in the "City of Joy"

I planned to write this entry a week after I got back, but then as the time went on I put off writing it because it enabled me to still keep this trip open and unfinished in a way. Yet it may be time to truly recognize that the summer is over and that I am indeed back in America.

London was fantastic. I couldn't stop smiling when I entered the airport and everything was calm and clean. I went to the bathroom and started giggling at how much toilet paper they had stocked in the stalls. Three days was not nearly enough time to explore London, a city I definetly want to return to, but it was perfect to get a taste for hostel life and some time to relax before I made it all the way home. The flights back were great, no real problems with the new security restrictions. When the plane came into Boston there was a gorgeous sunset over the Charles, and seeing the Prudential Center and the Citgo sign made it really sink in that I was back home. My parents and sister picked me up from the airport, and it was so surreal seeing them there like that. Since I first got to India I had been picturing that moment, the moment I could finally breathe again and feel completely comfortable in my own skin and not like an outsider.

What was even more surreal was how natural it felt being back. I hopped into my parents car, drove on the right side of the road, got home, and went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning I felt like I had awoke from a three month dream. India felt so far away, so detached from the place I was in again. In those first two weeks, there was no adjustment back - it was like I had never left. I found I was still more sensitive to people critiquing America and our government, yet that has gone away now. I found I noticed the beauty in New England much more - the trees, the mountains, the sky. There is amazing beauty in this country as well that I hadn't paid much attention to before, yet now it seemed impossible to miss. I didn't miss India during that time because I realized you don't have to travel far and wide to see amazing things, they can be right in your back yard. I am trying to hold onto that outlook, yet I find myself getting caught up in one thing or another and taking the beauty around me for granted again. It was hard going from working all day long and always having something to do to not working at all and having very little to do. Going shopping and eating out can only be entertaining for so long. I didn't have any difficult reactions to the expense and abundance that the Western world offers it's consumers, yet when I was in London I did get overwhelmed by Harrod's. The wealth in that place is ridiculous, and the food court! They have every type of food, and every variety of every type of food imaginable! It did feel strange thinking I had been sitting on a cracked floor surrounded by Indian women eating with my hands two days ago, and now I was at Harrod's, one of the nicest stores in the most expensive city in the world.

What's taking some time getting used to now is taking myself out of travel mode and into school mode. Being still so close to being in India, and not that far from going to Ireland, I'm finding it hard to live in the present and enjoy where I am now. It was so easy to stay positive in India. Even though it was probably the most difficult experience I have gone through, I had never had a more positive attitude about a situation. Yet now that I'm back in America, where I should feel more comfortable than ever, being in a familiar culture with a familiar language, being within a two hour drive of my family instead of a two day plane ride, I still feel displaced. I miss being a minority. I miss being in a different culture and learning so many new things each day. While I love being able to find healthy food no matter where I turn, I miss chapati's and dal, I miss chili spices and curries. I find myself putting hot peppers on everything. Even if it makes the food too hot, I still want them on there!

I'll get back in the swing of things, and perhaps writing this entry and making a proper ending to this story will give me some closure. Yet I can't imagine what it was like not knowing what I know now. I can't imagine what it was like not knowing how to wax cloth and speak broken English with the most amazing women. I can't imagine what it was like to not have ridden down the Ganges and listened to a sacred Shiva festival. I can't imagine what it was like to not have walked down the streets of Calcutta wearing a salwar kameez and having to adjust my dupatta every five minutes. I can't imagine what it was like when I thought the world as so large and unreachable, and now I see it as small, with no corner unattainable. I miss India, but I know I will return. In the meantime I can learn as much as I can to sustain me until January, when I shall be let loose once again on the world.

Thank you for reading, for following and supporting me along this trip. Being able to document it like this has given me the chance to make my thoughts all the more clear, and the experience all the more meaningful. Until next time, namaste (goodbye)!

Friday was my last day at Ankur Kala, and while I assumed it would be hard, it was a lot sadder than I thought it would be. I have gotten so attached to these women, a few in particular, and I was happy I was able to take some of them aside and say goodbye to them alone as well as in a big group. I didn't really do much work as I was going from department to department having some final chats with people and saying my goodbyes. Then during lunch Annie even ate with us, and I was given a card signed by all the women and also some going away presents. All day long the women asked "How many days til you come back?" I would sadly smile and say, "Many, many days," and finally they got out of me that it would be at least two or three years, and they just looked crushed. Even though they know I'm a student and that America is on the other side of the world, they still think I have tons of money to throw around (which I guess in comparison I do), and that it would only take a few hours to get here. They were saying things like, "Come back for Durga Puja! Just for a few days!" Durga Puja is a large Hindu festival at the end of September, and it's huge in Calcutta, four days of no work and all play. I'm sad I'm going to miss it, but Hannah's coming back to India in a couple weeks so she said she'll send me pictures.

Saturday I finally went to see the Marble Palace with Hannah, and I'm so glad I got to fit it in while I was here. It's in the 1000 Places to See Before You Die book, the only thing that made it from Calcutta, and while no Indian person we asked had ever heard of it (a lot of people said it was the same as the Victoria Memorial, mainly because that's made of marble), we figured it had to be at least a little interesting to see. It ended up being an old colonial building made during the British Raj. An Indian man who worked for the government built it as a museum and it has tons of gorgeous, marble statues and huge paintings and portraits covering the walls. For anyone in or around Boston, it kind of reminded me of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, just on a much larger scale. It is still taken care of, but it's been left to age so it looks really ancient, as if you're stepping back in time to when the British ruled. Hannah kept saying how many houses like this there are in England, which made me sad I'm only able to stay there for a few days on my way back to the US. I've been thinking I might go to England a few weeks before my semester in Ireland starts next year so I can see all the people I've met here, and also get a chance to really see England. We'll see. After the Marble Palacee we went to Blue Sky Cafe one final time, and I went home to relax before we went out for a last visit to I, va pretty classy bar we always went to near our apartment.

Today Zoe and I went to Gariahat to get mehndi (spelling?) done on our hands, stopped by to see the family on floor thirteen one last time, then headed over to Sucharita's house to give her some gifts and say goodbye. It's insane to me that I'll be in Western civilization in less than twenty four hours.

I'm still just as torn as ever about leaving. It's so easy to say, and even believe, that I might have wanted to stay longer if I could have, but knowing that it's not a possibility anyway. I keep getting more and more excited about having access to all the things I've missed these last three months, and I'm really interested to see how I readjust to America, even if it takes me some time to get used to it again.
Ha, on a side note, I finally encountered some anti-Americanism from an Indian. I had been thinking to myself how America is so well perceived here, and I was surprised that in three months I had never talked with an Indian about America's status in the world right now, but on my way to I last night a man stopped me to talk for a bit. It came out that I was American, and he then said "Oh America...we Indians, we hate the Bosh, hate the Bosh [I found out he meant Bush]. Bosh is destroyer of all civilization and root of all evil. Indians *spit* Bosh. *Spit* Bosh." He then asked me America's view of our president and if we all agree with India's view, and also to make sure I tell America that India doesn't like Bush's politics. I'm make sure to send them a memo.
Anyway, my view of America has really changed since I've been here, and while I know it has it's problems and I still don't agree with everything the administration is doing right now, being an American has been a strong part of my identity here and it's made me prouder to be from that country. I found myself almost getting defensive of that Indian's man's view of "Bosh," even though three months ago I probably would have said harsher things about him. It will be interesting to see how my view of America further evolves when I get back.

And now all I can do is wait. My flight is at 6:30 tomorrow morning and Sucharita's arranged a car to pick me up about 4am. With all the commotion at Heathrow I'm a bit worried about the flights over, and with all the hand baggage restrictions it doesn't look like I'll even be allowed to bring a book on-board for my ten hour flight to London. I'm meeting Hannah on Wednesday for dinner, seeing as she lives about a half hour from the city. It will be really strange seeing her so soon after leaving India. It will be familiar yet so foreign at the same time. Georgie and I were supposed to meet Tuesday but that didn't work out, and I'm still waiting to see if Sam can join Hannah and me on Wednesday, but other than that it looks like a few days of sightseeing and getting over jet lag. And I'll get to stay in a hostel for the first time, get me ready for backpacking next June.

And so ends my three month adventure in India. All during this trip I've felt like time's gone by quite slowly, and that while some parts flew by, picturing my first few days here seemed like a lifetime ago. But now today, having it be exactly three months since I landed, visiting Sucharita's house where I was oriented and feeling like I would never make it to the end, it feels like I blinked and the summer was over. I have learned more than I can say this past summer, and can't even measure the impact this trip has made on me. All there is to do now is wait and see how I fit into America again.

Friday afternoon I had my last discussion meeting at Ankur Kala. It was a relaxing one - we watched part of a Charlie Chaplin film to give the girls a break. I started getting really choked up at the end of the meeting, where we prayed and sang the songs we've been singing throughout my time here. It's starting to really hit me that I'm leaving this place soon.

Saturday and Sunday were spent doing some last minute shopping and trying to soak up as much of India as I can. I found this new shopping center, and it was in a slightly different area of the city than I'd been to before, so it was nice to be able to navigate where I needed to go on my own and feel confident about doing it. I feel very comfortable in India and I didn't think I'd actually get to that point. Saturday night I also saw Omkara, which I heard made the top 20 on the movie charts in the US. Go see it if it's near you, it was absolutely amazing. It's an adaptation of Othello and it was incredibly well done. I forget the directors name, but the way he shot some scenes was really creative. I'll have to find out more of what he's done. It was also satisfying to be able to understand what was going on, even though the entire film was in Hindi.

This week has come with mixed emotions. For the most part it's wonderful, knowing that I'll be going home soon and having fun things planned for the rest of the week. Work is going well and each day hits a little harder how little time I have left, and how I'll probably never see these women again. Hannah, Sucharita, Annie, and I had a lunch meeting yesterday over some things Hannah and I thought Ankur Kala could improve upon, especially the way volunteers are used. I had been feeling thus far that while I may have made an impact on the individual women at Ankur Kala, I hadn't really bettered the organization as a whole in any way. Now, after sharing with Annie the things Hanna and I have noticed during our time here and talked with her about how Ankur Kala could be improved, I feel like I may have done something in that area after all. It's still not as much of an impact as I wish I had made, but I recognize there's only so much you can do in three months.

I feel very torn about coming home. For the most part, I can't wait. India can be incredibly frustrating at times, and there are some moments when even staying here another four days can seem daunting. But then there are other times when I feel slightly sick at the thought of leaving. I have been trying to pinpoint exactly what it is about India that I like so much, because on the outside there's a lot of problems. It takes ten times as long to get anything accomplished, I don't speak the language, people don't have the same views on manners and politeness which can be very frustrating at times, it's incredibly hot, dirty, and crowded, and I'm constantly getting harrassed by street children and salespeople. But there's also an amazing culture, which I know is incredibly vague but I can't seem to find the words to describe it. It's so heavily focused on music and dance, which gives it a flavor that the US is lacking. It's so bright and colorful. People go out of their way to help complete strangers, even if it totally disrupts their plans.
I miss America and I wouldn't want to stay longer, but I'm afraid of coming back home and not feeling right. I know I probably won't for some time, and that after being in India for three months it's to be expected for there to be some transition period in coming back home. I just home I don't go through another week like I had when I first got here.

Indian boys and Indian girls

I went to another Ankur Kala exhibition on Thursday, this time at a boy's primary school. I forget if I mentioned the last exhibition I went to, but it was probably about 4 weeks ago and it was a girl's primary school. The differences between how the children acted, and more importantly how their parents acted towards them, were very interesting.

I noticed at the girls school that usually mothers and some fathers come during their child's lunch break to bring them lunch. Watching how the parents were acting around their kids made them look really spoiled - coming in just for twenty minutes to hand deliver their kids food, opening their lunch containers for them and getting everything ready so all their kid has to do is eat - it just seemed very unnecessary. I was also probably thinking of how priviledged these kids are to have parents who can do this for them in India, and also how lucky they are to even be able to go to as nice of a school as they were going to, and it frustrated me a bit seeing how unfair things can be, and also that the parents and children seemed to think little of their priviledge. We were selling things for lower class women, and many mothers barely glanced at the table, even though they knew it was for a charity, and I even saw some give the Ankur Kala women dirty looks. However, some did buy things, and let their daughter's choose a thing or two that they would buy for them. The girls were nice and controlled, always asking before they touched anything, and always listening if we told them not to do something. I loved seeing at the kids around and it made me slightly sad at times that I wasn't working at a children's project.

Any desire of wanting to work with children was completely extinguished after going to the exhibition at the boy's school. Keeping in mind that boys are generally more energetic and rambuctious than girls to begin with, these boys were little brats! They touched absolutely everything, messing up the displays that we had and never listening when we told them to stop. They were incredibly loud and violent, pushing other kids out of the way so they could grab at our products and sneaking under the table so they were behind the counter and in our selling area. But, I attributed this to the fact that young boys can be more troublesome than girls. What really bothered me, though, was how the parents acted towards their sons. One mother brought her daughter with her to pick up her son from school. The mother told her daughter she could have one thing, while she let her son buy as much as she wanted. I didn't see any parent say no to their sons, and whatever they wanted, they got. I also saw mothers and fathers spoonfeeding their sons. These are eight and nine year olds. The parents got their child's lunch all ready, all opened and set up on the table so all their sons had to do was sit down and feed themselves. But they didn't even have to feed themselves, their parents did it for them! And I thought the girls were spoiled!

What's funny is I saw a Hindi movie last night (a drama this time, much easier to follow than a comedy), and there were several times when women would spoon- (or hand) feed their husbands or brothers. Why can't Indian men feed themselves!
Then I was thinking, hey, maybe Indian women have something here. Men here never have to cook, so they wouldn't know how to make food if women stopped cooking for them. But even if they did know how to cook, they wouldn't know how to feed themselves so the food would be useless anyway. So now, whenever women want to take control of the men in this country, they just have to stop cooking for and feeding them, and the male species would perish.

Or maybe not and maybe India is as sexist as I thought.

I finally got to wear my sari last week! Three of the girls left this weekend, so we all went out for a final dinner together before some of us flew to Delhi and those of us who had saris wore them. Sucharita came over an hour before we left to help us put them on. I knew they were complicated, but at times it's almost ridiculous how much material they give you to wear. Six meters - one to make the blouse and five to wrap around you. I want to try to put it on one more time before I leave so I get decent at it before I come home. I think I remember all the steps...if it would actually stay on is another matter.
But Komal, Danica, and Sam had their last week. Sam came with us to Delhi and is leaving today to go trekking in Nepal. But before I get onto this week, first Delhi.

We got a flight Thursday night and got our hotel to pick us up from the airport. We ended up choosing a hotel in the Tibetan area of Delhi, which sounded cute yet couldn't have been further from the center of the city, so it took forever to get into town. Friday morning we got a rickshaw to the nearest metro stop and took that the rest of the way. It was the cleanest subway I have ever seen. Cleaner than any in the US. Then when we walked up the stairs out from underground, I thought I had stepped into New York City. Central Delhi is so nice! So modern! So clean! We were just walking around in a stupor wondering what this place is doing in India. What made it even more incredible is that everyone we'd talked to about Delhi before we left said it was awful - really unsafe, crowded, intense, etc. I have never felt safer in India - I felt like I was home. When we ventured out of central Delhi, specially this place called Connaught Place which is where we got out of the subway, it started to look like India again, and Old Delhi is a bit intense, but still nothing compared to Calcutta. I wonder what my impression of Delhi would have been had that been my first stop in India.
Anyway, we got some breakfast and then went to the Indira Gandhi museum. I'm really shocked at my lack of knowledge of important international figures. I thought she was Gandhi's wife before I went there. Then I looked around the museum a bit and was very confused until Hannah corrected me. She was the first female Prime Minister of India, and her father was the first Prime Minister. She was a really incredible woman, and ended up being assasinated by her own bodyguards in her own garden. The museum is her old house that they converted, and it has a glass plate over the place where she was shot. Her son ended up being Prime Minister, too, and he was killed during a terrorist bomb. Their family reminds me a bit of the Kennedy's.
After that Hannah and Merroney wanted to do some shopping, but a downside of Delhi being more Western is that it's prices are also more Western, so shopping was not on the agenda for me. Sam and I decided to go to the Tibet House instead. It is an art gallery of Tibetan art work that was brought into India after China took over Tibet. It was small but there were some interesting things there.
Then we took a walk to Humayan's Tomb, which inspired the construction of the Taj Mahal. It was pretty expensive to get in, and seeing as we were going to the Taj Mahal in a couple days we just walked around the gardens in front of it for a bit and relaxed. We got a rickshaw (I loved how rickshaws would go anywhere in Delhi - in Calcutta they each have certain routes and usually won't take you for longer than a ten minute ride) back to Old Delhi, where we were meeting the other girls for dinner. We ended up finding the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India. It was absolutely beautiful. It was made of red and white stone, with several large domes and tall walls all around the inner complex. Sam and I walked around there for a while, trying to escape all the Indians wanting to pose for a picture. I can understand people staring at white people because they don't see them often, and if I saw an Indian woman walking down the streets of my little rural, New Hampshire town, I might do a double take as well. But taking pictures of us? Wanting to pose with us? I just giggle thinking of them showing their photo album to people. "Here is our family in Delhi. Doesn't little Nikhil look cute. Oh, and here is us with a random white person we found in the Jama Masjid..." It just seems absurd to me. But I'll save more about this issue for later, because it got better the next day.
After the mosque we went to dinner. I am getting sick of Indian food. It's always curry, rice, and grease. Sometimes I think they finish cooking the meal and then just plop a spoonfuul of oil on the top of it. Naan is still good though. We headed over to Red Fort after that to catch the sound and light show. The Red Fort is where a lot of the Emperors during the Mughal empire stayed, and we got a little history on that empire, and also how the British came and took over. After that it was pretty late for being out in Delhi, so we headed back to our hotel.

