Happy Holidays

Hi everybody that reads this. I'd just like to wish you a happy holiday. My plans for the holidays are up in the air but I know I will have a good time and I hope that you do to who ever and where you are.

The Journey

The journey started in Bokaro at a Rotary Youth Leadership Camp this was were I met the other exchange students in my district It is also were I met about 50 local Indian kids who wanted to become great leaders of tomorrow. The camp was a two day camp in which the kids all slept in small rooms with 15 other kids. The first night was scary and involved little sleep as everybody there was so excited to be out of their houses for two nights. They all want to tell the three foreign exchange boys their favorite joke, and stories. They next day was full of lectures that were very insightful and helpful if you have never heard them before. I was impressed with the Indian kids’ ability to pay attention and take notes during the exercises. I also took some good notes about what the speakers looked like and other interesting art. We had very little room to walk around and even less time to do so.
In the end I spent most of my time talking to the other exchange students and ex-exchange student. The current exchange students include Yuki from Japan, Ramona from Switzerland, and Gui from Brazil who is now an ex-exchange student since he is headed back to Brazil the other ex-exchange student was Sebastian from Argentina who is in his thirties. We talked about being exchange students in this part of India and about the ups and downs.
The most interesting part of the camp for me was the show. It is probably the strangest thing I have been apart of. There were four groups at the camp and they all performed a short play and a dance. One thing to know is that Indians take their dancing very serious and they only group dance it is never by themselves or with a single partner. As my group tried to prepare they just kept bickering and were all stressed out. Everybody was so upset because they thought they were all going to get laughed at. My group never liked my comments like “so”, “we can make it a comedy”, or “why don’t we just improvise”. Soon enough my group had split up into boys and girls. It was hard to get anything done since everyone thought they needed to be leaders since they were at a leadership camp. After awhile the boys had an interesting skit and it was time to rehearse on stage. The skit didn’t go all that well in rehearsal and the dance didn’t go all that well either that is until I had seen too much. I just went and jumped on stage so that the girls wouldn’t be the only ones being embarrassed. I just stared pulling all the cheesy moves like the robot, the hand on knees switch, and what ever popped into my head. I guess they didn’t know about the cheesy move because everybody afterwards was saying what a great dancer I was. When the time for the real show rolled around the plan for the dance was for me to do random stuff in the middle of the stage for three minutes. It was apparently a fairly large success. The skit went off fairly smoothly even though I was never told my lines.
At the end of the camp I was exhausted but a greater journey was only ahead. The next day I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and crammed into the back seat of a car meant for three but needed to fit four of us exchange students. Indian roads aren’t very good and that is especially true in the states of Jharkhand and Bihar within the first couple hours of driving I was angry enough to punch the Hamburglar. My head was being thrown like a rag doll back and forth slamming up against the side of the car. I don’t know why but around the third hour of driving I threw up. I didn’t feel sick or any thing it must have been like after riding a rollercoaster people just sometimes vomit. Soon after the car was on its way again we passed a couple of cities and town as I sat half way between being asleep and awake.
As I came out of one of my half sleeping trances I realized we had stopped and the others were talking to a man about what had happened. Some one had been hit and the locals closed the road down until the police could come and make a settlement with the family and that generally takes a couple of hours. So we decided to play some card. It was a strange sight for many of the Indians around us since they would come an stare at us for a minute or two and then continue on there way. After about an hour of playing card a man approached us. This is a Rotary moment and all Rotarian should smile after reading this. It was a Rotarian from the near by city of Giridih. He then took us to his Mica factory were the do all sorts of things with Mica. After about an hour of that he took us to his friend’s restaurant we ate and ate we sat the eating small portions of almost every dish on the menu. We topped it of with some coffee and by the time we finished the coffee the road had been cleared and the car was on its way again.
We continued to drive and drive all day trying to get any little bit of sleep. The road would have short stretches were we could reach 80 KPH but we usual putted around at 40 KPH. It was supposed to be an eight hour journey but be 1:00 we knew it was going to take longer. As dark began to fall I realized that I had to pee bad so I thought that I would wait for a place were there weren’t a lot of people. This is harder then it sounds since there are a billion people in India so I finally gave up and decided go and join the rest of the people and pee anywhere. Well seeing a white boy is a strange sight for most Indians so naturally I get stared at especially when I go to the bathroom (the open field).
It was another hour before the drive figured out that he didn’t know where Munger was. We struggle to find out that we were going to pick up another man that knew where Munger was. When we finally reached the man it was around 9:00 o’clock and too late to show up at the Ashram. It was decided that we need to stay at a house/hotel/apartment I’m not sure what it was. I was happy to see the bed and was sleeping within minutes. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and using a towel for a blanket. This wasn’t all that bad until the fan stopped working it was a cool night but that wasn’t what I was worried about within three minute of having no fan I had plenty of followers. The followers were mosquitoes and while the power was out I was being eaten alive for three straight hours I could either cover my legs or my face with the towel. The next morning I look like I had chicken pox I was happy since I had a least gotten seven hours of sleep equaling my previous two day total.
The final portion of the drive was supposed to be an hour drive but it is in India so I knew that this wouldn’t be true. About twenty minutes into the drive the car came to a stop again. There was another dead body. This time there was no being rescued but at least it was only a three hour wait as I was cooked in the midday sun. I took a nap to pass the time. Like always the road does get cleared eventually. When we finally reach the Munger Ashram we were 22 hours late. The Ashram was wonderful after the journey it was clean and quiet.
In the end the journey was worth it and I’m glad I did but I never want to do it again.

