During the month of February I got to go to the state of Kerala. Even though there were some problems at first the following two weeks were the best time in India for me so far. The best of my time was spent in Trivandrum. However I did spend a couple days in Kollum and that is were I saw the ocean for the first time in five months. Seeing the ocean was a great feeling, the air was so clean coming off the water. I sat on the beach next to a dead washed up puffer fish for a while before I was surrounded by a bunch of kids wanting me to take pictures of them. I took some picture of them and left. After that I ate some bad fried rice and it put me out of commission for a while. The other note worthy thing in kollum was going on the back water on a big tour boat that only had me and another passenger on it. It was nice to see the type of fishing they do over here especially since both traditional and modern fishing boats both go out to fish at the same time.
The next stop for me was Trivandrum or Thiruvananthapuram every body just says Trivandrum. Trivandrum is a nice city it has wide roads and very little trash on the streets. In Trivandrum I got to stay with the Jacob family. There are Indian but they have the last name Jacob because they are Christians. Surprisingly 40% of people in Kerala are Christian, which meant one thing to me BEEF. The first meal I had in Trivandrum was a hamburger and I had some doughnuts for dessert. It was wonderful. But I spent 10 days total in Trivandrum and got to see a lot of things thanks to Renju Jacobs who spoke with a Irish accent since he had just got done with college in Ireland. I went to the beach a couple of times and they were amazing beaches but it was weird on the beach it was almost only foreigners. The beaches there were some of the best I’ve seen and hardly crowded. Other than seeing beaches I got to go up a Mountain to a tea plantation/hotel making 22 hairpins up and 22 down. I went to a lion safari park and got see some lions close up. I also got to see some a parade of people with metal stuck all through there body. Along with many more less note worthy adventures. I got to play nightly soccer games with all the kids in the neighborhood. It is sad to say but good to say I became a part of the neighborhood there more than I have in Ranchi. All in all I was sad to have to leave Trivandrum with only spending a short time there.
Next stop was Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. The first day I was there I went to a Yoga center not for Yoga but to take a bath in mercury water. Sounds strange but it did make me feel funny. Not to worry there wasn’t that much mercury. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the place but no cameras were allowed. Other than that I went on a short hike up a hill trying to over come a fear of venomous snakes. On that note I did get to see a wild cobra in Trivandrum but not a King Cobra. After a couple days in Coimbatore I headed back to Ranchi.

me on the train the puffer fish

My Christmas Break

In India schools have Christmas break too. Christmas break started on Christmas eve and was scheduled to go until the 4th. For Christmas I went to my first host families house where they were throwing a party. It was sunny and warm which made it feel more like a summer lawn party. A Santa came to the party and most of the little kids were excited to see him. The Santa wore a mask to make him look like Santa but all it really did was make him look creepy. After the party I went back to my host family's apartment and celebrated Christmas by eating some candy and lighting a fire in the fire place. There was the occasional fire work that was shot into the sky but that wasn't to impressive considering people shoot fireworks of for almost any occasion and there is usually at least one shot off every night. I gave out some Alaska things to my host family. They are going to have a lot of Alaska things soon enough though since their son is in Sitka. During the normal days of Christmas Break I started reading a lot which I hadn't done much before. When new years rolled around I celebrated it that by sitting by the fire and watching TV. School was supposed to start on the 4th but was cancelled for a week because the it was too cold. It was 43 degrees at night and was getting up to around 65 degrees by the mid day on the coldest days of the break. I stared school again on the 12th which turned out to be a half day.

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.