Saturday we had breakfast at our hotel and went to the Mahatma Gandhi museum. I knew he was an amazing person, but seeing his life layed out before you and described in such detail was really incredible. They even had the clothes he was wearing when he died on display, and the bullets that hit him. He did so much for that country, and to practice the kind of non-violence he did through the entire struggle for independence is remarkable. Gandhi is the face on the Indian rupee, and I can't think of a more suitable person for it.
After that we walked across the street to the Raj Ghat, where he was cremated. It has beautiful gardens surrounding it, and many ghats nearby, but the Raj Ghat is one portion of the complex. There is a roped off portion in the center of that grassy area marking the spot he was cremated, and we looked at that for a bit before finding some shade under a tree. This is where we were attacked by Indian cameras. All four of us sat down on the grass, and before we knew it we were surrounded by Indians, just staring at us. Then one person took out his camera and took a picture, and then all twenty of them took out their cameras and started clicking away. Some even bent down and got right in our faces. Without even asking! In Darjeeling and Varanasi, people took photos with us, but they asked very nicely first and we always so happy after. Here, they didn't even ask, and when we told them to stop, or declined their request for us to pose with them, they acted as if we were being rude! Like we have some duty to just let them photograph us and stop whatever we're doing just to pose with them, so after they'll have some souvenir of the day they saw a white person. I got really frustrated, if you can't tell already, with this. Haha, especially, after I had walked away from the girls because I was sick of feeling like some exotic animal, a small crowd of men then followed me to where I was sitting and still snapped photos of me. I didn't move just for the fun of it! Grr, it made me angry. And at the place of Gandhi's cremation, the man responsible for so much of India's independence struggle. Just another thing about India I don't understand.
We went to get some lunch and then went back to our hotel to meet our rental car driver was taking us to Agra. It ended up being a five hour drive - hot and cramped, but still better than a train. We found a nice hotel with a rooftop view of the Taj Mahal and went to bed fairly soon because we wanted to get to the Taj early the next morning. I went up to the roof before I went to sleep to see how good this view was and felt chills at what I saw. It was about midnight, with very few lights around me and tons of stars out. And there was the silhouette of the Taj Mahal. There were no lights on it, just this majestic outline in the middle of a dirty Indian town. Once again, a moment where I laughed at myself for ever getting tired of being in India.

Sunday we woke up about 5am to go up on the roof and see the sunrise over the Taj Mahal. It was such good weather, and we couldn't have asked for better lighting. It didn't open until 6, and our hotel was only a two minute walk from it, so we had some chai, gaped at the Taj, and then headed out. We debated whether or not we should get a tour guide, and a seemingly trustworthy man came up to us and gave us a good price, so we let him be our guide. I'm so glad we did because he ended up being such a lovely person, and he knew where all the best places to take pictures were so we could save on the photographer's they have there.
There are some sites you hear about and see pictures of, and they look amazing and fantastic on paper, yet when you get there it's a bit of a disappointment. This was not one of those sites. You first walk into a garden complex with high walls around it, with the streets on one side and the Taj Mahal on the other. Then you walk through these arches to get into the actual site, and as your walking you start seeing bits and pieces of the famous building. And then you look up and it's that famous picture staring you in the face. I felt like I was looking at a painting. It is perfect - the design, the symmetry, the details, everything. My mouth has dropped at a lot of the sites I've seen so far this summer, but I never noticed it as strongly as I did when I walked through those arches. Ah, I'm getting giddy just thinking about it - it's just so beautiful! We spent about a half hour wandering through the gardens and fountains leading up to it, taking pictures and staring in awe at where we were. The building is made of white marble, and the main dome has the tomb of Shah Jahan's fourteenth wife. Shah Jahan was an emperor in India and he commissioned a lot of the great architectural pieces in the country, including the Taj Mahal. He made it in memory of his favorite wife. There's also a tomb for Shah Jahan, because he requested to be buried there when he died.
We spent the next couple hours wandering through the building, as well as the gardens and mosques surrounding it. Finally we tore ourselves away from it to go eat.
The other girls didn't want to see the Agra Fort, the other main site to see in Agra, but I figured I probably won't be back here anytime soon, so I hopped on a rickshaw and went to the Fort. It was actually nice going through a new Indian town on my own, feeling comfortable and confident enough in my bartering skills and how to handle pushy salesmen. I got another guide for the Fort, which I am also glad about because there was so much history to it. Shah Jahan was imprisoned there by his son for the last ten years of his life because he was spending too much money on buildings and his son wouldn't stand for it anymore. It was quite a prison, though, so I don't know how much he could complain. The architecture was nothing compared to the Taj Mahal, but I'm still very glad I went.
Around noon we took our car back to Delhi. We decided to splurge for our last hotel in India and got a nice hotel for that night. It even had air conditioning and an elevator! By that point we were all a bit irritated with India, after a long drive back from Agra and just dealing with people hassling you, so we went back to Connaught Place and found a TGI Friday's! I don't even really love that restaurant in the States, but I was so happy to see it! It even had the same menu and everything (just with lamb burgers instead of beef). Everyone spoke English, the place was spotless, and the food was just like home. Ha, it was amusing, however, when we ordered dessert and forgot how big Western servings can be. We couldn't even finish half of what we ordered. And to make the perfect end to our escape into the Western world, there were even back-to-back episodes of "Sex and the City" on HBO when we got back. Ohh, what a treat.

Monday we only had the morning in Delhi because we had an early afternoon flight, so we went back to Connaught Place. Hannah and Merroney went shopping again and I found a nice coffee shop to read in. On my way out I stumbled upon a Subway and got food for the plane ride back. I never thought a turkey sub (on wheat bread!) could taste so good. Ooh, also, I found my first McDonald's in India. I shrieked when I saw it and felt like such an idiot, being that excited over fast food. I still couldn't bring myself to order anything off the menu (which also serves no beef, mainly fish, chicken, and paneer burgers), but it was interesting to see. Our flight home was fine and we were back in our apartment by 7pm. I was surprised at how comforted I was to be back in Calcutta. Also it's probably because I know I only have two weeks left and the next time I'll be leaving it will be to come home.

I do think I'm ready for that though - these next two weeks feel like they will drag on. The past two days have gone by pretty slowly. With the language barrier there's only so much I can learn from the women at Ankur Kala, and sadly my kitchen skills have not improved much in my time here, so I can't even say I'm being that much of a help in the JSP department. There keep being moments when I feel like I never want to leave, and then moments when I wish my flight was in an hour. Eh, it'll come soon enough.

So I was walking along a street in Varanasi Saturday night with the other girls during our tour of the town, thinking "This town is alright but nothing amazing so far. It's just like the other Indian towns I've seen. I'm getting a bit tired of India, I could go home now, etc. etc." Then we turn a corner and there's the Ganges river, one of the holiest rivers in the world, bathed in a gorgeous dusk light, with people lighting candles, chanting, and worshipping along the ghats. A few minutes later I am in a gondola-shapped rowboat, floating on the Ganges watching a loud and colorful festival for the god Shiva. At this point, I was thinking, "Kathleen, you fool, why would you want to go home!"

But let's back up a bit. We left Friday night on the train and got in (on time!) about 11am Saturday morning. We checked into our hotel, had some breakfast, and then met the hotel's tour guide, who was absolutely wonderful and probably shielded us from a lot of the hassles that can ruin a person's trip to Varanasi. He drove us around in a van to all the major sites, and knew a lot about the city and India, especially about Hinduism. We went to the major university in town and three temples that afternoon, which were interesting yet at this point I'm getting a bit sick of temples. One was filled with monkeys and tons of flies (there are more flies in that city than anywhere I have ever been), and reminded me a lot of Kalighat - crowded and crazy. I have also decided, once and for all, that monkeys are not cute. Yeah they're small and fury, but they can turn mean so quick. I almost saw one of them attack a dog, and even though the dog was three times the monkey's size, that monkey would have torn it apart.
However, I did learn a lot about Hinduism at these temples by talking with our guide. When I came to India I thought I had a pretty good basis of the Eastern religions, yet the more time I spend here, the less I seem to know. They are so complicated, especially Hinduism. There are millions of gods and goddesses, with different areas of India believing and worshipping different gods. The rebirth cycle is much different than I thought it was, where you go through hundreds of lives before becoming a human, and you don't break free of the cycle of rebirth, you just keep trying to have good karma so you get reborn into the highest caste. I really need to look over all the books I have on religion when I get back to reorient myself with them, because even different types of Hindus believe different things. Anyway, after seeing the main temples in town (apart from the Golden Temple, the most famous temple in Varanasi which is for Hindus only and is almost dangerous to go in at this time of year because it's the season of Shiva and people can get crushed there its so crowded) we went to Moghul town, which is the silk factory district in the city. Varanasi is a great place to get silk, and our tour guide took us to all these different rooms where silk was being made in different stages. Most of the rooms had young boys working in them, and at first we thought "Ooh, child labor, child labor." However, after seeing what not having a job can do to a person in India, it's almost as if these kids are the lucky ones. They get to go to school in the mornings, they have a job and are kept off the streets, and most of the time they are family businesses, so its more like an apprenticeship so the boys will have a trade when they grow up. It's sad to see by Western standards, yet in this society it works.
After we saw the different rooms (dyeing rooms, ones with the looms, etc.) we went to the showroom of one factory and the owner showed us how to tell the difference between the different qualities of silk. Then we were literally covered in samples while some of the girls decided what to buy. We felt like queens, being bathed in silk, which was a bit disturbing after seeing the work that goes into making them.
After shopping a bit there, we had some dinner and went for a night boat cruise on the Ganges. That was my favorite part of the weekend, lying on my back at the edge of the boat, the river flowing past me, looking up at the star filled Indian sky, with the sounds of a Shiva festival in the background. We also got to put a candle (which sat in a little bowl) on the Ganges and make a wish when we set it into the water, and my hand dipped into the water by accident, so I have also touched the Ganges river, which I learned soon after is septic. At least I ate dinner first. I did have a strange desire to jump in the water though, to bathe in a holy river. Yet then I touched my fingers and felt that they were all grimy and sticky after being in the water for just a second and I came back to reality.
I did end up falling into the river though, which wasn't too fun ... just kidding, Mom ;)

Sunday morning we woke up early to see the Ganges in the morning, and it was a much different atmosphere than at night. There was a lot more activity - many people bathing, washing clothes, going for walks along the ghats, burning bodies. We took another boat ride and stopped for a while to watch a cremation. That was interesting and not nearly as eerie as I thought it would be, but probably because I was preparing myself for seeing bodies and limbs floating past me in the boat and all I ended up seeing was a burning pyre. Apparently, you can't burn young children, pregnant women, or outcasts of society, like people of a very low caste or people with leprosy, so those bodies get put in the river. Also, sometimes people don't have enough money to burn the entire body, so the left over limbs are put in the river as well. But the burning process goes as follows. The body is washed and put in a certain type of clothing - red for women, white for men and widows, and orange for priests. They are then put on a wooden stretcher-like structure and covered in cloth of the same colors as above. Then they are dipped into the Ganges for a final cleansing, left to dry on the ghat, and then burned. Both men and women are allowed at the cremation, but women generally don't go because they aren't allowed to cry - if someone cries at the cremation the soul won't want to leave this earth and go onto the next life.
After the boat ride we got some breakfast and relaxed at our hotel. Then three of the girls went back to the silk factory to buy some more things while Zoe and I joined Komal for lunch at her cousin's. That was really fun, having a family Indian meal, and I gave Komal some entertainment by putting the food in the wrong dishes and eating things in the incorrect order. Oh well, I don't even have American dining etiquette down so this wasn't so bad.

So that was my weekend in Varanasi, and the completion of riding trains in India. Yeah, no more trains! They aren't that bad, but I'm so happy we're flying to Delhi.

I also realized I haven't talked much about my project or happenings during the week lately. Basically most of my energy has been going into traveling on the weekends, so not much has happened otherwise. Work is still going very well. I still love my project and the women I work with, and every day I come home I just think how happy I am that I'm at Ankur Kala rather than at a school teaching children. My work is almost like meditation because it's so repetitive, and usually quiet. It can still be a long day, but it's enjoyable so it's alright. Then after work we usually do some errands in Park Street or Newmarket, sit for a bit in Barista sipping coffee, or just come home and read or use the internet. Sometimes we'll go out to dinner, but because we do that so much on the weekends we haven't done that that much the past couple weeks. This is Danica, Komal, and Sam's last week, however, so we'll probably do something Wednesday night, the day before we leave for Delhi. I'm also really looking forward to having my last two weekends in Calcutta. There are still some sights I want to see, and I want to be able to relax and enjoy the city that's been my home for the last three months. It's weird to think that my first apartment was in India.

I've also had a lot of thoughts about poverty and the homelessness situation in India over the last few weeks, but I think I've finally settled with my opinions on it. I'm not going to go into them here, but I'm mostly adding this because I haven't talked about poverty too much on this blog, yet I think about it every day (you can't not think about it), so it seems important to at least mention how much of a presence it is. I haven't seen anything I didn't imagine in my head (except perhaps for the number of amputeed people there are), for I have a pretty vivid imagination and prepared myself for the worst, yet thinking it and seeing it every day, everywhere you go, are two very different things.

On another note, I think I've also been able to pinpoint why I miss home so much at times. I miss my family, obviously, but that's the thing that's the hardest. It's the little comforts that I don't have here, yet are available and if I actually lived here I would have them. Constant internet access - life would be so much different and more comfortable if I didn't have to go to an internet cafe all the time. TV/DVD - I miss coming home and being able to veg out with a good movie; it can be relaxing at the end f the day and very useful here. Food - I miss the fruits that you can get in New England, and fresh milk products, and salads, and whole wheat breads and pastas; if I had those things life would be a lot easier. The reason I'm listing these things is that before I didn't think I'd want to live in India, yet I'm finding more and more that I love this country and this culture, I just wouldn't want to live without the things I listed above. I don't know if that's sad or not how much I rely on technology, but I think I do enough things during the day and on the weekends that watching a movie now and then wouldn't ruin the experience. One thing I have really enjoyed, however, is not having a cell phone. A lot of the girls here bought Indian cell phones for local calls, and while it's made it hard to make friendships with Indians I meet, it's been refreshing not to be carrying a phone with me everywhere, for me to be able to contact people when I want yet not the other way around. So, long story short, I may not mind living in India one day, I would just have to find a place with cable and internet connections, and overcome my laziness and go search for stores that sell some of the foods I listed above, because they do have Western food stores here, they are just far away from our place.

It was such a bad idea to plan this trip in the middle of my summer. I am truly depressed to be back in Calcutta. Darjeeling was amazing. That has been the first place in India that I could honestly see myself going back to spend a lot of time there. Anywhere near the Himalayas, either in India or Nepal, would be a wonderful place to live.

We left late Thursday night on the train. We were supposed to get in at 6am Friday morning, but, with India being India, we didn't get in until 1:30pm. We then had to take a three and a half hour jeep ride up the mountain to get to the town (the train stopped at a city nearby Darjeeling), which made me feel like I was in one of those cartoons where a truck is going round and round a mountain and almost falling off the edge at every turn. All the towns are built into the mountain, and being a monsoon season there is a constant fog everywhere, so you look out and you just see clouds surrounding you. Had the skies been clear you could see the Himalayas, but the fog was beautiful in its own way. It gave the place a very mystical atmosphere. We found a really cute guest house to stay in, went out to dinner, and went to bed early.

