attempting to befriend the campus cat.

In conclusion, I like India.