No hurry, no worry, no chicken curry! -The wise words of an Udaipur Rickshawvala

Sorry that I have been SOO awful at keeping this thing updated! It has been SO wonderfully busy since all the other MSID students have arrived. There is always an option of doing SOMETHING after class whether it is visiting someone’s house, walking to the ATM, going to the grocery store, attending Yoga classes (which I do NOT do), doing homework. The problem is that we don’t get out of class until 4 in the afternoon!!! (unlike before when Molly and I were done by 1:30 and had SOOO much time to kill) Our classes start at 10 in the morning and continue until 4, with a short tea break, a lunch break and another “whatever break.” The fact that everything in India takes longer than in the US is SOO true. Like I mentioned above, going to the ATM is a task that takes up the whole afternoon, so you cant really plan to get more than one task done each day. Classes are great and our professors are SOO intelligent. The head of the program here teaches one of our courses about India and she has published a 3-inch thick book about the history of Rajasthan (the state that I am in). You can look up the book on the internet and be impressed for yourself…her name is Rima Hooja and the book’s title is The History of Rajasthan. We continually have guest speakers that are SO interesting sharing about the farming and grazing patterns of villages, or government regulations, or water control…people are just SO smart. We basically have THE hook-ups!

We are beginning to research our internships. I have to look for ones that interest me and they recommend a few from the past. Of course I am doing an internship with alternative economics or micro-finance so I just basically have to pick the NGO that I like the best. I will probably be stationed outside a major city and then travel to various villages in Rajasthan, which sounds SOO great! J Please keep me in your prayers while I am in this decision process, so that I may choose the place that God wants me to be.

Like I said….WE HAVE THE HOOK-UPS!! Mostly every Friday (until the internship phase) we have some kind of field trip. One Friday, we went to a blue pottery factory, block printing factory and a hand-made paper factory. It was QUITE the experience. I have explained it as something that you hear so much about, but yet it you NEVER get to experience it. WELL, I experienced it. The paper factory had the biggest impact on me. We were not allowed to take pictures in the factory, because basically they did not want pictures floating about showing the conditions of their factory. NOT that the conditions were AWFUL (like rats running around and dirty floors), but they were monotonous and I am guessing the hours were long and the motions were repetitive. The paper made here was shipped all over the world to stores such as Wal-Mart and private boutiques in the U.S. It was crazy to see them making things that are on the shelves at Wal-Mart. They are in the process of making things for Christmas, so I got to see things for Christmas BEFORE they were even on the SHELVES of wal-mart…HA!...I was able to talk to some of the girls working there through broken English and broken Hindi. It was overall crazy because the process of paper-making was so interesting, yet the conditions were shocking.

Our other field trip was to a village. It was RATHER empowering and exciting because we basically just sat and talked to a women’s self help group (micro-finacnce group…MY KIND OF WOMEN!...ha.) and listened to what they have done for their village. Basically every improvement in the village is accredited to them!! They told us that when they wanted to build this small dam like structure (but its not a dam) that has helped raise the level of the underground water the men did not want to join them, so they decided not to fix the men meals until they agreed to help with the manual labor!...isnt that great?...because men CANNOT cook here…like they just DON’T!...(well unless they are a servant, but I don’t think that the villages really have servants)

Two weekends ago I traveled to a city called Udaipur…aka THE MOST ROMANTIC CITY!...ha. It was GORGEOUS! It had SMALL little streets where we risked running into cows, donkeys, elephants, camels, people, scooters, other rickshaws, cars, shopkeepers…you name it we probably ALMOST hit it. All the buildings are SUPER tall because they are all competing to be the tallest one so that they could calim to have the best view of the palace out in the middle of the lake. At night, all of the palaces in the town are lit up with lights…so GORGEOUS! We went to a palace called monsoon palace that was placed on the top of the hills and it overlooked the entire valley/city of Udaipur and then on the other side it overlooked PURE green land! We rode in the MOST ridiculous rickshaws!...these drivers think that they are invincible (and I am beginning to think that they are)…and they LOVE to get a reaction out of us, so they would drive out of control just to hear one of us squeal (I don’t know if that’s the right noise, but it will do, you never really know what noise will come out of your mouth when you think you are going to HIT a donkey!) Some of the rickshaws had some BANGING music…and by banging I mean like there is NO volume control…its either LOUD or off. Others had banging music WITH black lights. We were busy the WHOLE time that we were there…but a good busy NOT an overwhelming busy. ALL of us LOVED the city!! In order to get there we took a train late Friday night and arrived there in the morning on Saturday and then took a train back late Sunday night and arrive EARLY Monday morning BEFORE classes. (just enough time to take a short nap, shower, and eat breakfast.)

SOO the trip was great but the aftermath of the trip was NOT the best. I think that I caught some kind of cold on the train or during that weekend. For the past week I have been sick with a head cold. It started with a sore throat on Monday and then worse on Tuesday and somewhat feverish and now I am just CONGESTED!! I was MORE than blessed with a package from some of my friends from college, and it was SOO encouraging, the Lord’s timing was PERFECT! J ...You know how when you get REALLY congested you cant TASTE anything??...well, I don’t know if I have just never been this congested to experience this LACK of taste or if I never realized that my taste was GONE because I already knew what EVRYTHING tasted like in the States…well ANYHOW, I cant taste ANYTHING right now…and I REALLY don’t know what things taste like when I eat them. For example I went to a restaurant on Saturday and I got a dish that I have eaten at other restaurants and my friends asked me if it was better than the others that I have had…and I realized that I had NO idea because I could NOT taste it…ha! The only way I knew if it was spicy was if I felt the stinging sensation on my lips. Crazy huh?

Because of my little sickness, and HOMEWORK (can you believe they are giving us homework here?) I decided not to travel this past weekend, along with the majority of the rest of the group, so we just explored Jaipur…which mostly constituted of walking around the Old City and get attacked by the shop keepers…if you are going to shop DON’T go to the old city in Jaipur…they are ridiculous!

FUNNY story…my mataji is a RATHER funny character. She told Molly and I a while back that the WHOLE world was going to EXPLODE in two days, because of that scientific tube that they were going to turn on in Switzerland. She said, “Where is the US? They wont let other countries have atomic bombs that only destroy a country and this tube is going to destroy THE WHOLE WORLD and the US is doing NOTHING about it!!!???” Later she heard that the tube was not a threat and that we would survive through the week…I think I need to start keeping documentation of my mataji’s one-liners…like a quote board…yeah K2N??...she is SOO funny!