Saturday we got up at 3:30am to catch a jeep up Tiger Hill. That's become a really popular tourist area because you can see the sunrise come up over the Himalayas. We knew we probably wouldn't be able to see anything because its the summer and fog is everywhere. We got up there and we could barely see anything, so we just hung out in the lodge for a bit sipping chai and admitting defeat. We stayed there for about an hour and were just about to leave when the clouds started to part and you could see the tips of the mountains. Then a big gust of wind came and blew more of the clouds away and we had a beautiful view of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world which is on the border of India and Nepal. Then we looked all around us and suddenly we had almost a 360 degree view. A lodge attendant showed us where all the mountains were and country borders. There was the Chinese border, the Nepal border, many other mountains which I either can't spell or can't remember the name of, and the very tip of Everest. Once again, an experience in India that is beyond words.
We spent the rest of the morning walking back to Darjeeling. On our way we stopped by a Tibetan Buddhist monastary. We walked into the grounds and a monk told us that we could go inside the main building. When we walked in there were about 30 monks chanting and swaying back and forth. We were given cushions to sit on and we sat there for about 15 minutes watching the monks chant, sometimes pausing, sometimes using cymbals or doing different motions with their hands. Then they all got up at once and went outside to take their morning break. Komal, another volunteer here who is from Spain but whose parents emigrated from India, talked to them in Hindi (that has been soooo helpful. I don't know what I'm going to do when she leaves) for a bit, and then we went on our way. It was such chance that we stopped in on that monastary at that time. I felt very uncomfortable being there, like we were making their spiritual experience some sort of tourist attraction, but the monks seemed more excited to have us there than anything so they didn't seem to mind.
We grabbed some brunch back in Darjeeling, then set off for some shopping at the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Center. It's similar to Ankur Kala in the kinds of crafts they make and the way their organization is set up. Exiled Tibetans can go there to work and then send money back to their families, wherever they have settled. There was the showroom and there were also different shop rooms where the goods are made. Komal and I went into the rug making room and met a man who was in his 70s and had been forced out of Tibet 50 years ago. I remember learning a bit about Tibet a couple years ago in the Buddhist Ethics class I took freshman year (the course that inspired me to come here), and it was very emotional to see that learning come to life right in front of me.
After we bought some things from the Tibetan Center, we went to the Himalayan Mounteering Institute. They had a couple museums about mountain climbing and Everest. At first I was getting really into it and thinking to myself "Hey, I think I'd like to try some mountain climbing. That would be a pretty amazing experience." Then I saw a model demonstration of little clay figures climbing a Himalayan mountain, saw one guy almost fall off a ladder that was resting between a huge ice crack that was in the snow, and realized that maybe that wasn't such a good idea.
After being a tourist for about 14 hours straight, we took a break at a really nice guest house that served "high tea." It was such a fancy place and the waiters were dressed in traditional servant clothing from the British Raj, with the white robe and turban. A very cool atmosphere to be in. We had Darjeeling tea (in Darjeeling!), then some cookies and cucumber sandwiches. That was our dinner for the night, so we went back to relax, take a hot water bucket, and go to sleep.

Sunday I woke up sick, but I blamed it on taking my malaria pill on an empty stomach and was sure it would go away by mid morning, so I went horseback riding with a couple other of the girls. They told me it would just be on little ponies walking around with guides, but then I get there and there are proper horses ready to run. I hopped on my horse and felt some of the tricks from my riding lessons coming back to me (thanks Aunt Sharon!), and then quickly remembered that I had to stop my lessons halfway through the 'trotting' stage, and now these horses were ready to canter/gallop. The guide behind me kept hitting my horse saying "choop, choop!" which I'm assuming means "go faster" because it kept darting off every time he said it. Meronie came, though, and she's an excellent rider, so she was able to walk me through it and I must say I think I have trotting down now. Cantering, on the other hand, is another story. I did forget how much of a workout riding could be, so after an hour my legs were killing me and we took a break. At this point my stomach decided to remind me that I was sick, so I ended up having to take a "shortcut" back. It wasn't really any shorter, but I did get to have my horse walk instead of trot through the hillside. It was amazing to be able to go through nature like that, on horseback, with the fog around me and the outline of the mountains in the distance. Then we went through a neighborhood of Darjeeling and all these little Nepalese and Tibetan children came running out of their houses to see a white person go by and practice their English. It was so cute.
I took a nap when I got back and then went with some of the girls to see some waterfalls that are near the start of the Ganges. It wasn't anything too famous, but just another reminder of how beautiful India can be.
We went to another hotel for afternoon tea, then I went back to bed while the other girls headed for dinner.

Monday I woke up fairly early because I'd been sleeping so much the previous day, so I went up to Observatory Hill, which the others had done yesterday during my nap. There was an amazing Hindu temple up there with people worshipping different gods, burning incenses, ringing bells, and feeding monkeys. There were so many prayer flags around as well! It was beautiful.
I met the others for breakfast and then we spent the day shopping and relaxing. We got a jeep down to catch our train, which was not a fun ride at all being sick, though I think even if I wasn't sick I still would have gotten queasy with the kamikaze driver we had. I've become pretty tolerant with the roads in India after being here two months, yet this one was nuts even for Indian standards. I think we got our payback, however, when we started singing Broadway musical soundtracks on the way down.

Our train was late again getting in this morning, so I had to take another day of work off which I now feel guilty about :( Maybe I'll go in for a Saturday in a couple weeks to make up for it.

These last few weeks aren't going by quite as fast as I thought they would and I'm starting to get a bit tired of Calcutta, mostly because now I've seen more of India and how much beauty there is in other areas, and how much dirt, pollution, and poverty there is here. But then again that's the reason I came here, to volunteer, so I have to remember that.

This weekend is Varanasi, which I haven't heard good things about so I'm not really looking forward to it at this point, but it's such an infamous city I feel I have to go. We'll see how it matches up to its reputation.

What a weekend.

Danica, Sam (one of the new volunteers - she's a 23-year-old teacher from Australia), and I took a 10pm train Friday night and got into Gaya (a main town near Bodhgaya) about 5:30 the next morning. The train ride was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, as we had heard many different things from people as far as what the sleeper cars would be like. Basically instead of chairs there are bunk beds and everyone sleeps next to each other in rows. It was rickity and noisy a lot of the time, but it got us there cheaply so what more can you ask. We got a taxi into town and went straight to the Mahabodhi Temple, the main Buddhist pilgrimage site because it holds the Bodhi tree where the Buddha attained enlightenment. It's not the original tree - someone destroyed it years ago - but luckily someone had took some of the original tree and was able to plant and grow another tree somewhere else. Then some time later they moved the tree back to it's original site in the temple. There were beautiful gardens, statues, and shrines surrounding the tree, as well as many people meditating next to it and throughout the complex. The actual temple was a huge rectangular stone structure that I'm sure has an official name which I don't know, and inside was a large shrine with a statue of the Buddha in the center. We spent about an hour and a half there wandering around and meditating, soaking everything in. It was so surreal to be studying Buddhism a year ago and now to be at the holiest Buddhist site in the world.
After that we got breakfast and spent the next couple hours going to all the different Buddhist temples in the town. For every Buddhist country, there was a temple: Chinese, Burmese, Bhutanese, Japanese, Thai, Tibetan. They were all very similar, each one still had a distinct style of decoration, especially on the inside for their shrine of the Buddha and the wall paintings. After seeing these (and hiding out in the Tibetan one for some time to escape the rain), we went to the Great Buddha Statue, this 80 ft high statue that was unveiled by the Dalai Lama about fifteen years ago. That was incredible to see.
Next we went for what we thought would be a quick trip a few miles outside of town to see the Dungeshwari caves. This is where the Buddha meditated for six years before coming down to Bodhgaya and attaining enlightenment. The Lonely Planet guide book said to take a rickshaw to this one area and that there should be a road you can walk down for a couple miles to get to them. Well, we got a rickshaw to start. After about ten minutes the driver stopped and pointed to these hills in the distance and said "Look!" Through broken English we got that those were the Dungeshwari caves and that we had to cross a stretch of sandy beach and then rice fields, heading for these two white dots in the distance that were the monastary for the caves. Another passenger in the rickshaw spoke a little better English and he said that it's just a couple kilometers and that is the only way to get there. So we set out on what we thought would be a short walk. It took us about twenty mintues to cross the beach, ten of which were spent trudging through knee deep water and helping each other out of wanna-be quicksand patches. Then we reached the grass and the two little white dots were still very far in the distance. We were walking along when we ran into some farmers who said we can't cross here because we're messing up their rice fields. A little boy interjected and motioned for us to follow him, and he showed us where to walk and which way to go to get to the caves. He became our tour guide for the next few hours.
An hour later, after feeling like I'm in a scene from Good Morning, Vietnam, navigating our way through corn fields and mud paths (barefoot most of the time because the sandals we wore were completely inept for this walk), we got to the base of the monastary. We sat for a bit before climbing up the long driveway to the buildings (I'm not sure what the driveway is for exactly because there are no real roads anywhere near the monastary, yet a cement driveway just appears in the middle of these mountains) and talked with our guide and some of his friends who lived in the village near the monastary, then continued on. The monks and everyone else there were so kind, giving us tea and chairs to rest in (after seeing us completely drenched by rain and mud), and then leading us to the cave. I don't know if there are more, but there was just one that we saw. There was a golden statue at the back of the cave, which was about half the size of my dorm room (if that helps anyone who's seen my dorm room, which is small even for a city school), which was designed much more emaciated then most of the other Buddha statues we saw that day. We hung up prayer flags and burned incense that we bought from the monks and meditated in the cave for a while. It was so quiet I felt like I could hear the silence, if that doesn't sound too Simon and Garfunkel. After being in Calcutta (and Bodhgaya, for it had its fair share of noise, even with its spiritual atmosphere) for some time it was amazing to not be able to hear anything from the town below. After we left the cave some guides took us up to the top of the mountain, which would have only taken two minutes to climb, yet took ten because we were wearing sandals. I'm not sure exactly because we couldn't really understand the guides, but they took us to one stupa where I believe the Buddha spent some time meditating at, and there are six stupas along that mountain ridge.
Now, this cave trip would have been absolutely ideal had we just been able to pay for our prayer flags and incense and just leave. We gave them money for the things we bought and also gave them extra for taking us up the mountain. However then they started asking for money for the candles they burned for us inside the cave, which we told them we didn't want since it was light enough outside for us to see, which we asked them before hand if they cost any money because we weren't going to pay for them. They knew enough English to understand that question and they assured us that the candles for free. Yet when we went to leave they got angry because we wouldn't pay for the candles. They also wanted us to buy more incense and flags, and give more donations than we'd already given for the monastary, and got angry when we wouldn't give them more. It's so hard to tell what is respectful and customary with these types of things, and then when people are trying to take advantage of foreigners. It's known that most temples and religious sites want donations, and some will try to gyp you. Because we weren't sure what these guides were trying to do, we bought the flowers and incense to offer to the Buddha inside the cave, even though we didn't really want them. Yet I think at the end, when they were trying to get more money out of us besides all the things we bought and the donations we gave, they were trying to take advantage. It was so frustrating because these guides (surrounded by a pack of children begging for money) followed us down the driveway yelling after us. I hate not knowing the language here so I can't ask them (or someone else nearby) what is customary to give for these types of things. I hate not knowing the culture well enough to know how to properly handle these types of situations. The monks and guides gave us a wonderful experience, and it was incredible to be sitting in the exact spot the Buddha once sat, yet now I wonder if they think we are horribly rude foreigners who don't respect their traditions. I don't know, that just always seems to happen after visiting temples and I wish I knew the correct way to handle it. I have, however, learned how to not let it ruin the entire experience. Those few hours, even the long walk through the mud back, were absolutely amazing.
It was about 3:30pm when we got back to Bodhgaya. We got lunch, did a final walk through the town, and got a rickshaw back to Gaya where we got an apartment for part of the night. Our train left the next morning at 3am (it was supposed to leave Sunday afternoon yet the travel agent who sold us our tickets completely misled us, and by the time we had double-checked the time on the Indian railway sites it was too late to change them. It worked out well though - we didn't need two days there), so we spent the evening snacking on biscuits and chocolate while we watched STAR movies (TV!! Is it sad that I felt like jumping up and down when I found out they had cable television? How I've missed that little black box...). We had a slight scare when we got to the station later on and thought we missed our train (apparently Gaya doesn't post all the trains that are coming through the station on the display board, so when we didn't see it showing up anywhere and 3am had long passed without any sign of our train, we got a bit worried), but then we found a worker at the station who spoke English and he said it was just running late. We left Gaya about 4:30am and then got to Calcutta at 12:30pm today. Indians seem to all wake up at 5:30am, so just as I was getting used to the heat and the shaking of the train, everyone woke up and started chatting with each other. Didn't get much sleep last night, so now I shall go read and have some dinner before heading to bed early. This was a fabulous start to our weekend trips.

It's really hitting me now how quickly these last weeks will fly by. We leave for Darjeeling Thursday night and are coming back Tuesday morning. Then we leave for Varanasi that Friday night and come back Monday afternoon. Then we leave for Delhi that Thursday night and come back Monday night. Then I have a week and a half left and I go to London. Where has the summer gone!

Kirsty's last day working was Friday, so we went out to dinner and relaxed. We went to Blue Sky Cafe, this restaurant on Sudder Street (the main strip for tourists to come because it has really cheap hotels and is centrally located in the city); we've made friends with the owner of the restaurant and stop by there a few times a week. They have the best banana lassi's. Mmm. She didn't leave Calcutta until today, though, so we got to spend some of the weekend with her.

Saturday we had our "temple" day. The other girls hadn't been to Kalighat yet, so we went back there. Apparently there was a minor festival that day, and also Saturdays are crazy there anyway, so it was absolutely packed; much more crowded than it was when I went the first time. It was a really amazing atmosphere, seeing that many people crammed together to pray, some seated in rows on the floor around burning offerings, some in a pool of water next to the main building clensing themselves before they enter the temple. I'm glad I got to see another side of Kalighat.

After that we went to the main Jain temple in Calcutta, which was absolutely spectacular. There was a beautiful garden with statues and fountains all over the place. Then the main building was covered in a mosaic of mirrors and colored glass, and inside there were mirrors and crystal everywhere, with a huge sparkling chandelier in the center, painted tiles covering the walls, and small statues of the Jain gods in niches on the sides. I could have stayed there all day.
As we were leaving this priest stopped to talk to us and asked us if we wanted to see some more Jain temples nearby. Apparently there were two others right next door and he oversees all three of them, so he gave us a tour of the others and gave us a little background of the religion. Jainism is very similar to Hinduism, just a bit more extreme. While Hinduism worships Buddha, Jainism worships three brothers who started the religion. Hinduism has animal sacrifices, Jainism believes very strongly in not killing anything; they are strict vegetarians and extreme Jains carry little brushes around with them so they can wipe surfaces they touch or sit on to make sure they don't kill any insects. Jains also worship different gods than Hindus; there are 24 gods in Jainism and thousands in Hinduism. I was getting so confused when the priest was trying to describe the religion to me and all the different gods and creators of the faith, and also how it's similar and different to Hinduism. I never knew these religions were so complex. But all three temples were gorgeous. I hope I get to stop by there again before I leave.

Sunday we took a rest day and slept in. New volunteers came that day as well. Two are in our apartment - a 28 year old and a 37 year old, both from England. Then there are three in the Patuli house, all in their twenties and from England, Australia, and Spain. Then there is one 32 year old from Ireland living near Gariahat, right about Catrina's apartment (I forget if I've mentioned her before, but she's a girl from Ireland who volunteered two years ago and has now come back to live and work in Calcutta for some time. She's awesome). We all went over to Sucharita's house that night and it was so strange seeing the car so full heading over there. It's so great having so many volunteers now, and from so many different countries. They all seemed pretty shaky that first day and asked us how our first few days were. They were relieved to hear that we were all freaked out in the beginning as well. It was also nice to see them uneasy when they first got there, not because it's enjoyable to see them uncomfortable but more to know that how we reacted was normal. It's also nice to be able to tell them that it will get easier and really mean it.

Today was a pretty normal day. It poured all day. I'm getting really excited for our Bodygaya trip this weekend. And July 4th tomorrow! Me and Danica (the other American) are going to see Superman and maybe try to find some sparklers or something to celebrate. It's strange not being home for Independence Day.

