Oh, hey India

Why hello there! Long time no type.
Sorry about that.
We didn’t get internet access for a while. And THEN my very independently-minded laptop decided that it did not like India and went to sleep for a week. AND THEN my charger went m.i.a. for a weekend. Whoops!

Anyways, I’m in India now!! Super crazy. I have tons to put here so instead of making everyone read one huge post, I’ll break it up.

(written 8/28):

One word to describe everything so far: UNREAL    

     The actual 15 hour flight wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. The seat next to me was empty and there were 170 movies to choose from. Plus I was so ecstatic to be FINALLY going to India that not even the screams of the small child sitting behind me could dampen my spirits. After jetting across 41% of the Earth’s surface, we landed in Mumbai and went right to the hotel (after our first mind blowing interaction with urban Indian traffic).

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The road we took out of Mumbai went through the slums. It was so strange seeing images you’d usually see in pictures or TV in real life. Leaning corregated metal shacks and piles of trash would have dominated the landscape if it were not for the people. Highlights were seeing my first Indian cow just chilling at the side of the road and watching some women in bright saris wading through the highly polluted water doing God knows what. Eventually the city scape faded into the monsoon green Western Ghats, which is and incredible mountain range.

Idea is everywhere in India. My phone and internet are powered by them

        Durshet was incredibly gorgeous! It earned the nickname “Indian Summer Camp.” There was lots of information given to us in a variety of meetings, but we did fun things too like visit a Ganesh temple and learn folk games/dances from village women who worked in the Durshet kitchen.

                 Durshet room  

Ganesh Temple by Durshet 

The best part of Durshet was when we went on a trek to a tribal village further up the mountains. Everything was so unbelievably green (with the exception of the mud and other unmentionable substances) because of the monsoons.  We saw the well and women balancing an insane amount of water jugs on their heads.

 She's carrying 3 water jugs on her head! So impressive! 

Getting water/posing for the US student paparazzi

The woman in the back is not as impressed with my India Skillz as I am (photo cred: Jen Attig)

Then a women taught us to unshell rice and grind it into flour. One of my many new India skillz. This women is absolutely amazing! She’s about 65-70ish years old and doesn’t have a single grey hair on her head. Grinding the rice for 5 minutes gave me blisters and sore shoulders, but she’s been doing it for 60 years.

Grinding rice into flour 

 Unshelling the rice: harder than it looks 

Apart from this, we spent a majority of the time at Durshet bouncing between 3 buildings for orientation meetings. Mostly it made us even more excited to get our new lives in Pune started!