On Short Notice

A couple days ago I looked at my itinerary to see that an up coming event was a Rotary Youth Leadership Camp and a two and a half week stay at the Yoga capital of the world in Sojourn. I thought it would be too late to join the Yoga camp (I didn’t mind missing the Leadership Camp) so I dismissed as a missed opportunity. After school I came home and sat down for lunch my host mother was on the phone and looked at me as if she had to tell me something. She did she said your leaving to Bokaro tomorrow for about a month. I was shocked and it took me a little while to realize what she was talking about. Apparently it wasn’t too late to sign up for the camp the camp was mandatory. So I’m leaving tomorrow for the rest of the month.

School

I’m attending Delhi Public School of Ranchi and the kids in my class are probably a year and a half ahead of me in Math and Science. If they are that smart they have got to be incredibly well behaved in class right? Wrong there is no order in the class room and it is even more hectic considering there is no teacher in the room half the time. So how are all the kids so smart? No it is not that every Indian is born a genius. The answer is in how much time they study and go to tutors. School is just a place to go to see where you rank among other students. Students here have to work hard since school after 12th grade is very hard and getting into and college is the only way to get a decent job in India.
The teachers speak in English to teach the lessons but I can only understand the English teacher more then half the time. The Indian accent is very hard to understand sometimes but trying to understand an accent won’t be my problem soon as I’m slowly picking up more and more Hindi. Hindi is spoken when ever people aren’t answering question or teaching lessons in school. So when ever the teacher makes a joke I don’t understand it. When the kids are studying math I either try to keep up, study history, work on art (doodles) or work on my Hindi (mostly work on my Hindi).
For P.E. the class just goes out and plays football (soccer) and the teacher will just bring us the ball and leave. There are some really good football players but I’m not out of my league. Football is the best part of the school day. The only thing about football I’m not looking forward to is when summer comes back around the kids are playing in sweater vest and I’m dying heat in my shirt.
We have to wear school uniforms which I thought wouldn’t be all the bad. I was wrong; currently every body is dress in all white with black shoes and striped sock. Soon we will switch to the winter uniforms in which we will wear a sweater vest or a blazer, thick grey pants, wool socks, and a tie. I will have a hard time with the winter uniforms since the winters here are like Alaskan summers on the warmest days. I will try to modify everything so that I can enjoy the whole experience.

Cricket Superstar

The other day as I walked back from the bank some kids at a small tire repair shack call me over. They didn’t speak English and my Hindi isn’t grand yet either. We tried to communicate and they brought up a chair for me to sit in. The only few word of English they could string together was “Indian girls nice, yes?” as girls from the local girls college walked by. Then they would say something in Hindi to the girls and point at me everybody around would then give an awkward smile to the four boys. After awhile small school children an there parents began to walk by so the comments to the girls stopped. I decide it was best to start going back to my house which was only a couple hundred yards away. As I began to leave the oldest of the boys who was about my age said “cricket” and made a the bat swinging motion. This intrigued me then he pointed at the clock and held up four fingers. I understood right away and agreed to play I tried telling him I would be back I think he understood but just kept attempting to say my name and holding up four finger and I would hold four fingers back the more he did the more I wondered if I had just agreed to buy four tires or something.
It took about fifteen minutes to walk back to the house since at every roadside booth some one wants to talk to me and I didn’t want to seem rude. When I finally made it back to the house I was very excited since I had been stuck in the house for the past couple of days. I felt like was twelve and just got invited to go play baseball with the big kids. When four finally rolled around I went and met up with my new friend and we started walking to the field which wasn’t very far. When I got there everyone was excited to see me and there was a wide range of ages present. There were a few people who spoke English but none very good. After introducing myself to everyone and shaking a lot of hands people wanted me to bat so I did. The bowler (pitcher) was throwing lightly to me and made it fairly easy to hit. On the fourth throw the ball bounce high and I drove up onto a house next to the small field which wasn’t hard since the filed wasn’t only about 50 ft by 100ft with houses around most of it. We were playing with a ball that was like a tennis ball but slightly heavier. After that the game began it started on a rotten note for me the first ball was hit to me it took a weird bounce and rolled to the boundary which meant four point to the other team. Soon enough my team was up to bat and I was at the bottom of the order. I saw a total of three ball a swing and a miss a weak ground ball and then the bowler hit the wicket on the third. In baseball perspective it would be like if a pitcher (me) was taken out every time some one hit a home run of him and I came into pitch and pitched a ball then a foul ball before giving up a home run.
The next game went a little better for me the put me in another position and I made a sensational catch. Ok it was really just a small jumping catch on a lazy bloop but all the little kids started jumping and cheering to them I was like a superstar cricket player. When my batting time came around again I also did better then the previous time I saw six or seven balls (opposed to the 20-25 average)and collect four point before popping out. Everybody then took a break and by that time somebody who spoke decent English showed up and he translated as everybody tried talking to be. The most popular subject to talk about was my name people called me everything from Caro to Great (I liked that one) and no one quite got it right. The person who spoke decent English gave me a ride home on his motorcycle.
The neighborhood that I played was a poorer one but not close to the poorest for Indian standards. Even though it was the poorest neighborhood I’ve been to it was also where I felt the most comfortable I. Everybody was very nice and wanted to test the English they knew. The cricketers all wanted me to come back and play again.