One final thing I found out this weekend was about the caste system in India. Sucharita came out to dinner with us on Friday and we got into an interesting discussion about it. I found out how complicated the system really is, and also how it integrates itself into so much of the country. All of India has a caste system, but it differs in each area of the country. There are four main castes (each with different levels within each one) and then a lower caste called the Untouchables (I think it's called that universally). Last names denote certain castes, which explains why so many people have the same last name - that confused me when I first came here. The caste system also only applies to Hindus. Muslims have a version of it with the Shi'ites and Sunnis, and last names also denote which group a person belongs to.
One's caste denotes who they can marry and what jobs they can have, among other things. And one of the reasons India has had some trouble developing and bettering its poverty rate is that people in higher castes won't take jobs below their caste, even if they are badly needed. While in America some jobs have different levels of prestige, a person can take any job they want with little problem. In India that is not the case. Also, and this is a little bit of speculation on my part, but I've heard Annie and some other people make reference to this as well. I think part of the reason India hasn't been developing as quickly as it could is that people accept how their life is because of their belief in karma and rebirth. They believe that they have their life because of their behavior in their past life, and if they are in a lower caste than they believe they deserved this life and will focus their energy on behaving well now so they will be placed in a higher caste in the next life. Also, because they have so many lives they don't worry as much about having a difficult life for one of them; they have so many more chances to have a good life later on. Hinduism and the caste system is so complex though that I think if I lived here for years I still wouldn't fully understand it. I'm so glad I did a longer term program, however, especially in India, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to learn as much as I have. Having Sucharita watch over us, and also working every day with Indians, has given me such great opportunities to talk and learn about the culture, something I never would have gotten had I come to India as just a tourist.

I love this country. I love Calcutta. I love Ankur Kala. I love my fellow volunteers.

I don't know what changed this week, but some time on Monday something clicked and I just got excessively giddy. And that feeling just hasn't gone away. It seems like everything in India you could take either negatively or positively - completely depends on the attitude you bring to it. You could find everything annoying or everything amazing. Lately I've just found everything amazing. Even the bus rides, the crowded, dirty, sweaty, bumpy bus rides that I take twice a day and used to dread, even those I'm finding fascinating and relaxing. Things are going really really well, and I can't believe I only have six weeks left here.

This week I got my sari :) It's a bright turquoisy-blue with gold trim. I'm picking up my blouse from the tailors on Saturday and hopefully next week the girls and I are going out to a nice dinner so we can wear them. I found cute bangles and shoes to match, too. I'm having such a hard time trying to think of gifts to get for male friends and relatives back home. This is such a female friendly country - bangles, sparkly shoes and bags, saris, jewelry, etc. Not much for the boys, but I'll find something.

My day at Ankur Kala has been switched around as well, which at first I wasn't happy about but now it's made things even better. I forget if I mentioned this before, but for the last two weeks we've been ending at 3pm instead of 4:30pm, so that makes the days a lot easier to start with. And now I'm splitting my mornings between working in JSP and batik, and then my English class was moved to the afternoon and was shorted to a half hour instead of 45 minutes. That is perfect because I was always scrambling for things to teach them at the end. Now I'm scrambling to fit a whole lesson into thirty minutes, which may not be much better from the learning perspective, but its made my job easier. From doing some teaching/mentoring programs in Boston I've realized that teaching can be difficult and tiring, but I just keep gaining more and more respect for all teachers. I only teach for a small part of the day - I can't imagine what it would be like if all I did was teach English. Thinking up topics to teach, planning the lessons, having the patience to explain things over and over again - it gets tiring day after day, and I have so much more understanding for teachers, especially language teachers. It will be interesting taking my french class next semester after teaching a language for a summer.

Saturday Kirsty leaves, and then we get new volunteers on Sunday. I can't believe she's leaving already - I'm going to miss her. This is also Danica's last weekend in Calcutta (she's here for another four weeks, but every weekend in July we're traveling around India) so we'll probably have another couple tourist heavy days. I hope we get to see a lot of the temples in the city, I haven't seen all the ones I've wanted to yet.

I also saw my first Bollywood film yesterday - Phir Hera Phera. I literally thought that movie would never end. It was exactly what I expected - singing, dancing, all in Hindi with a few English sentences sprinkled in, and completely random. It was all that, but just twice as long as I expected. I figured hour and a half tops, how much could they really put into a Bollywood? Apparently EVERYTHING. It had a love story, clowns, mobsters, drug deals, gun smuggling, trapeze artists, and psychotic gorillas, to name a few of its elements. Danica and I went, and we knew we wouldn't understand most of it because it was all in Hindi, but I truly believe even if we spoke the language that movie would still make no sense. One interesting part, however, is that one of the characters has a dream about going to America, and they show the characters walking through the streets of LA with the Statue of Liberty and the Hollywood sign in the background, and people are throwing around money, and tall, thin, blond women are rollerskating around in bikinis and dancing with the Indian men. So I guess that's what Indians think of when they picture America. I don't know if I'll be seeing another one anytime soon, but it was fun to see one. I also thought about what I would have thought had I seen this movie in America and had never visited India. The movie was set in Mumbai, and there were rickshaws and buses in the background, and beggers and vendors on the streets, and men being affectionate with one another and people shouting at each other when they talk - I just thought how the only things that I found normal in the movie I would have been confused by had I watched this at home with no background. That may be a really obvious statement, but it's interesting to see what I've gotten used to while I've been here. I like that :)

This weekend was filled was touristy things. Saturday Danica and I got up early and went off to Park Street. I checked out the Indian Museum while she went to Barista (the Indian version of Starbucks) to read because she'd already been to that museum. It's the main museum in Calcutta, and some parts of it were really interesting. It had a lot of animal fossils (some extinct), as well as a whole section on anthropology and the different tribes that live in India. Other parts (like the geology or horticulture exhibits) did not hold my attention as well, but it was still a worthwhile visit.
Next we went on what became a very long journey to book train tickets for our upcoming weekend trips, a journey which is still not technically over, but I'll get to that later. We found a place that would book tickets but they had a really high service charge, but we got directions to an official train office so we planned to book the tickets there later that afternoon.
After that we found the Tipu Sultan mosque, which was impressive to look at, but since we kind of found the mosque by accident (we hadn't originally planned on going there), I wasn't dressed as conservatively as I should have been and felt very out of place. We didn't stay there long. Around this time, though, was when we met this Indian guy who became our tour guide for the rest of the afternoon. He is going to America in a month or so and wanted to practice his English, so he tagged along with us for the rest of the day. It was interesting how differently we were treated when we were with a native. We still had as many stares, but we weren't hassled as much.
We grabbed lunch and then found the train office. We walked in, laughed, and walked out. There was a huge crowd of Indians surrounding these two little windows, behind which stood workers who looked so stressed they were about to burst. We realized now why people bother with travel agents and just paying a service fee - if we had tried to book all our train tickets there it would have taken forever. The workers did not know English very well, and with all the noise in the background trying to communicate with them would have been a nightmare. So we decided to just go back to the travel agency the next day.
Then we headed over to BBD Bagh, an area of Calcutta where all the British government offices used to be, where there was pretty (albeit crumbling) Victorian architecture.
Not far from there was Millenium Park, a peaceful area near the Hooghly River that seems to be the romantic hangout in Calcutta. Danica and I walked around the park for a bit and it's been one of the only places where I've seen Indian couples touching and being affectionate to each other in public. Millenium Park also offers boat cruises along the Hooghly, which we took and got some great views of the city, as well as the sunset.
On a side note, the sky here is prettiest I've ever seen. The sky isn't bigger so much, but the clouds are so much more pronounced, so much more picturesque. The sunsets are also breathtaking. Around 6pm the sky becomes this gorgeous pinky-red, and it reflects off the clouds in such a surreal way. It's also officially monsoon season, and if you are high up (such as in our apartment), you can see this blanket of gray coming towards you in the sky. It will rain for about twenty minutes each afternoon. It's been great so far because everything is so much more cooler, and it's sunny before and after the rain so you can still be outside and doing things during the day (you just have to remember your umbrella for those twenty minutes of downpour).
That concluded Tourist Day #1

Sunday was a little less filled. We slept in a bit, then headed straight to the travel agency to book our train tickets. We thought we could book them right there and that they'd have a printer that they could print our tickets off of, but apparently they have to go to Howrah, so we were told to come back a few hours later to pick up our tickets. Then we went to Barista again to relax and read a bit, and went to Flury's for lunch. When we went back to the travel agency, it was closed with our travel guys no where to be found. Some people who had seen us there that morning said that they have a half day on Sundays and to come back tomorrow to pick up our tickets. I never thought buying train tickets would be such an ordeal! We haven't paid for them yet, so the guys would have no reason to take our information and run with it, but I just don't understand why they wouldn't have told us "Make sure you're hear before such-and-such a time, because we close then," but hey, this is India. I wouldn't normally be this worried over them, but the places we're going are pretty popular and the trains usually fill up, so we need to get these tickets soon if we want to go. But Danica said she has to go to Park Street again tomorrow anyway, so she's planning on picking them up and hopefully that will be the end of it.
After that we went to the Academy of Fine Arts. It was pretty small, only three or four rooms, but the things they had were pretty interesting. There were a couple rooms filled with paintings and sculptures which I really liked, and then also rooms filled with tapestries and rugs. There was also an exhibit going on downstairs of modern painters which was really interesting.
Right next door to the art museum was St. Paul's Cathedral, the main Catholic church in Calcutta. It was absolutely gorgeous to see, and the stained glass inside was amazing. The gardens surrounding it were also beautiful.
It surprises me sometimes how peaceful and full of nature Calcutta can be. This city has so much poverty, so much dirt, so much trash, so many crowds, but it also has some of the country's best botanical exhibits and beautiful gardens in the most unexpected places. This city always surprises you.

Georgie left on Saturday. We took her out to dinner Friday night, and Ankur Kala gave her a little send off party Friday afternoon. After lunch everyone got together, put on some music, and some girls did Indian dances for everyone. They kept pushing Georgie, Hannah, and me up there to teach us the dances. I love how easily the women can mix work and play like they do. Then Annie talked a bit about Georgie's time with Ankur Kala, and Georgie talked a bit about her perspective of the place. The women then told her how much they appreciated her being there, and that they'll miss her terribly. One woman, a woman who Georgie thought disliked her, was crying because she was so sad she was leaving. I was even getting choked up! I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like when I leave at the end of the summer. Georgie was here four weeks and the women got that attached to here. I missed two days of work this week because I was sick, and when I came back one woman kept saying "You weren't here! You missed English class, you weren't here!" She doesn't speak English that well so one girl translated and told me that the woman was sad because I missed work the past couple days. I don't want to think about what it's like when I leave for good!

And now starts week 6 of the summer. It's hard to believe it's almost half over. Every time I get homesick or miss the comforts of America, I remind myself how fast this will all go by, and that once I'm home I'll probably miss India like crazy.

Marriage

In the US, people marry when they are in love, or because they got pregnant and feel obligated to get married, or perhaps because it will better their financial situation. It is, for the most part, a joyous event which people look forward to, and even if a person doesn't want to officially married, most people want to find someone to settle down with and share their life with.
In India, some people get married for the above reasons. If you get to choose your partner, it's called a love marriage. I've been told that these marriages cover about 10% (say the poorer women) to 50% (say richer women). The richer women say marriage is great, especially if it can be a love marriage, and that it is something to look forward to. The poorer women say the exact opposite. So far I've had many conversations about marriage, and many of the women I've talked to have said how they want to remain single as long as possible. They don't want to get married because married life is a very difficult life. Abuse is common, their husbands constantly demand things of them and they are working constantly for him, they have no independence and very little opportunity to do things on their own. Traditionally, women should no longer work when they are married. Some are lucky and have husbands that are understanding and liberal and allow them to work and still have their own lives. But the general consensus I have gotten is that marriage is something that should be avoided if possible.
For arranged marriages, the traditional type of Indian marriage, the man often demands a sum of 50,000 rupees from their prospective wife, and also that the woman have a two-room flat for them to move into, before he will marry her. Many women cannot afford this dowry. I was also told that if a woman has lighter skin, her dowry will probably be lower because the man thinks she's smarter/better and thus won't make marriage as difficult for her and set a lower dowry for her to pay. Light skin is something to be admired in women - there are tons of skin moisturizers and other beauty products here that are designed specifically to lighten people's skin. However, for a man, darker skin is something to be admired.
Marriage is often necessary for many women, however, because the society is set up in such a way that a woman needs a man to survive. When she is a child, she has her father to care for her. Once she reaches a certain age, her father will no longer want to take care of her and she will need to be married. It is the mother's responsibility to find a husband for her daughter, which, from what I've been told, is done usually in two ways. Either a boy is chosen from a family in the community the daughter is in, and the mother approaches the boys family and proposes marriage. The boy and girl meet and as long as there are no objections (which can really only come from the boy), they will be married. The other way, which seems to be the more common way, is that personal ads are posted in the paper. They were quite amusing to read the first time I saw them; it's exactly like the ads in US papers looking for a date or something like that, but instead of just a date they're looking for a husband or a wife. The boys ads usually include his occupation. The girls ads usually include a description of her looks. If an ad peaks the interest of either party, they'll contact the boy or girl's family, set up a meeting, and so forth. I think it's become a more modern and drawn out process recently, but one woman I was talking with said she met her husband fifteen minutes before they were married, stayed with him for five days, and then he went off to work up north somewhere and she sees him every so many years. It seems common in the poorer communities for the husband to work somewhere away from their family, probably because work is easier to find.
I also know that I have to recognize this may not be the norm and that I am talking to a specific group of women in India, and that their opinions and perspectives of marriage may be very different than that of a middle or upper class woman, or even that of other lower class women. There are some women I've talked to who are waiting to get married and want to be married, though they seem to view it as more of an inevitable event in their lives than a desired one.
It was hard to hear this because marriage is viewed so differently in the US. Of course there will be some women in the US who view marriage as a negative thing and who do not want to get married (or find a life partner if they don't agree with the institution of marriage - that option is not here in India so I'll include those couples in the category of marriage). But for the most part, marriage is something that people look very forward to, to be able to spend your life with someone that you care about. But then I have to remember that marriage serves a very different function here. With the risk of sounding overdramatic or cliche, marriage here could be seen as another type of imprisonment for women - she is just going from being controlled by her father to be controlled by her husband. But, one wonderful thing the women at Ankur Kala told me is that they don't need the support of a husband to survive because they have Ankur Kala. That job gives them a skill, an income, and also a family. The women who work there become their family, their support system, the people whom they love and love spending time with - the kind of things a husband/life partner would give someone in the US. Women at Ankur Kala don't need husbands because the purpose of a husband in India is already being provided for them through their work. They are able to become self-sufficient, and thus don't need a husband. I suppose they could marry for love if they ever found someone, but love marriages seem to be so poorly looked upon and can be such a disgrace to ones family, especially in the poorer, more traditional communities, that it seems unlikely. One woman I was talking to said that her sister had a love marriage and that it was a horrible upset in her family. Also, in some communities love marriages are often no better than arranged marriages as far as abuse and happiness rates go.
Once again, I only have access to a particular kind of women in India, and I'm speculating a lot on what their opinions could mean. If I had been talking to a different group of women with different (or even perhaps similar) circumstances I could have gotten a very different impression of marriage. I almost didn't post this bit about marriage for that reason, but because I had almost the same conversation, at different times, with different women, I felt there was something there worth recording.

On another note, I've also learned about the traditionally jewelery that is worn after marriage based on religion. If a woman is Christian, once she's married she'll wear a ring on her left ring finger, same as here. If a woman is Muslim, once she's married she'll get a nose ring, a large gold one that looks a bit like a short cone. If a woman is Hindu, once she's married she'll put a line of red powder, a couple inches long or so, on her hairline. She will most likely be also wearing a large bindi, maybe a little smaller than a penny, on her forehead. I thought the bindi symbolized something important, such as the different colors of them, but it turns out they don't mean much; they are more for decoration. The only thing is a single Hindu woman should wear a small bindi, maybe a little smaller than a pencil eraser, and a married woman should wear a larger one. But, these "rules" only go for the women in those religions. If you are outside that religion you can wear nose rings or bindis or rings all you want, they just won't mean anything.

