Before you look at this post and click out of the page allow
me to tell you: I promise to make
these much shorter. I won’t write this much everyday but so much is happening
its hard not to!
India is everything I wanted it to be and more! Our rooms
are very similar to regular American dorm. We have air conditioning and a bathroom in our room too. Dawn and I are roommates. We are staying in the international
hostel but the school is in between semesters right now (they start again in
July) and we are the only ones here.
So basically, we (the four of us) have an entire dorm to ourselves.
We were introduced to Solomon, who is essentially the RA of this building, and he has helped us get everything set up. Not only do we have the dorm to ourselves but we are also the only students eating at the international cafeteria. For each meal they set up one table for the four of us and make a huge meal (which we hardly ever put a dent in).
Most
of our meals are traditional India dishes and they are delicious! Because we
are eating at the international hall the cooks are careful to use filtered water
and wash all of the fruits for us- so we can eat pretty freely on Campus. (We
have already eaten lots of fresh pineapple). The cook is also being
extra-cautious not to make anything too spicy but we told him we were ready to
turn up the heat. They westernized
breakfast for us, so it was pretty much the same thing we’d eat in America with
a few alterations. The jelly here
is syrupy sweet and raspberry- it tastes almost like the gelatin filling in a
cookie. They also served hard
boiled eggs and corn flakes. The
corn flakes were served to us with hot milk,which was a little odd a first but
turned out to be delicious (give it a try in your breakfast!). I can’t really describe what we’ve been
eating for lunch and dinner because, to be perfectly honest, I really have no
idea. It is rice, Indian flat
bread and some sort of curried gravy (usually made with potatoes and
veggies). Each meal is also served
with a brothy soup and fried veggies.
We
got a tour of the campus this morning and walked around town. Trichy is about
8k from end to end and houses 4million people…to give you a comparison value
(and assuming Dawn and I’s rough calculations are correct)…Trichy has 40times
the population density of Boone. The campus is quiet and not very busy but the
moment we leave the gate everything changes.
One
of India’s most interesting qualities is the road system. Drivers sit on the right side of the
vehicle but they may drive on whichever side of the road they please. There are
some cars and vans but there are twice as many bikes/mopeds or “two-wheelers”
as they are called here. (We have
seen as many as five people on one moped- women ride them side-saddle and often
have infant in arms!) As you can imagine, crossing the road is quite a feat.
Josephine, one of the administrators showing us around today, had us practice
crossing the road with her today (we even held hands). She wanted to be sure that we were able
to do it with her before trying on our own. I can’t even tell you how necessary this was. Once we conquered the road we shifted
our attention to the animals.
There are goats and cows everywhere! The pedestrians don’t seem to
notice them but they are some of the largest cows I have ever seen.
After
our little tour of the city we had lunch and then rested. Indians work on a two-shift
system. A typical workday involves
a morning shift, lunch and rest, then an evening shift. Our days will be structured similarly
once our internships begin. You
know that feeling right after you eat lunch where all you want to do is nap? In
India, you can! And it is pretty stinkin fantastic.
After
our nap, two of our new friends took us shopping. We went to a department store and picked out Salwar
Khameez. Salwar Khameez are like
the jeans and t-shirt of Indian women.
Sarees are worn as well but typically are worn by older women and for
more formal events. We each bought multiple Salwar Khameeze (which consist of
pants, tunic-like shirts, and a scarf) but it took us forever to pick them out-
everything was so beautiful. We
each spent around 3000rupees on clothes (roughly $50) but that bought us 7
outfits! Finally our Indian friends told us that we needed to hurry up because
they wanted to go out to dinner.
They
took us to their favorite restaurant in the middle of the city. A comedy of errors then followed. There is a bit of a language barrier
between our new friends and us.
While a lot of people in Trichy speak English, some are still learning
and some speak only Tamil (the native language of the state we are in). The girls showing us around the city
speak English but it isn’t always easy to understand and ordering dinner became
a bit of an ordeal. Dawn, Emily,
Danielle and I only knew a few of the menu items so we tried to just order what
we knew. But the server was asking
us questions in Tamil and the girls were having trouble translating what he
wanted to know. Eventually we just
gave up and let our friends order for us.
We ate curry, malai kufta, veg biryani, dosai and naan. Since none of us knew what we ordered
we kindof went at it family style but at the end of the meal we were stuffed
(all for $3 by the way).
When
we got back to campus the cook was waiting for us outside of the mess hall and
asked if we were ready for dinner.
Whoops! We assumed that someone had told him that we were eating dinner
in the city but no one had. So we
took our very full bellies and sat down to a second dinner. Not wanting to offend him (or waste a
ton of food), we all piled our plates high as we laughed about the whole
mishap. Dinner number two was: fried prawn, some sort of Chinese corn dish,
tomato soup, fresh cucumbers, rice, and some sort of egg noodles. He finished it by bringing us chocolate
milkshakes. Suffice it to say, we
are VERY full. From now on we will
not eat out unless we know for sure that the kitchen has been told.
When
we got back to the hostel we took turns trying on our new outfits. We had to
send our shirts to a tailor in town so that they could attach sleeves (most women
here wear their Salward Kameeze with sleeves but they are purchased
sleeve-less) so we just tried on all of our new pants. Luckily, all of the pants have
drawstring tops- they are very forgiving of the 4 full meals we have eaten
today.
We
start our internships tomorrow and I am excited and a bit nervous. We are all going different places so I
am shedding the security blanket of my American friends. We work 9-12 then come back for lunch
and resting and go back to work 5-7:30. I’ll let you know how it goes!
I know that was a lot to read but if you are interested in
more here are the links:
Dawn’s blog: http://summerinindia2013.blogspot.in/
Danielle’s blog: http://danigoestoindia.blogspot.com
Emily’s blog: http://emilysindiaadventures.blogspot.com/
(and yes- theirs are just as long)
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