Happy New Year!

I had intended to post this the day after NewYears but our internet was down, then it was my host mom's birthday, then I got distracted, basically there's a hundred excuses as to why I didn't finish it until today... most of them probably aren't very valid:

I spent New Years Eve with my family but in the afternoon I hung out with my friend Jordan. As soon as we returned from Nagpur, he was told that he had to move out of his current house until we returned from our North Tour in March. Instead of begin placed with another family, he is now living in a hostel type place that is actually more of a cult/commune/hostel. I guess he doesn't mind too much which is more than I could say if I were in his position, but he does get really bored there. He is also locked in (or out depending on what side of the gate he's on) at 8 every night. We hung out at a coffee place and basically wasted time until I had to go home. I felt bad for him because even on New Years Eve he had to be in by 8. I guess he ended up spending the night reading and on the phone with one of our friends who also had nothing to do. As for me, I went home, showered, and put on one of my traditional outfits. People made several jokes because I was wearing a salwar suit while my sister was wearing a western style dress. They called is a "true exchange". We had a neighborhood bonfire/potluck in the middle of the street in front of out house. Everyone brought a dish that could be reheated of cook and the ground floor of the building next to ours became a sort of communal kitchen where fresh chapattis were cooked and the food was prepared. To pass time before midnight we played group games like the Indian version of bingo and other silly group games. Someone also had brought a set of speakers so that people could dance. At midnight everyone went around shaking hands or hugging each other wishing them a happy New Year. Around 1, the women of my family, Ipshita, my mom, my aunt, my cousin Jhanvi, and I drove to the gurdwara or Sikh temple so that they could pray for the new year. I sort of watched and followed what they did. Like most temples here, you have to remove your shoes before entering a gurdwara but you also have to cover your head (like a mosque). You're also supposed to back out of the temple, instead of turning around. Sikhism is a relatively new religion that broke off of Hinduism. It's mostly practiced by Punjabi people. While almost all Sikhs are Punjabi, not all Punjabis are Sikh. The term Punjabi describes a person from the area of Punjab.
On the first, I spent the afternoon with my friend Amanda who lives in Bhopal. Her family had come to Indore for New Years and so her father could attend a funeral. We spent the day in the mall shopping with her host mom. Amanda spent that night at my house since my sister had to go to Bhopal for an exam.



Monday, I went back to school. I was only one of 5 students to show up. A similar attendance record has persisted for the rest of the week so far. Yesterday the state government announced that from today on, all classes in all schools public or private, from 8th grade and below will be suspended until the 16th due to unusual cold. In some parts of the state, the temperatures are hovering above and below freezing. There was actually snow in the capital yesterday. India's made me weak, the temperatures are in the 60's and 70's during the days, and 40's at night and I'm feeling cold. Obviously not as cold as the people here think it is but still, 70's should be nice weather for me.

South Tour Pictures Part One (Golkunda Fort, Hydrabad)

My friend, Nisha Khan, and I.  Nisha is from Onterio, Canada. This is the only picture not from my camera, our friend, Amanda, took this. One of the other students (Franzi from Germany) made a CD with a mix of the best of everyone's pictures from the whole tour and gave them to us for Christmas so now I have around 3,000 pictures from the tour alone.

The whole group plus random Indians in the background. That's one of the problems with being a foreigner here, everyone tries to get in your pictures and EVERYONE wants a picture of you. Sometimes people ask but most of the time, they try to be sneaky and try to get a picture without you noticing. This gets VERY old after awhile.

First row, left to right: Dascha (Oregon, born in Russia), Nisha (Onterio, Canada)
Second row, left to right: Sebastian (Colombia), Hannah (Germany), Me, Franzi (Germany), Aafreen (India), Serenity (Florida, born in Korea), Olivia (Michigan)
Back row, left to right: Chris Yoder (Illinois), Amanda (Washington state), Nikolas (Germany), Jordan (Oregon), Sabrina (Austria), Jakob (Germany), Brii (Onterio), Anais (France), Michelle (Germany)

Merry Christmas (Exchange Student Style)

I just returned this morning from a week in Nagpur where most of the other exchange students on the South Tour were from. We arrived the 23rd and spent that day and the next learning a practicing dances for their district conference. Because we only had 2 days to learn, the students from my district only did one dance. It was a Bengali traditional folk dance. Christmas eve we went to a Christmas party at a country club as the guests of one of the student's parents. From there we attended a midnight mass at a nearby church which was a really special and emotional thing for a lot of people. That night, we slept at the house of their counselor and stayed up late discussing our various Christmas traditions. This may have been my favorite part of the night because for me that's what a big part of being an exchange student is about, sharing cultures. On Christmas day, after a quick change we met once again to go to the conference an hour outside of the city. On the bus ride over we exchanged secret santa gifts that we had drawn at the end out the tour. All the gifts were placed under a little "christmas tree" potted plant that we brought on the bus. Some people also brought small things for the whole group like sweets, CDs of photos from the tour, or, I brought a collection of silly bands...
The rest of the day was spent hanging out and preparing for that night's performance. Some of the dances that the other students did were amazing. The exchange student show is an annual favorite at the function I guess and it's often said that the foreigners know the dances better than some Indians.
Below is a link to one of 3 newspaper articles about us and out practices. There were also 2 news television broadcasts.

http://www.ehitavada.com/site.home/paper_type/13/date/2010-12-25/page_no/8

The 26th, we also returned to the conference. The rest of our time was spent just hanging out. I had a great trip and everything but it was also nice to return home today to my family and everything.