Yesterday morning I woke up, realizing that I had been here a full month, and thought to myself "Wow, I'm really surprised I haven't gotten sick yet. Maybe I'll be able to go this entire summer without getting sick!" Sure enough, early that afternoon my stomach was not feeling so hot. I had been planning on going shopping with the girls after work, and I wasn't feeling that bad so I met them in Gariahat, an area in downtown Calcutta that has some good shops. I ended up leaving them soon after I got there because I felt like crap. I went home, took a nap, woke up to find a care package from Cara!, tried to eat some dinner but couldn't stomach anything, and went back to bed. Last night was not very fun either. I took today off from work and just slept and read in bed, and now I'm feeling better but still not well. I can't really think of what did it, I haven't eaten anything differently these past couple days, but something did not agree with my stomach. But they say you only get sick once, so hopefully this will be that one time.

This weekend we had a lot of touristy things planned, but it was so unbearably hot that we scrapped some things. Saturday we went to the Victoria Memorial. It is absolutely gorgeous, and while the Brits didn't really seem to think about this aspect, I thought it would be so amazing to have a memorial dedicated to a ruler of your country in another part of the world. If George Washington had a huge memorial like this in another country, I would get some chills at the history and memories in it. I brought this up to the UK girls and they did not share the same excitement. They said it's because Americans are more patriotic than Britains. It makes sense, being that Britain has always owned its country, has had an Empire, and has never had to break away from a greater power, whereas America (and India) had to fight for its independence (from Britain).
The memorial includes a huge garden surrounding the building with trees and lakes and grassy areas where people can relax, picnic, read, etc. Then there's a statue of Queen Victoria a little bit before the building. Then there's the actual memorial, which looks exactly as it does in pictures and is amazing. We stared and took pictures of it for a while, then went inside to see the museum. The museum is one of the making of the memorial, and also about the British empire in India. There was one part dedicated to the architects who designed it. I'm in the middle of reading The Fountainhead, so I've been paying a lot more attention to architecture lately and the details of an architects work in the creation of a building, so it was interesting to see that bit about the Victoria Memorial's architects. The other parts were vaguely interesting, but not that much. Indian museums I've found have a lot more writing in their exhibits, unlike American museums where there are just paintings or sculptures or other material objects and just a short blurb describing them. Here, there are long passages about every item in the museum, which we unfortunately did not have the attention span to read. It must be the Western style of doing things quickly, whereas Indians have the patience to take their time on things. The interesting passages I read, like the evolution of religion in India, and the importance of Calcutta being India's first capital, but there were other parts that were not quite as exciting. There were also wings of the museum with paintings done by Indian artists depicting the Indian countryside, and also important Indian people, such as Gandhi, Tagore, and Indian rulers. It was interesting, and I'm glad I went, but if I went again I'd just buy the pass that gives admittance to only the gardens, because for me the best part was looking that the beauty of the building.

Sunday we went to Nicco Park, an amusement part. There's an area with rollercoasters and other rides, and then there's the water park. Being as hot as it was, we headed straight for the water. It was like going to Water Country! There were the usual things: a wave pool, slides, a lazy river. The one unique thing they had was this place called "Rain Dance," which is this dome that lets out a mist coming from all directions that gets you absolutely soaked. It also plays music, so it's almost like being in a club. With rain. We walked in and all these guys were busting out to Indian tunes. Guys here dance all the time. In America, guys never dance, at least not most of them, and if they do it's very reserved. Here, they just dance like crazy. It's the girls who seem a bit more reserved, actually. The rain room was fun though. For most of the day we just played in the water pool and sunbathed, nothing too exciting, but it was so nice to cool off and relax.

Nothing major has happened recently. Work is still going good - the women keep getting sweeter and sweeter. Exhibitions should be starting soon, where girls from Ankur Kala go to schools and show off the work they're doing, and Annie (the head of Ankur Kala) will talk about the issues going on with women's rights. So those should be interesting to go to. This week is Georgie's last week :(

This weekend we visited a small rural town called Shantiniketan. Nobel Prize winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who is an absolute hero in India, created a university in this town and really cleaned it up to make it the nice, peaceful place it is today. When we got there we settled into our rooms (we were able to stay near some other i-to-i volunteers who are doing a project in that town, and we had the incredibly sweet coordinator for that site looking after us), and then Nando (the coordinator) took us to the Tagore museum and around the university. It was nice to see, but I didn't think it was anything too special. I did get a couple of Tagore's books though and I'm excited to read those. He did a lot of poetry but also some prose, and was really influencial in education reform in India. He also had a very close relationship with Gandhi, and I think he indirectly had a hand in getting India it's Independence.
The nicest part about being there, however, was the peace and quiet. That was the longest I've gone in three weeks without hearing a horn every half a second. Here you only heard them every ten seconds. The scenery was gorgeous, so many stretches of open land. Nando took us to this village that he works with that's on the outskirts of Shantiniketan. It's exactly as you would picture it, mudhuts with goats and ducks running around, the older members sitting inside talking while the kids are playing outside. We walked through it to this huge open space with rice fields and other crops. It was so nice to see the other side of India.

On another note, the transportation in India never ceases to amaze me. Even though it was quieter in Shantiniketan, people still drove like crazy. And even though the roads are smaller, people still think they can fit two lanes of traffic on them. There was one point where I was on a rickshaw and a big truck was coming at us on a road that could barely fit the truck, let alone both vehicles. Nevertheless, the rickshaw decided it was going to keep going and not move to the side of the road. I really thought the rickshaw driver believed he could just pass through the truck, but then he pulled to the side at the last moment. On the taxi ride home from the train station there were many times when we could have crashed, yet somehow we managed to escape unscalthed. I'm not really afraid on the roads, however - you have an unwavering faith in the drivers. The train ride back from Shantiniketan was interesting though. We didn't get seats in the regular compartments (we were on the waiting list when we bought our tickets), so we had to sit in the ladies compartments, which is basically rows of seats that don't fit half the people that travel in the car. Me and Danica got to sit next to the open door and watch the landscape go by. It was a very pleasant ride, except for the fact that the train conductor was blowing his incredibly loud horn every five minutes for absolutely no reason. Unless there was a train coming at us on the same row of tracks, there is no purpose for that horn. You also have to get off the train while it's still moving, because people push there way off the cars the second the train pulls next to the platform. I just giggled when I thought of all the safety violations we would be committing in the US.

Children
Kids are amazing here. I spent one day at STARS, Georgie's old project, and the kids just immediately welcomed me, started tugging on me, trying to get me to play and dance with them -they were excited about everything and just wanted attention from you. I went to IPER, Kirsty and Danica's project, and the kids were exactly the same way. Always the same routine: they stick out their hand to shake yours and say "What's your name?"; you answer and ask theirs; they answer and giggle; if you ask them anything else, they'll just smile and skip away, because that's all the English they know. Seeing these two children's projects makes me regret telling i-to-i that I didn't want to work with children. I've done mostly children's programs at college so far, and while I enjoy some of them, a lot of them are so frustrating because the kids don't care. They don't want you there, they don't want to learn from you - all they want to do is run around with their friends and act too cool for you. Of course all of them aren't like that, but with a lot of kids programs I've worked at that's been the result. Here though it is so rewarding to work with children. They are just dying for someone to play with them. I'm still happy with the project I'm at, but if I ever do something like this again I won't cancel out working with children.
However, get out into the streets and you are just attacked by children. It could be because we are white, but kids just flock to us, either asking for food or money, saying hello and asking our names, or just tugging on us for blocks trying to get us to stop and play with them. One day walking to the bus stop from work, about ten kids aged 7 or 8 surrounded Georgie, Hannah, and me. They kept grabbing at our clothes, our bags, our arms, our hands, trying to get us to stop. They asked for food, money, kisses - they would not stop! It got a little frightening at one point because they tried to open our bags, pull hard on our clothes and hair, etc. Every time we shouted for them to stop they just laughed, thinking it was a game. I forget how we lost them, but they followed us for several blocks. It was like those commercials where all the movie stars are walking around poor African villages, and all the children come out to the actors and surround them. However instead of Angelina Jolie going down to give the kids a hug, it was us pushing the kids off of us before they brought us to the ground. Not quite as peaceful in real life.

The Pace of Life
With an exception of the roads, India moves at a pace about a third to that of the Western world (meaning the US and UK because that's the only countries I can speak for at the moment). You go into a store and the clerk takes their time getting ringing you up, or they talk with you for ten minutes before they even start ringing up your purchase. Then just as your about to step out the door, annoyed because that quick stop to the store took ten times as long as you wanted it to, they ask you to stay for tea and chat some more while a line of customers has developed behind you. Or, you'll go into a store, be talking with the store worker, and another customer will come in and just start talking to the worker. The worker then stops what they're doing to help that customer. If another customer comes in, the worker will stop helping the person who interrupted you and help the person who just came in. The phrase "I'll be with you in a minute" seems to not exist for store workers. That phrase is very common for other people, however; yet that one minute generally turns into twenty. One time I dropped in on Mr. Bala to ask him a question and he was on the phone, so I said I'd come back later. He stopped me, pulled out a chair for me, and told me to sit for just a minute, that he'd be right out. After about five minutes of awkwardly waiting, I left and came back a half hour later. I've called up Sucharita many times and mid conversation she'll tell me to hold on a sec, and then start talking to whoever is with her
for a while, having me wait on the line and listen to rapid fire Bengali. Then she seems surprised when I say I'll just call her back later and that I wouldn't want to wait for her to be ready to talk.
At work I've had to remind myself of the Indian pace several times. There is so much down time. People take rests for no apparent reason. Tea and mooli (I think that's how you spell it - it's a puffed rice and peanut mix) is brought around every hour or so, and people stop what they're doing to eat for fifteen minutes. People do things very slowly as well. A job that could be done by one person in ten minutes is done by four people and takes an hour. Every time I'm not doing something and feel like I'm not helping anyone I have to remind myself to look around and see how no one else is doing anything either, and try to find meaning in the down times as well as the busy times.

Gender
You cannot ignore your gender here. One, there is a vast difference in the way men and women dress here. In the US, anyone can wear jeans and a t-shirt. Only girls can wear dresses and skirts, but other than that both genders can dress similar. Here that is not the case. Men wear pants and shirts, more western style clothing. Women wear saris, salwar kameez suits, and sometimes jeans with a long top over it. On the buses, there are seats for only women, and often if a women gets on a bus, a man will get up and give her the seat. On the trains, there are special ladies cars. It is very obvious if you are the only woman on a bus, or walking down a street, and you have to on your guard walking alone being a woman, especially at night. I know some of these later parts are similar in the US, but I definetly feel safer walking alone at night in Boston than I do here. You are just constantly reminded of what sex you are. And being a white woman makes it even worse, because for the most part the only thing Indians know of white women is what they see in the movies (usually pornographic), so they already have preconceptions about what Western women are about. It's so frustrating being on a bus or walking down the street, because I just cringe to think about what people think of me. Yet if I was a white man, none of this would be an issue. I've never had to think this much about my gender when I didn't want to before. Going to Simmons you are reminded of your gender a lot because it's an all women's school, and there's a feeling of empowering yourself and being proud to be a woman. But if I didn't want to think about being a woman and I just wanted to be a person, I could easily do that in the US. It's not quite as easy here to forget your gender.

Well it took a little over two weeks, but this is finally feeling like the summer I had imagined when I originally planned it.

Three new girls came this week, two in my apartment and one in the Patuli apartment I used to live in. Kirsty is living in my apartment and is awesome. She's a 24-year-old free-spirited backpacker from the UK who just got done with a six week tour of the Middle East. She's here for four weeks and then spending the next several months traveling South East Asia and China. She's working at IPER, the children's education center that I visited the other day, which I'll talk about more in a little bit. Hannah is living in the Patuli apartment and is also wonderful. She's from the UK and has traveled a lot. She lived in Canada for two years as a ski instructor, and has also spent some time in the Dominican Republic, among other places. She is working at Ankur Kala with me and is so positive about everything that it's made working there really great. She's been in situations like this before, where you go in with one expectation for a job and it turns out the work you'll be doing will be nothing like you planned, but listening to her stories and the different ways she looks at things has been really great. She'll be here the same amount of time I will be so we've planned a bunch of weekend trips together as well, which will be very exciting if they all end up happening. Danica is a 22-year-old from Virginia who just graduated from UVA. She's also traveled a lot, but she only got here Tuesday (the other girls got here Sunday), so I haven't gotten to know her as well yet. It's so nice having a full apartment all the time though. Everyone who's here is so interesting and adventurous - it's a really fun bunch to be around.

Ankur Kala is also going very well. As I said before, I'm changing my attitude towards it from a direct social work internship (which I had been imagining) to an anthropological adventure where I get to step into the shoes of people similar to those who I may work with in the future. I've gotten more of a routine down during the day, where I work in the JSP (jam, squash/juice, pickle) department for half the day, where I cut and peel fruits and vegetables, and I work in the batik department for the other half, where I put wax on cloth in certain patterns and then help to paint and dye them to make different designs. I really like batiking, but I don't know if a full day of sitting on the same low stool painting on wax would be too much for me at this point, so I'm going to split my time between those two departments for now. But the best part is I've made sure that I'm working along side the women, so I get to talk to them in broken English. I'm learning a lot about their lives and their attitudes towards different things, like work and marriage, albeit in a much more indirect way than I had imagined. Yet I feel like I'm really building relationships with these women and getting to know them, which is great. It bothers me that we don't speak the same language, because there is such a huge part of their identity and personality that I'll never see because all I can hear from them is broken English. But I guess that's a learning experience in itself - getting to know people through other forms of communication.

Working in these departments is also teaching me to have a great deal of patience (something I sorely need anyway) because I'm sitting for two and a half hour blocks either cutting tons of fruits or waxing tons of cloth. It's tedious and monotonous work, yet it's also very calming in it's simplicity. And I've stopped seeing boredom as a negative thing because it can be a huge learning device - if I'm bored, these women are probably bored, and they have to deal with the fact that this is there life, not just a three month stint. What must that be like to deal with? Also, for some reason I forgot the fact that work isn't always fun - in fact most jobs I've had I haven't loved. I woke up so many times last summer not wanting to go wait tables, yet I did it anyway and it was fine. So just because I wake up some mornings not wanting to go to Ankur Kala doesn't mean that that work site is a bad one, it's just more that boredom and not wanting to do things you have to is part of life, so why should it be any different here? This is incredibly obvious, and I probably seem silly for writing it out like this, but for some reason while I'm here I tend to glaze over the most painfully obvious truths. I have loved most of the time I've spent there lately, however. The women are so great, and the songs they sing in the morning, the prayers they sing, the way they support and learn from each other, it's just wonderful to be a part of that community. Today they sang "We Shall Overcome," that song African Americans and other activists sang at protests and sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. I'm starting to think now that that song has been used for several liberation movements, but it was really powerful to hear the song sung by these women today, first in Hindi and then in English. Those are the things that make all the boring moments worth it.

So I'm happy now. I still miss home, yet I don't want to go home right now. Probably when mid-August comes around I'll be ready to go home, but for now I'm happy where I am and am excited for all the trips we're planning and what else I can experience at Ankur Kala. Oh, and as I said I went to IPER when Kirsty went there her first day. I would be teaching English four days a week for a few hours a day, and then the rest of my time would be spent in the women's center there teaching girls and adolescents how to batik and embroider. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it? So I think I will be staying at Ankur Kala for the summer. The thought of leaving them now actually makes me sad because I'm just starting to get settled there. Switching sites doesn't make much sense anymore. So even though this won't give me the direct social work experience I was looking for, I think it will teach me many things about social work in an indirect way, yet that may help me more than any other kind of internship could. I knew there must have been a reason I was placed there. I'm glad I found out what it was so soon.

Georgie took me to Newmarket on Saturday, the main shopping center in Calcutta. There are all this little side roads near it with stands selling sparkly shoes, bangles, bindis, bags, etc., with each stand specializing in it's own thing, and then the actual area called Newmarket is in the center of all these side streets. It's absolutely crazy when you are walking through there because shop owners and vendors will constantly be calling "Madam, Madam! Come here, come buy!" You get suffocated by them. There are also people called "basket men," who are guys carrying around big wicker baskets and are usually dressed in all white. They'll come up to you and say, "Oh what are you looking for? A skirt? Oh I know a great place right around the corner. Come with me, I'll bring you there." If I had been on my own, I probably would have thought, "Oh what a nice man, people here are so helpful," yet Georgie warned me before hand never to go with these guys. They all have deals with the vendors in the market area, and if the vendor sees the basket men bring someone to their store, they'll double the price of whatever you're buying because they have to give half to the basket men for bringing them business. It's a bartering system in Newmarket, so they can make the price whatever they want.