Durga Puja

Hi Everybody,
I got to go to a big festival called Durga Puja. On the second day of Durga Puja they celebrate by sacrificing water buffalo and goats. Thousands of people come to the local palace to watch this event. There is a gated off area where the animals are sacrificed luckily the people I went with knew the King and Prince who lived in the palace and I got a front row view of the event. The tradition is to also dip your finger in the blood and dot it on your forehead I decided to partake in that. They do eat the buffalo afterward so they aren’t wasting the meat.

A New World

Hi everybody,

I have been slowly but surely adjusting to the new environment that I'm in. Each day gets a little bit more exciting. The celebration for the holiday of Durga Puja is going on now. The streets are being filled with bamboo structure that are held together by twine then covered with giant sheets. From a distance the structure look like real temples instead they are just make shift covers for some wonderful temporary shrines. I have been in two and the art is amazing.

Each time I have entered the temple or have been anywhere I have gotten a lot of strange looks. I've only seen one other white person since I have gotten to Ranchi . I get three reactions from people who seen my some smile and life, others look bewildered, while a few have given me a condescending gaze.

Everybody has heard of cows roaming the streets freely but that is only the beginning here. Animal that roam the street here include dogs, goats, water buffalo, cows, chickens, pigs and people. The strangest thing about all this is the animals are fearless the lay on the side of the road or in the middle of the road and that is an amazing feat considering that cars only stop for cows. The horn is necessary for this feat drivers are almost constantly honking their horn to worn bikes, people, animals, and slower moving traffic the danger that is right behind them. A sign I saw in Kolkata sums up Indian driving the best when it showed an infant begining carried by a passenger on a motercycle the point of the sign was to promote helmet use.

My time in India hasn’t had me see much since I have been cooped inside since I have had a cold for the majority of the time that I have been here. However I have got to do some things mostly before I got sick. I got to go inside a nice temple while I was in Kolkata they wouldn’t let me take my camera in so I didn’t get to take any pictures. It was a Hindu temple and they had a small section for each god. They handed out powdered mints at each station and at one station I got one of the classic dots put on my forehead.

After a day and a half in Kolkata I got on a plane to go to Ranchi I flew to Ranchi but couldn’t land due to heavy rain and the plane was sent right back to Kolkata. The next day I caught another flight to Ranchi. It was about seven a clock when I first got to my new house. The house is big for Indian city standard with walls all around and a gate. There is about an equal number of cars to servants about ten each.

The Second Writing

As I pack and repack my bags keep getting lighter as I try to decide what to take and leave. It is a harder decision then I thought it would be since I want to take everything including my uber comfortable bed but I realize that this is nearly impossible with four days of traveling. So I’m settling with some clothe and Alaska things.
I’m excited for the four days of traveling which send me to Seattle for a day and then to London for three hours before flying to Kolkata. I looked at the interactive map for the Heathrow Airport in London and there was a Caviar Bar in the duty free zone and the prices are a lot cheaper (I say cheaper not cheap) so I’m tempted to try some. Once in Kolkata I’m not sure what I’m doing for the day but I am staying there for the night and will be traveling to Ranchi by train the next day.
I hope this is the beginning of a fun trip and I’m sure it will be.

Getting Ready

Hi everybody I’m just making the first blog to get the ball rolling. I’m ready to go and very excited. I would like to thank everybody for this opportunity.