In some ways Christmas wasn't as hard, missing home-wise, but in other ways it was harder. I didn't expect to have any kind of christmas and as long as I didn't think about home and our traditions, which I didn't really, it was fine. However, when several of your close friends are missing home, it's easy to follow suit and think about what you're missing. But when I stopped to reflect on the fun I was having, the people I was with, were I was, and everything it all amounted to much more positive feelings than I could have possibly had negative. I hope that made sense.

I still promise for South Tour pictures but it's time for me to go to bed,

Another Family

Blogging has not been on my mind in the past few days.
 As soon as I returned from the tour I had to switch gears and unpack everything just to repack it again. This time though, I had to pack EVERYTHING since I switched families on Sunday. It seems like all my stuff has multiplied since the last time I moved.
My new host family is not far from the previous one. They live in a relatively unpolluted and diverse colony ( I was told many times that people of all religions and castes live together and get along). There are also a fair number of animals who come because there is a very small wooded area. This morning when I was walking to the bus there was a flock of wild peacocks in the road. That's another great thing about my new location, the junior section for my school is at the end of the road and all the buses start and finish their rounds here. I don't have to leave until 8 in the morning when one of the buses returns to drop off kids for the junior school.
My new family consists of my mother and father who are both doctors and my 20 year old host sister. We live on the third floor of the apartment building in a two-bedroom flat. My host aunt, uncle, and cousin who's 15 live below us. I think the family owns the whole building. Everyone is very nice, VERY nice. When I first arrived my cousin and I spent a couple hours walking around and I met some of the other girls (mostly younger) and people who live in the colony.
I'm sure I'll think of more to say later but for now I have homework and other things I need to do. I also promise to put pictures from the tour up as soon as possible but there is no wireless internet here so I have to transfer them from my laptop to my sister's.

Home Again...

I returned to Indore on Friday morning while it might be great to be back and living a regular routine I miss being on tour very much. I had an AMAZING time, that's an understatement but I don't know how else to put it (hope the caps lock helped).
There were 18 students, mostly from Germany or Canada and the US. From start to finish, the trip went far to quickly. We started in Nagpur where a lot of the students are living and took a night bus ride from there. Most other nights were spent at hotel except for a few that we spent rocking on the bunks of trains.
 From the get go, we were busy every day visiting dozens of temples and other sights and monuments. We spent a few days simply relaxing on beaches or strolling through markets bargaining for souvenirs and gifts. Mostly though, it was a wake up at 7 and non-stop doing things until dinner time even is those things were sitting on a bus for a few hours watching India roll by.
ONe of my favorite days came towards the end of the middle of the trip (if that makes sense). We started the day in warm and balmy Mysore but by the end of the day our bus had climbed thousands of feet into the mountains in a hill station city call Ooty. The drive was breathtaking in a way I had never experienced before. We drove high above the valley we had come from winding on dangerous switchbacks, a sign at each hairpin bend reminding drivers how many people had died there previous years. The scenes were stunning though, lush, unbroken green of the wildlife preserve spread out in the valley below. Trees and bushes clung to the rocked mountain side and above us craggy peaks soared into the clouds. The vegetation at the bottom could only have been described as tropical but at we ascended, it began to resemble the forests at home or in the Pacific Northwest. Both the small villages we passed and the city of Ooty itself were much like what I expect to find if I ever make it to the small mountainside villages in South America. Terraces covered the hills growing the areas produce as well as thousands of pounds of tea to be exported.
 The hotel we stayed in had a magnificent view of the town below, it was built terraced into the side of the mountain with the wall facing out made all out of glass. The whole time we were there a cloud layer surrounded the mountains and valleys making us feel like we were in our own world up there that we had driven to.
Another of my favorite places we stayed was Goa, though it was a favorite for a whole different set or reasons. Goa is THE vacation destination to go to in India, it's a major beach town. We got to spend long relaxing hours on the beaches. Another night we spent in a houseboat in the backwaters of Allappy where we passed single homes on lone islands and Indians rowing by in small homemade canoes. It was another extremely relaxing night, we listened to music, danced, swam, and watched one of the best sunsets ever!
I wish I could go on to describe every temple, every beach, every moment of tour but that would be beyond my and the computers capabilities. I plan on posting pictures as soon as I can but if you're my friend on facebook you can see both my pictures and the hundreds that my friends have posted.