That was fun getting to barter for the first time. Basically I was told cut the price the vendor gives you by about half and work from there. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, basically because the vendors will give you just about any price you want if they think you'll leave without buying it. With most of them I asked for a price, go them to a point where they wouldn't budge anymore, then started walking away, pretending I was leaving. Yet they'd always run after you saying, "Madam, Madam, OK, OK, what price you want?" Lots of times if you say a price and they agree on a price ten or so rupees higher, you can just give them what you wanted to pay for it and walk away; they normally don't bother going after you. Grr, but then you get some who don't argue with you and just give you the first price you ask for, which is infuriating because you know you could have gotten it even lower! I got a good start on my souvenir collection, though. A nice tunic, a couple of cute bags, some sunglasses, and an awesome pair of turquoise sandals with little jewels on them.

After that we went to Bar-B-Q for dinner. It's on Park Street, the main strip for good restaurants in Calcutta. Sucharita said I was off my two week adjustment period for the food, so I could finally order meat and dairy products. I got chicken tandoori, which was alright, but I liked the paneer I got last weekend better. Then we went to a famous cafe called Flurry's for dessert. I so thought that I wouldn't be having sweets for about three months - oh how wrong I was. India has special sweets called Hindustani (I think that's what you call them), and the Bengal region also has it's own type of sweets, but they also sell a lot of Western desserts, which we got at Flurry's. And with all the rice and bread that we eat for our other meals, so much for losing weight while I'm in India!

Sunday we went to the Kalighat Temple, the most famous temple in Calcutta and also a big pilgrimage temple for Hindus. It's said that Lord Shiva was destroyed (I forget how) into over 50 pieces, and each piece landed in a different part of India. A temple was then constructed at each point where a piece of Lord Shiva landed. I think Kalighat was built where one of his toes landed. Going there was more of an interesting experience than a cultural one. Unlike Bilar Mandir (a temple I went to when I first got here, which was pristine and cream colored and had a very calm, holy atmosphere), Kalighat was surrounded by vendors selling things to make shrines out of (which, and I'm sorry if this is disrespectful, but just look incredibly tacky), very crowded and noisy, and had a floor splattered in goat's blood from all the sacrifices they make during the day. In the courtyard of the temple, there is an area where goats are slaughtered and then sold to people who want to eat "blessed" meat. A priest met us right away to give us a tour, and during it he had us stop at the sacrificing ground where we saw a goat beheaded. I turned away once I saw the guy take out the machette. After he showed us around, he asked for our names and blessed us. Then he took us to this holy tree in the temple where you put a string of flowers on it while praying for something, and asked for a donation for the poor. After that he dotted us with a holy orange cream between our eyes, where bindis go, and sent us on our way. Georgie had already been once before, but she wanted to go again with me because last time she and the girls with her got ripped off by the priest when he asked them for a donation. He wicked guilt tripped one of the girls when asking for money to buy rice for the poor and got her to give him 1000 rupees. Georgie warned me of this, and how the money probably doesn't really go to the poor, so I knew to give much less. I'm glad I went to that temple because it's a very well known one, but I wouldn't want to go back there like I'd want to go back to Bilar Mandir. It was certainly an experience though.

I just got this joke from my mother, who I think got it from my Aunt Mary, about driving in Calcutta.

Highway Code of India

Article I: The assumption of immortality is required of all road users.

Article II: Indian traffic like Indian society is structured on a strict caste system. The following precedence must be accorded at all times. In descending order, give way to: cows, elephants, heavy trucks, buses, official cars, camels, light trucks, buffalo, jeeps, ox-carts, private cars, motorcycles, scooters, auto-rickshaws, pigs, pedal-rickshaws, goats, bicycles (goods-carrying), handcarts, bicycles (passenger-carrying), dogs, pedestrians.

Article III: All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail, to stop is defeat. This is the Indian drivers' mantra.

Article IV: Use of horn (also known as the sonic sender or aural amulet):

Cars:
- Short blasts (urgent) indicate supremacy, i.e. in clearing dogs, rickshaws and pedestrians from path. Long blasts (desperate) denote supplication, i.e. to oncoming trucks "I am going too fast to stop, so unless you slow down we shall both die" In extreme cases this may be accompanied by flashing of headlights (frantic).

- Single blast (casual) means: "I have seen someone out of India's 870 million whom I recognize", "There is a bird in the road which at this speed could go through my windscreen", or "I have not blown my horn for several minutes."

Trucks and Buses: All horn signals have the same meaning, "I have an all-up weight of approximately 12.5 tons and have no intention of stopping, even if I could" This signal may be emphasized by the use of headlamps.

Article IV remains subject to the provision of Order of Precedence in Article II above.

Article V: All maneuvers, use of horn and evasive action shall if be left until the last possible moment.

Article VI: In the absence of seat belts (which there is) car occupants shall wear garlands of marigolds. These should be kept fastened at all times.

Article VII:
-Rights of way: Traffic entering a road from the left has priority. So has traffic from the right, and also traffic in the middle.

-Lane discipline: All Indian traffic at all times and irrespective of direction of travel shall occupy the centre of the road

Article VIII: Roundabouts: India has no roundabouts. Apparent traffic islands in the middle of crossroads have no traffic management function. Any other impression should be ignored.

Article IX: Overtaking is mandatory. Every moving vehicle is required to overtake every other moving vehicle, irrespective of whether it has just overtaken you. Overtaking should only be undertaken in suitable conditions, such as in the face of oncoming traffic, on blind bends at junctions and in the middle of villages/city centers. No more than two inches should be allowed between your vehicle and the one you are passing - one inch in the case of bicycles or pedestrians.

Article X: Nirvana may be obtained through the head-on crash.

Article XI: Reversing: no longer applicable, since no vehicle in India has reverse gear.

What makes it even funnier is how it's all completely true (except for the article about reversing. Cars do have reverse gear, and instead of a little "beep" sound when vehicles are reversing they play little songs. I thought it was a cell phone ringing when I first heard it.)

The Roads
Getting around this city is ridiculous. The first week I was a bit frightened. Now I find it amusing. The first day I came here, Sucharita's driver drove me from the airport to my apartment. The cars are in the British fashion, with the steering wheel on the other side of the car, yet the driver (Rakesh) was driving on the American side of the road. I wondered if they just had their cars backwards here, yet then I saw another car driving towards us in the same lane. Apparently once Rakesh had enough fun with playing chicken, he moved to the correct side of the road. There are no rules for driving here, and if there are no one follows them. People go wherever they want as fast as they can. People move slowly in every aspect of life here, yet on the roads people are insane. Rickshaws, taxis, trucks, buses, motorcycles, bikes, cars, pedestrians, cows, people - everything is going in a billion different directions at incredible speeds. The Indian version of a speed limit is a sign that says "Drive Slowly." The police also handle driving violations differently. Yesterday when Georgie and I were walking from our bus stop to work we heard this huge bang from behind us. We turned around and saw a policeman driving around with a huge stick in his hand, which he was using to hit the tops of taxi cabs that were parked illegally. The taxi drivers then quickly dropped what they were doing and ran to their vehicle to move it before the cop dented it anymore. Apparently that's the Indian equivalent of a ticket. The buses are downright unsafe to be on if there aren't any seats, which there often aren't, because people are crammed into the aisles trying to keep their balance while the bus motors along at 60 mph when he probably should be going 30. I'm surprised I haven't fallen yet. It's truly like going on a roller coaster ride every time you get on the road. And the rickshaws! If it's a regular rickshaw, it's a guy on a bike tugging a little cart behind him that can hold two people. You don't go too fast and usually you stay on the side of the road. In an autorickshaw, however, you are put into this little covered go cart looking thing that can hold five people including the driver. It thinks it's a car, so it tries to go as fast as one, yet it has no doors and if you have a seat on the outside you are literally hanging half way out into the road. However, even though people are honking constantly and are constantly cutting people off, I very rarely see people have the road rage that they have in the US. No swearing at other people, no flipping other drivers off, no dirty looks, this just seems to be the normal way to drive.

Displays of Affection
Men hold hands here. They wrap their arms around each other, often rest their hands on another man's back, and are for the most part affectionately touching the men that they are hanging out with. However, homosexuality is incredibly taboo here. It surprised me the first time I saw two men holding hands walking down the road here, because I knew how gay people are not very accepted here, and even in the US where it is more accepted I don't see that many gay couples being as obvious with their feelings for each other. But it's just how friends show affection for each other. Women do this as well, though this didn't surprise me as much. There is also not as much of a "personal bubble" around people here - people are not as aware of how close they get to other people, and complete strangers will often put their hands on your waist or back when they slide by you on a crowded bus, and the women at Ankur Kala are constantly resting themselves on me or touching me when they are sitting next to me. It's refreshing to not have to be as careful about keeping your distance from people.
Men and women, however, show very little affection to each other. You very rarely see men and women touching voluntarily (on the buses these rules kind of go out the window because they are so cramped), and you never see a couple holding hands or hugging.

Being a Minority
Georgie and I are constantly stared at. Not subtley, not for a second, but we will walk down the street and people will literally look at us and turn their head to keep their gaze on us as they walk by. People on the bus will just look at you for several minutes without breaking their stare. Even if you look at them so they know you're aware they are staring at you, they still keep looking. The first week I honestly felt like I was from a different planet. It was as if their eyes were saying, "My God, a white person! I thought those people only existed in fairy tales!" or something like that. When Georgie and I were at the zoo she pointed out how we were as much of an attraction as the animals. I looked around and it was so true - people were looking at us as much as the exhibits. It's hard to believe we stick out that much, especially when we wear out salwar kameez's. Like if I saw an Indian person walking down the street in American clothing, I don't think I'd be that shocked. In New Hampshire, maybe, but that's only because New Hampshire is one of the least diverse places in the world and any minority gets attention. But in Boston I would probably not even notice. If an Indian women was wearing a sari, then I would probably notice and stare for a bit because it would be so out of context. But a lot of young Indians here wear Western clothing, so it's just weird to think that we are that out of place. People constantly want to talk to you (mostly to practice their English), and while some of it is friendly, some of it is just annoying. Vendors suffocate you trying to sell you something, for they think you have money because you're white. Which you do - Westerners are rich by default. It's been a real eye opener to be the only white person in the room, or on the bus, or within several city blocks. I can see it being strange coming back to America and seeing mostly white people again.

Last night Sucharita came over and talked with Georgie and me a lot about Ankur Kala. She knows a lot about social work and community development, and she helped me understand how even though I'm not feeling like the work I'm doing can directly relate to social work, anything I do here will truly be able to translate and help me later on. However, she also said that if I do want to switch sites, that is definetly a possibility. She even suggested that I go to a children's/adolescent's organization called IPER on Tuesday to see what that's like. And I may also be able to go to another one called Sanlaap, hopefully the week after that.

So here is my new plan: for the next two weeks, I am an anthropologist. I am immersing myself in a community of women who are at the bottom of the social ladder in India and I am seeing what life and work is like for them. They are incredibly open and welcoming, so just being around them is enjoyable. The work is monotonous, but Sucharita said something that made me look at my role here in a new way. If I am feeling bored with the work, how must the other women feel? I know that I only have to do this for three months, at the most. They have to do this for the rest of their working lives. How can I make the job of cutting vegetables more interesting, for myself and more importantly for them? What do I observe that could be changed for the better? What is it like stepping in the shoes of another person, in another culture? These are all things I'm going to keep in mind for the next two weeks, and I am going to try to soak up as much of the experience of being there, working as an employee of Ankur Kala, as I can. Then after two weeks I'll reevaluate if I want to spend the rest of my trip there. If I find that Ankur Kala is fulfilling and I enjoy my time there, then I'll stay. If I find that I'm still doing the same old things and not feeling that the work is what I want to be spending my time doing, then I'll switch to another project, hopefully one that I've already visited with Sucharita so I'm familiar with it and the staff already knows me.

Either way, the time I spend at Ankur Kala will be really valuable. I'm spending my first month as a kind of ethnographer. How many chances do you have to slip into the shoes of another person, living, eating, and working just like them? I think that will be really beneficial for me later on if I decide to go into social work because I'll have some idea of what life is like for the people I'm working with. Obviously it's not exactly the same, for I still go back to relax in my nice apartment in Hiland Park and they go to their home where they work all night for their families. But that's as close as I can get at this point.

This afternoon was great at work, though. Every other Friday everyone gets together and discusses different women's issues or inequalities that are occuring in India and in other parts of the world. Today some women shared their stories of why they came to Ankur Kala and how much their lives have improved because of it. We also talked about the inequalities that exist for women in India, and Georgie and I spoke of women in the Western world, and how some things (most things) are different and some things are similar to a women's life in India. Before that discussion, I was thinking that I'd probably only be spending two more weeks there and then I'll try to change sites. However that discussion was just another example of how there are some things at Ankur Kala I don't know if I could get at any other site, like the amazing community that is there. However, then I got an email of a past i-to-i volunteer who I work with back in the US (who coincidentally came to the same city and lived in the exact same apartment as I do two years ago) and she told me all about the work she did at Sanlaap (where she worked) and it made me realize how I would probably be feeling better at another site. But the wonderful thing about this plan of mine is that I don't have to decide anything for two more weeks. For now, I will just be. I'll be able to visit another site and see what that is like so I have another organization to compare Ankur Kala to, and I'll also feel good that I gave Ankur Kala a fair chance. A month at an organization should be enough to let me know if it's where I want to stay, and that would leave me two more months at another organization if I decide to switch, which would be a long enough time to get to know the site and be able to make some kind of impact.

I kick myself sometimes because, as Sucharita reminded me last night, I specifically asked to work at a women's center, which is why she put me at Ankur Kala. What i-to-i should have been sensitive to, however, is that Ankur Kala is not a women's center in the way the Western world views a women's center. Ankur Kala is a business that happens to employ underpriviledged women and gives them benefits that help their current situation. But they do not have the services that a Western women's center has. I'm not saying that anywhere in India there is a women's center like the one's we have in the US - they most likely don't. But because i-to-i is a Western organization I feel that they should at least put that disclaimer on there. Or maybe I'm just incredibly naive and I should have assumed that. I'm finding that I have been very ignorant about a lot of things on this trip so far, so this could be one more thing to add to that list. But there must be a reason I ended up at Ankur Kala, and I think I've found a way to make my time there beneficial for me, as well as helpful to the women there.

So I wrote a bit last time about how I'm not sure about the place I work with. I was hoping that by the time I updated again that would have changed, but unfortunately it hasn't. I spend my day teaching English, peeling fruits and vegetables, organizing things, and watching other people work when there is nothing to do. As I said before, the founder of Ankur Kala told us the main part of volunteering is doing the same tasks as the other women and showing them how they can still be proud of doing simple tasks.

One, I wonder if that's really true, because a lot of the time I just feel in the way. When there are actually things for me and Georgie (who is now at Ankur Kala with me) to do, then things are okay. We work along side the women, talking with them in broken English, and it's a nice atmosphere. Yet other times we will be doing work and there will be other women sitting around doing nothing. So basically we are taking their job away from them. Other times we will have nothing to do and we'll just sit around watching the other women do work. My favorite time is in the morning, when we meditate and I teach English. But that only takes me until 11am and I'm at work until 4pm.

Two, I wonder if that's enough for me. The main part of this trip, besides getting a new cultural experience, was getting experience in international social work. This is a field I'm thinking of going into and I wanted to do an internship of sorts to see if it's something I'd like to do as a career. I feel silly because I can't even pinpoint exactly what I would like to be doing instead, especially because now I know how big the language barrier is. Like I would love to do some minor counseling or public education, similar to the things I do at the rape crisis center back in Boston, yet because I don't speak Bengali that is not possible. I could see myself working at a homeless shelter and giving out clothes or organizing a soup kitchen for them to have food, but India doesn't have homeless shelters. The poverty is huge here and a lot of people live in shacks on the side of the road, yet that isn't considered homeless by Indian terms. So I don't even know if the things I really wanted to do I could even do here because I don't know the language and most of the social norms of the culture. I went with Georgie to STARS, the children's center she worked at before she came to Ankur Kala, and that was more fulfilling than what I've been doing so far at the women's center. Like I observed Georgie teach an English class, I danced with the kids, and I helped bathe them. The kids were so happy that we were there and they had so much energy. However, Georgie said that dancing and bathing only happens on Fridays, and normally during that time they were sitting around watching the kids play games or maybe helping the instructors at the center keep the kids under control. Then in the afternoon she taught another English class to older kids, which she said was not very successful, similar to the English class she taught in the morning. I talked to Georgie about this feeling of not doing meaningful work and she said that while she knows that the kids really loved her being there, she doesn't feel like she did all that much for them. So this may just be the reality of "social work" in Calcutta.

Also, I know now that I can't really do social work. I don't have a degree for it and I don't know the culture well enough to just walk right in and immediately change things for the better. So that's one thing I've had to realize and adjust my goals for this trip accordingly. And I wonder if there is really any volunteer work that I could do here, with my limited abilities because of the language barrier, that I would feel fulfilled by. Part of me says that I just have to give it time, that things happen much slower here in India and that the fulfillment will come later and that any "good" I do will be in much more subtle ways than in the US. But at the same time I keep running through my head all the other programs I could have chosen, or even all the other organizations that volunteers work for here with i-to-i that I might enjoy better.

I know I couldn't have done anything more to choose a better program - I researched programs probably more than I needed to, and I chose the place with a good reputation that offered a women's center. I also emailed Sucharita the second I got my placement with Ankur Kala and questioned her about it because it described doing some of these tasks that I'm doing now and I knew that they weren't the things I wanted to do. She said that it would be much more than just cutting vegetables and office work, so I let it go. So I really couldn't have done anything differently. It's just frustrating because I don't want this summer to be a waste. I know it won't because the cultural experience alone will be fantastic. But I'm not really getting much of an "internship."

Maybe I'm expecting way too much. Also, I'm sure a lot of undergraduate internships are just busy work, like filing papers or other things like that - it's really the atmosphere you're around that's giving you the experience. So maybe I have to start looking at it like that. I'm working at an NGO that helps underpriviledged women, and I am seeing first hand the injustices that are placed upon women in India. I just wish the work was a little more interesting, or at the very least that there was actually work for me to do. It's frustrating that an organization would ask for volunteers that they don't need. But maybe I'm just overlooking the reasons they asked for them.

It is only week two - I guess I just need to give it more time.

I love India though, everything is good in that arena. The new girls come on Sunday and I hope next week we can plan all the weekend trips we'll go on. So far we're going to Shantiniketan and Darjeeling, and hopefully a few more later on.

So things are getting better. I moved in with Georgie and Laura Friday night and can stay in Hiland Park for the rest of my time here. A lot of people have been asking for a mailing address, so here it is:

Kathleen Peters
Bay Tower 5/B-1, Hiland Park
Kolkata, India 700094

I've been told by some people that the mail system is really sketchy here (most things, going out and coming in, are opened by the mail carriers to see if anything valuables in there), so if you do send something please don't send anything too expensive or that would be horrible to get stolen.

So what's been going on since I last wrote. I wasn't feeling well Thursday at work, a mix between exhaustion, the heat, and also feeling emotional because I had just finished making my fifth poster in three days and just feeling like this trip is going to be a waste (a feeling which I'll expand on in a bit), so I asked if I could take the afternoon off. I had been sitting in the showroom for about fifteen minutes doing absolutely nothing and felt that I was more in the way than anything else, so I figured my time would be better used getting my energy back than just sitting there. When I expressed this to them, however, I think they thought I was on the verge of death because they made this huge fuss, gave me a long speech about drinking enough water, had someone walk me to the bus station, gave me a gazillion phone numbers to call if I had any trouble on my way back home, gave me this huge umbrella to shield me from the sun, and also told me to take Friday off so that I could rest some more. They were incredibly sweet, telling me that I'm part of their family now and that they'll take care of me with whatever I need, but ever since then they always keep asking me how I'm feeling or if the heat is too much for me. It's caring yet annoying at the same time.

So instead of doing nothing Friday, I went to a children's place called STARS with Laura and Georgie. It was their last day there (Laura went home Saturday night and Georgie is now coming to Ankur Kala with me) and it was really great to see what another site was like. I sat in on a couple English classes, learned some Indian dance moves, handed out some lunch for the kids, and helped bathe them in the afternoon. The kids were so cute and I kind of regret telling i-to-i that I didn't want to work with kids, because at the moment I feel like I'd be doing more for the community than I am at Ankur Kala, but Georgie had been there for eight weeks and said that she definetly had days when she wondered if she was doing anything, and also that when she first got there she worried she wasn't doing enough, so it probably wouldn't have been that much different. The kids were just so energetic and grateful of us being there, though, that it seems like such fulfilling work, which Ankur Kala has not been so far. After work, I went back to my apartment and waited for Sucharita (my in-country coordinator) to get there. Shelley had told me that she'd be there at 4, and I'd left her a note saying I wouldn't be back from STARS until 5:30. However when 8pm rolled around I went downstair to borrow Mr. Bala's (my neighbor downstairs) cell phone to call Sucharita. Apparently Shelley had it wrong and Sucharita had come by in the morning to see me. She ended up coming by later that night, we talked for a while, and I explained to her why I wanted to move into Hiland Park with the other girls. Eventually she understood and I moved in that night. So that arrangement has been responsible for most of the positive changes I've felt towards this trip.

Saturday Laura, Georgie, and I went shopping during the day, stopped for tea and "tiffin" (snack) at a cafe, and then came back to get ready for Laura's farewell dinner. The other two girls had already bought their saree's so they got dressed up in them, and I wore the best salwar kameez that I'd bought that afternoon. I can't wait to get a saree, though - they looked gorgeous. Sucharita came with us to dinner and we went to a place called Kwality. It was interesting trying to decipher what everything on the menu was (Sucharita must have gotten so sick of us asking what things were), but I got Matar Paneer, which is a tofu-like cheese with peas in a red curry sauce. It wasn't too bad. We finished eating around 10pm (Indians don't eat dinner til about 8:30pm), then Laura finished packing and left later that night for an early morning flight. I'm sad that I only got to spend a short time with her, and for most of the week I'd been jealous of her that she got to go home, but at some point on Saturday I started seeing the beauty in Calcutta.

It's noisy, it's dirty, it's ridiculously busy, but it's got such a flavor to it that you almost can't help get caught up in it. Even when I crammed into the filthy buses that are going 60mph down crowded streets, or when I'm holding on for dear life as a rickshaw weaves through the streets, or when I see rows and rows of busted up shacks lining the roads, there is still something endearing about the city and the people in it. Even just being here a week I've encountered so many acts of kindness. From Mr. Bala listening to me whine and complain about work or my living situation, to the women at Ankur Kala immediately welcoming me into their home, to the people who own the internet cafe next to my place sitting with me for a half hour last night trying to get directions to the place that will fix my iPod (which broke the second day I was out here), everyone here is just dying to help you in any way they can. And each day I've been here I realize how I'm glad I'll be here for 3 months. I'm still worried about my site, yet I no longer worry about Calcutta or India. I miss my family like crazy, and I'm still torn between truly wanting to be here and also wanting August 14th to be here so I can go home. I think that feeling will pass, and also that these weeks will fly by, but that may just be another part of this experience, to really know what homesickness is. It doesn't seem too abnormal to miss home when you're this far away.

So Sunday me and Georgie went to the zoo, which I'm glad I saw but it wasn't anything fantastic. They had so many different kinds of deer there, which I found interesting because I never really considered deer zoo animals. I also didn't really understand why the peacock got a bigger cage than the lions and tigers, but it was still fun. After that we did some more shopping, changed the rest of my traveler's cheques, and rested for the night. The heat wipes you out here like crazy. I feel gross because all I eat are carbs and I get no exercise, but it would almost be dangerous to exercise here. You'd have to get up at about 4am just to work out at a time cool enough to do anything, you'd have to drink so much more water to make up for all the fluid you lost, and also you'd be that much more exhausted by the end of the day. I'm just dying for a light salad or something though - all I eat is rice and potatoes. Everything is starch here, even the desserts! I tried some Hindi sweets yesterday, which were really good, but they were still very grainy and wheaty. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Okay, so Ankur Kala. Here's my day:
9:00-10:00 -- yoga/stretches, meditation, prayer, announcements
10:00-10:15 -- tea break
10:15-11:00 -- I teach an English class to five or six girls
11:00-1:30 -- either working in the office organizing products in the showroom or other secretarial things, or cutting fruits and vegetables in the JSP (Jam, Squash, Pickle) room; both are with the other women who work there
1:30-2:00 -- lunch
2:00-3:30 -- either office work or working in the JSP room or batik (a kind of cloth decoration) room
3:30-4:30 -- either more office/JSP/batik work, or going out into the city to sell things and spread the word about Ankur Kala

I haven't done the last part yet because today during that time I observed one of the business classes, which I'm glad I saw but I couldn't really help in it because it was all in Bengali. Also, every other Friday from 4-5pm they have discussions about women's issues, cultural issues, etc., which I'm really excited about seeing and I hope I can help a lot in those discussions.

So I'm really torn at this point about Ankur Kala, mainly between doing work that may be truly helping them and wanting to do the work that I really want to do. My time at the internet cafe is running out, so I may have to hold off on elaborating, but basically I don't know if I'm doing fulfilling enough work. The leader of it says that a huge part of volunteers being there is the women seeing Western, educated people doing the same simple tasks they are with dignity, and thus increasing their own feelings of self-worth. That sounds wonderful, and now it may be getting to my selfish side, but I wonder will that fulfill enough of my own reasons for coming here. I'll elaborate more on this later.

Also, before I go, does anyone like pearls? Georgie is getting some for a family friend, so I went to the shop with her and they are ridiculously cheap. I don't know the going rate for pearls in America, but there was this necklace of real pink pearls with a diamond pendant and earrings to match for only about $25. Maybe I'm overestimating how expensive they are in the US, but that seems like an awesome price. So please, let me know if you want any, either as a gift or if you want ones that are more expensive you could pay me back when I get to the US. Also, everyone send me gift ideas!!

Well I'll say one thing, Calcutta's never boring.

So Thursday night I get back from a fun ice cream party/spa evening with Laura and Georgie only to find a huge spider on my bedroom wall. The entire thing, creepy legs and all, was bigger than my hand. So I kind of stand there frozen for a bit and then realize that this is just part of Indian life, shut off all the lights so I can't see it anymore, and quickly climb under my mosquito net to go to sleep. I wake up about 5am the next morning and remember about the spider and look over to see if it's still there. It was dark so I couldn't make tell if it had moved or not, so I rolled over and tried to fall back to sleep. When I opened my eyes again a few minutes later I find the spider on my mosquito net right next to my face. I scream and jump out of my net to the other side of the room. Luckily it was on the side of the net away from the door, so I could safely stay on the other side of the room and kind of watch it to make sure it didn't move. I was on my fifth night of only a few hours sleep and was starting to get exhausted, so I quickly grab my pillow from under the net, shut the door to keep the spider in there so it won't follow me, and go into the other bedroom to sleep.
So I've been trying to sleep for about fifteen minutes or so when I hear this huge clang from the kitchen. I get up to see what happened and see a pot rolling around on the kitchen floor. Then a BIRD flys at me, flapping around like crazy. It must have come in from the kitchen fan that leds to the outside. I start screaming again and run out of my apartment into the hallway. Once I don't hear any noise, I go back into my apartment only to find the bird perched on my pillow in the other bedroom. So I had a spider in one room and a freaking bird in the other. Finally I think of opening the door to the balcony in the bedroom and the bird (which I named Felix...the spider did not get a name) flew away. I didn't really try to fall asleep after that.

I could have updated yesterday but I was scared to put any thoughts down in writing (scared because then there is a record of me feeling like this and it may somehow be harder for this feeling to change), yet I find myself back at the internet cafe tonight and so much happens each day that if I hold off much longer the entry will be way too long. So I'll start from the beginning...

I had a nice day with my family Friday, then went to the airport. I wasn't really that sad to leave my family, and pretty much I thought that I would of course miss them, but that they wouldn't be occupying that much of my thoughts because I would be in India, and what's cooler than that. Oh how wrong I was, but I'll get to that.

So the flight to London wasn't that bad - international flights treat you so much nicer than domestic. The layover in Heathrow was fun for the first few hours, but after four hours of going into the same stores for the hundredth time (and getting no sleep on the flight over catching up with me), I just wanted to get on a plane again so I could sleep (I didn't want to sleep in the airport because I was afraid I wouldn't wake up and miss my flight...which doesn't seem so bad right now. Again, I'm getting ahead of myself and exaggerating). I killed three more hours in Heathrow, then slept for most of my 9 hour flight to Calcutta. When I boarded that second plane I started getting nervous, worrying that this experience won't be what I want it to be (even though I'm supposed to have no expectations), worrying that I won't be able to visit everything I want to visit, worrying I'll have trouble getting to know the other volunteers or my homestay family, and also worrying a bit about missing my family. So I landed about 5:30am Sunday morning (8pm Saturday night at home). I went through immigration and customs (which were not nearly as bad as I thought they'd be), almost got ripped off by a porter for "carrying" my bags (he pretty much tore them out of my hands and put them on a cart to "help" me; however little did he know that I only had traveller's cheques with me and he wasn't patient enough to wait around for me to exchange them), then met up with a woman from i-to-i outside the airport to drive me to where I'll be staying. My in country coordinator, Sucharita, is in Darjeeling (12 hrs north of Calcutta) til Friday, so Shelley, her assistant, picked me up instead. She has been incredibly nice - a bit pushy at times, but I'm still so grateful she's here. So I get to my "homestay," only to find out that a family only owns the apartment building, yet doesn't live there. So I am living all by myself in a suburb of Calcutta. I started feeling really uneasy when I got to my apartment, and when Shelley left about 8am (to let me rest before she came back to orient me later that day) I had meltdown number one. A lot of "What the hell was I thinking", "Why didn't I think I'd have trouble adjusting", "Oh my God I'm never going to be able to do this for three months, let alone three hours!"
I looked around my apartment, which is pretty nice. It has this gorgeous view of a lake which is nice and peaceful to look at, and it has a western toilet, a shower, a full kitchen, and a dining room. There are two bedrooms, each with two beds and a dresser in them, which are pretty good sized. Either one or three people are moving in there in a week and a half, so I'll only be alone for that much longer (if I stay at that place, I will hopefully be moving by the end of the week in with the other volunteers I met). So Shelley came back around 6pm that evening, took me to exchange some traveller's cheques and also call home, then went to Sucharita's house (even tho she wasn't there) for "orientation." Orientation was pretty much me signing a couple forms, having tea and cake, and learning a few words in Bengali. I got back to my place around 9:30 and had meltdown number two.

The next day she wasn't getting me until 4pm, so I had to sit around in my apartment until she picked me up to go shopping. Not a good time for a person who constantly overthinks things to be all alone. My apartment is in the Patuli region of Calcutta, a little on the outskirts, and I had absolutely no idea where anything was so I wasn't going to leave my apartment and get lost. By the time Shelley came I had stopped keeping track of my little freak outs, so let's just say up until that point I was really really regretting this. Not the trip so much, but the length of it for sure. Even though I feel much more comfortable and am happier here now, I am still having trouble picturing myself here until August. I took another nap and unpacked during that time, then went off with Shelley. Once I was out of the apartment I felt a lot better. Her 13 year old daughter came this time, which was fun because she was just fascinated by seeing a Westerner and was constantly explaining things about India to me. I bought two Salwar Kameez (dress-like tops that go past your knees with long pants you wear underneath and a scarf to match) and a few other things I'd forgotten about. Then on our way back we stopped by Hiland Park, where the other two volunteers live. We met them and they ended up coming back to my place and we hung out for a bit. I felt a lot better after talking to them and realizing I'm not all alone. However once they left that was the roughest night I think I've ever had. I got next to no sleep, knowing I had a long day ahead of me for the first day at my site, and all I could think about was how much of a mistake this was. I felt so incredibly stupid for having this much trouble being in another country, and that got me worrying all about my thoughts on traveling in general. I have always thought I'd love to travel and have all these plans lined up after this one, so it worried me that I was having such a hard time on only day two.

Day three was actually good. I really like the site I work at - the women are so incredibly welcoming and friendly. A lot of them don't speak English (along with most of Calcutta...yeah right the language barrier won't be an issue; even the ones who do speak English have such thick accents that they might as well be speaking Bengali), but I'm surprised at how much we can communicate non-verbally. Everyone meditates/prayers for the first hour, then I teach a 45-minute English class. I've done two of these so far and neither have been very successful. Towards the end of the one today we were getting somewhere, but with me not knowing Bengali and them not knowing English, it is next to impossible to know if I'm getting anything across to them. I think I'm getting the hang of it, but I must look like such an idiot up there trying to teach them. After the English class I go over to the office of Ankur Kala (my site's name) a block away, and for the past couple days I've made posters. At first I thought this was a waste of time and that they just didn't trust me to do anything else, but when I looked around other people weren't do things of any greater importance. Women will organize the show room for the goods they sell, or they'll watch me make a poster and comment on how good my handwriting was or suggest a different color to fill in the letters with, or they'll just sit around talking and drinking tea (which is in constant supply, and every couple hours people come around with trays of little tea cups saying "Drink tea! Drink tea!" Even if I say no they still give me a cup. I feel like this must be what everyone says Italian families are like, constantly offering you food. They give me gigantic lunches, and if I don't eat it all they just can't understand why I wouldn't want more. Or why I wouldn't want a snack a half hour after that huge lunch. Or why I wouldn't want tea every time they offer it. They are really cute. How did I get on this topic...oh yes...)
So they aren't doing things of great importance either, so I'm not alone. However, today I realized a couple things. One, what I value as "important" is probably not at all important here, and them doing physical, material things is probably more helpful than the discussion based, interactive tasks I had envisioned me doing, which I now realize would be incredibly difficult with the language barrier. Second, a woman asked today after I finished my third poster if I had ever made these before because I was so good at them. It dawned on me that they probably don't need to make a poster for ever project they do in school, and also that because most of them can barely speak English, they probably have no idea how to write it. So they may have been waiting for an English speaker to come along who can make these posters. At any rate, if I make posters every day for the next three months I'm gonna get pretty bored, but I think I'm going to the "canning" department tomorrow so that should be interesting.
So I work there from 9-4:30 every day, and that has made things better for the past two days. I also hung out with Georgie and Laura (the other two volunteers) again last night, and also met their Indian friends who are moving to Canada in August. I helped them with their accent and we got into a nice conversation about the differences between America and Canada, as well as all the differences between America and England.

Georgie and I also talked about me moving in with her, which I would absolutely love. Their apartment is more accessible to the buses I need to take to work, and they are right near a shopping center (complete with this internet cafe) that is perfectly safe to walk to late at night. At the moment I have to be sure to get here early enough so I can safely walk the ten minutes back to my place. Plus their apartment is just nicer in general, and I will be with Georgie, who's been here for seven weeks, is staying another five weeks, and will be working at Ankur Kala starting Monday. I have no idea why Sucharita didn't just put me there in the first place - Georgie and Laura even told her repeatedly that I'd be better off there. I've talked to Shelley about it, and Sucharita called me Monday to see how I was doing and said then that if I didn't like living alone something could be arranged, so hopefully I'll be living in Hiland Park by the end of the week. I think that would make things a lot better.

So basically things have definetly improved from the first two days, and I realize how much I will learn from this trip. Before I thought I'd just learn about culture and get to see some amazing sights, which I still will be able to do, yet I didn't realize how much I'll learn about myself with this trip. It may sound really corny or cliche, and perhaps overdramatic, but this is probably the hardest thing I have ever done and I will have to learn so many new things to get by. I really don't know why I didn't plan on this happening - I planned for everything else - but maybe culture shock is just something you have to go through, you can't really prepare yourself for it. It's really hard not being able to call home when I want. There's no phone in my room, so I have to go to STD/ICD stands (pay phones) that are ridiculously hot and have people standing outside the door listening to your conversation and waiting for their turn to use the phone. And they take some planning ahead to use, which is not ideal when a sudden crisis occurs and all I want to do is call my mom. Also, I've never been at a place where I couldn't see my family if I wanted to. I live away from home during the school year, but they are an hour and a half away - if I have a rough week I know I can go home that weekend, or they could come up for the day if I needed to see them. That's not exactly possible when people are a 36 hour plane ride away from each other. So dealing with the fact that I'll really be here for three months is challenging. But each day gets a little easier. I can't see myself loving it here and never wanting to leave (like so many volunteers have told me they feel like), but I have learned so much in just these four days that I can't imagine what it'll be like in three months.

Oh, and did I mention how ridiculously hot it is here? The thermometer ranges from 89-94 degrees, but it's so humid here you can barely breath. I drink about 5 liters of water a day and I'm still so tired from the heat. And the food! Our meals are provided to us and they are said to be "mildly" spicy. Yes, that is why my stomach burns for an hour after I eat. White rice, Wonder bread, curried potatoes, bananas, mangos, and eggs. That is all I eat. Oh it may be a long summer...

My $.50 (25 rupees) hour at the cafe is almost up, so that's it for now. I wish I could have had a happier first entry, but I promised myself I would be truthful in this journal so there it is.

Tune in next time for lessons on survivng the roads in Calcutta and also how to handle constantly being stared at for being white...

Well, technically it's today seeing as it's Friday morning.

I can't really put a label on what I'm feeling right now. Sometimes I think I'm really at peace with going and not nervous at all, yet then I get a wave of anxiety that cancels that thought out. Or I think I'm a little numb to the experience, that I've been planning for it for so long that the thought of going doesn't affect me as much, yet then I get all jittery inside.

Ahh, even just sitting here trying to put down into words what I'm thinking isn't working. Well let's start on something a little more tangible...

Sunday my mom set up a little going away party for me; lots of family and close family friends. My aunt and I were saying how it seemed like I was going off to war with all the people there. It's funny - people go to India all the time for business trips or vacations or whatever else with no fuss at all. I feel like this trip shouldn't be as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be, but I guess anyone's first international experience can get a little extra attention. It still baffles me how long I've planned for something that will only be three months. I've been researching programs since last summer, booked my project in October, got my plane tickets in January, got my shots/pills in March, and will now be going in May. Such a long process for just three months.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday should have been my packing days, yet instead I shopped, lounged, and went out to eat too many times. I was able to see everyone who I wanted to see though, which was great because I was worried about feeling rushed this last week. It was actually almost the opposite - I had much more down time than I thought I would. I'm so glad I only had a week here before I left instead of three like I was thinking of making it.

Today I packed, which was much more stressful than I thought it would be. I am one who likes to do things ahead of time, so just dealing with the fact that I started packing for a three month trip the day before I leave was hard enough. Then realizing that I was still missing things, or that something took up more room in my suitcase than I had envisioned, or whatever other problem came up made the whole process more difficult than it needed to be. But I am pleased with the finished product - one large suitcase, a carry-on suitcase, and a purse. That's not too bad for twelve weeks. What is sad is that 3/4 of it is medication, toiletries, and other things that would have been a fifth of the cost had I got them in India, yet it calms my mom's nerves knowing that I have every can of bug spray ever made, so I bring them. The good thing is is that in three months I'll have used all that stuff up so there will be lots of room for all the things I acquire this summer.

In between packing my mom and I grabbed lunch, got traveler's cheques and solidified how I'm dealing with money over there, and also I got dropped off for a full body massage at a spa in our town. I have been wanting to get a massage for a while and got a gift certificate for a massage for my birthday this year, so I figured this would be as good time as any to have one. It was wonderful. I felt like jello afterwards. I wish she could have gotten all the knots out of my back - I'm much more relaxed but I can still feel some tightness - yet I guess since I've never had a real massage before it's hard to get twenty years worth of knots out in one hour. I guess that means I'll have to go back later on then. Drats...

Tonight I did some last minute packing, had spaghetti with a thick meat sauce (they said I'm having mainly vegetarian meals over there so I'm getting my fix now), said goodbye to friends, and finished up some little things I still had to do. I almost want to just stay up for the rest of the night (sunrise is only four hours away), but considering I'll have 26 hours of traveling tomorrow that may not be the best idea.

...I will be on my way to India :)

The school year is finally over and I have a week to unpack from my dorm, pack for India, say goodbye to friends and family, and also relax and try to enjoy these last few days in the US. I had a hell of a time trying to focus during this week of finals - every time my mind wandered I pictured myself eating curry and rice or me standing in the middle of a monsoon.

Most of my worries are gone. I have pretty much succumb to the fact that what I'm picturing in my head or trying to prepare myself for will be completely different than what it will actually be, so I've given up on that and just enjoying my excitement. I've also been talking to a lot more people who are in Calcutta right now through i-to-i, and also people who have gone through i-to-i before. The program has a forum specifically for people going to Calcutta, so I've talked to some people through that, one of whom is there right now and has been telling me what her first days were like, what to bring, where to go, etc. Also, which was wicked random, I found out that one of the women I work with went to Calcutta through i-to-i a couple years ago. I'm a hotline counselor at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and at our last meeting I was telling everyone how I have to take the summer off from the hotline (a long distance call to Calcutta might be a little beyond their budget), and one of the girls there said she went to India two summers ago and that we should talk. She ended up having to leave the meeting early, so I emailed her later that night to ask her about her trip. Just her enthusiasm for her experience got me even more excited, but after emailing back and forth a couple times it came out that she went to Calcutta as well and that she went through i-to-i. She told me all about the in-country coordinator that's there and how great she is, how the people you meet and work with are amazing, how easy it is to travel around on the weekends (and also if you want to go for a longer trip you just have to tell your supervisor you want a couple days off and you can make it a long weekend), how beautiful Calcutta is, etc. etc. Up until that point I hadn't known anyone who had gone through i-to-i, let alone an American who went through it (i-to-i is originally a British program), so that relaxed me a bit talking to her. Also, a girl from UVA facebooked me last week and said that she's going to Calcutta through i-to-i and will be there when I am, so overall I feel a lot more connected to the program and am glad I have some names of people that I know will be there. So my worries are gone pretty much. My mother on the other hand...

I know she's going to read this, and when I say it in person it doesn't seem to register, so maybe if I put it in writing it will calm her a bit: I will be fine. I know she's worried that I won't take my malaria pills correctly, or that I'll be lazy and drink the water or eat the fruit, or that I'll travel alone or go out at night by myself, or that I won't put on bug spray, or that I'll get rabies from a dog, or that someone will slip some drugs in my suitcase and I'll get stopped by customs and spend the rest of my life in some Bengal jail...and I'm sure there are many other fears she hasn't expressed to me yet. At any rate, I am not stupid. I have researched this country as best I could, talked to as many people as I can, got all my shots and pills months in advance, and done everything else I can to prepare myself. In fact, I almost wish I didn't give myself as much time as I did because I feel almost over-prepared - I've had too much time to think about it and I feel over-ready. Ha, and while I'm sure the second I step off the plane I'll be cursing myself for not prepping myself better, at the moment I've done everything I can. So mom, just trust that you've raised a good, smart daughter who will take care of herself. I know you wish I wasn't going, that I was going somewhere domestic, or to Europe, or even more to a more developed part of Asia. But just think about how easy having me go to Ireland will be next spring ;)

Eh, I still have a week to calm you down :)

So this is the start of my journal for my summer adventure to Kolkata, India. I've been planning this trip for so long that it's hard to believe it's actually going to happen. I've gone through a wide range of emotions in these last six months - excited, scared, nervous, overwhelmed, anxious, and everything in between. One thing is I've realized how much I love and need my family in the last few months. Knowing I'm not going to see them this summer, and also that apart from winter vacations I will never live at home again, has made me appreciate them so much more and part of me wishes I had spent more time with them when I had the chance as a teenager. But I guess if I had done that, I wouldn't have come to this realization of some regret.

But today I experienced a new emotion, one that I may have briefly crossed my mind before, but had never hit me like this...I've been trying to think of one word that can describe it, but I can't seem to pinpoint it closely enough, so here's my best attempt at explaining it: fear of making a mistake in the program I've chosen. I guess the real emotion part is fear, but it's a specific fear. It's not a fear of being in a new place anymore, although I have some of that. It's not a fear of going alone and not knowing anyone, or a fear of being away from my family for three months, although I have those too. It's a fear that I'm going to get there and I'll be working at a place that isn't where I want to be. Maybe some context for this fear will help...

Today I got my site assignment, the place where I will be working, 8:30am to 4:30pm, Monday thru Friday, for 12 weeks. I got assigned to the women's organization, Ankur Kala, which is what I asked for originally so I was happy when I saw that. I told them I am interested in going into social work and wanted to work in community development, either teaching employment skills or doing some minor counseling, things like that. However, when I looked at the list of activities the volunteers at Ankur Kala do, the first thing there was preparing food in the kitchen. That's when I started to get worried. When I was planning this trip last semester and deciding which program to go with, I was talking to the director of my school's study abroad office and was telling her the different kinds of things people do at the sites. I named several different things, and when I came to working in the kitchen she immediately said, "Oh but you don't want to be doing that. You can work in a kitchen here. You want to make sure you are doing something you can't do anywhere else." So the second I saw that I was at a site where the first thing they list for volunteer activities is kitchen work, I got a huge pit in my stomach. There are other activities below it that volunteers are said to do, but they are all very vague, such as "helping in the marketing section" or "helping with documentation." I don't really know what those mean, so that worried me as well. The last few activities were "teaching spoken english classes when necessary" and "using your expertise to better the organization in any way you can." So I'm assuming there is a wide variety of things you can do and the activities they list are the closest they can get to defining your job, but it still worried me that kitchen work was the number one activity. I want to be working with the women who use the organization, who need the help. I want to be helping people directly, not just cooking for them. And maybe this sounds whiny or like I don't want to do the behind the scenes work or don't want to be doing manual work, but that's really not it at all. I just want to be doing work that I will be doing later on in life, like counseling or organizing projects or teaching classes - things where I will be working directly with the people, talking and sharing with them.

I was hesistant to talk to my mom about these concerns because she is not thrilled about this trip and I felt that if I showed any sign of uncertainty about it, her worries would just get worse; but I ended up telling her these thoughts and she was much more understanding than I thought she would be. She had actually logged into my account and saw what placement I had been given (I showed her the site yesterday to make her feel more connected to the project, so she didn't hack into it or anything) before I talked to her, and she got a very different impression of what the activities are. She researched the organization online (www.ankurkala.org if anyone's interested) and it sounds like the activities women do there are cooking food to be canned and packaged (so they can sell them later), making beaded jewelry, knitting and sewing clothes and bags (all of which are also sold); they basically are taught skills on how to start a small business of their own so they can earn a living. And the volunteers (after we are trained in these areas) teach the women how to do these things. So when it said that volunteers are in the kitchen cooking, cutting, or preparing food, they are doing it along side the women at the organization, helping and teaching them. The marketing part is helping them get their name out into the community so people know that they have their own business, and the documenting is any kind of recording of sales or profits that need to be kept track of. After I talked to my mom about that, and also went to the website and saw some pictures of people in action, I felt a lot better about it.

I wrote my in-country coordinator an email and asked her some more questions about the site and the activities volunteers do, trying to get a feel for what an average day would be and what these activities really mean, and I expressed the concerns I had. I just wanted to make sure I am going to be doing work with people directly and not always behind the scenes, and when I heard that the first thing volunteers do is cooking, my study abroad director's voice immediately popped into my head and I got scared that my time is going to be a waste in some way, or that I won't be doing what I thought I'd be doing or what I wanted to be doing. One, that is silly to begin with because I know that just being in a different country will be enough of an experience to make this trip more than worth it. And I know that no matter what picture of this summer I have in my head, it's going to be completely different. But I want it to be the right kind of different, if that makes any sense. In any case, the email I got back from my coordinator put to rest most of the fears I had. She told me pretty much what my mother did, that you are working along side other women, helping and teaching them how to do these things, helping them to market themselves, document their sales, etc. I had also asked her if there was room to change sites once you got there, such as if I was at Ankur Kala for a week or so and realized it wasn't what I wanted to do, could I be placed at a different site? She said yes, but first reminded me that Indian work culture and values are very different than the Western point of view and that it won't be at all what I will expect. Then she went on to say to calm down, come with an open mind, and go with the flow. That is exactly what I needed to hear - I like her already. So I am very excited about my placement now. At the very least I'll come back knowing how to can and pickle things, along with batiking, which I found out was the art of dying clothing and other fabric into designs, and beading. Guess what everyone's Christmas presents will be this year!

I also got my housing assignment. I'm living in a homestay with other volunteers. There are three floors, with two rooms on each floor. In each room there are two volunteers, and the other rooms are occupied by family members. I am happy about this arrangement - I get to be with a family, which will show me an even deeper level of Indian culture, yet I'll be with other volunteers, so I won't be alone. I am happy about this. I got worried, though, when it said that I have two Saturdays off a month...I don't really know what that means because I thought I was only working Monday thru Friday. So what am I doing the other two Saturdays? I also worry that that won't let me travel as much around India as I wanted to.

Overall, I'm realizing how close this trip is getting and how I can no longer think about things in the abstract. I can't say, "Oh, well I'll be working in places like this or doing things like this, etc. etc., and I might stay here or I might stay there, I don't know yet..." Now I know all those things, which means I can create a semi-accurate picture of it in my head and know that it will actually happen. That is incredibly exciting, but also a bit frightening. I'm tired of waiting, mainly, for May 19th to get here, but I'm sure these next few weeks will fly by.