November, done differently.

Only in India do I get 3 giant mosquito bites on my arm in late November - while sitting in my room, on the second floor of my house, with all doors and windows closed. I'm not going to talk about the mosquito anymore, it just happened as I sat down to write and I needed to complain about it.

Life is getting to that weird stage of being pretty used to my environment, but also missing home more as the holidays approach. I was attending a kids event hosted by another organization in Pune today, and they had Christmas music playing. Its a little early for Christmas music in America, and I'm guessing even more so in India. This other organization is run mostly by Westerners, so having Christmas music playing wasn't too shocking, just a bit homesick-inducing. Not to mention, the flood of Facebook pictures I've seen from the Justin Timberlake concert in Memphis.

Despite my moaning about home though, I know that this is really a once in a lifetime experience, and everything that I'm missing in America right now will be made up for in the future (hopefully with a hometown JT performance included). I'm getting the chance to travel around the country, and learn about the ins and out of working with an Indian NGO - which is an often frustrating, painful, and rewarding experience.The next project I'm trying to work on is organizing a kids Christmas concert at the Deep Griha Academy. This feels a little ambitious, as the kids often seem pretty tone deaf/rhythm-challenged every time we do music lessons. They're sweet, funny, wonderful kids, but singing on any sort of key is pretty challenging. I don't expect miracles (but maybe a Christmas miracle?), but hopefully we can get a few simple songs down!

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently traveled to Kerala for my Diwali holiday. I now understand why they call it "God's Own Country." I think the views in Munnar may haven been some of the most beautiful I've even seen. There are rolling hills of tea plantations everywhere, which one driver referred to as a "green carpet," - a pretty accurate description. There were wonderful hiking trails near our home stay, which was about 20 kilometers outside of the city. It was so nice to be away from traffic and pollution for a few days! In Kochi I had the freshest seafood of my life - really, no joke. We bought king fish, shrimp, and squid from fisherman who caught the fish that day, and then proceeded to grill it right there for us. It was awesome. Along with that, some other highlights from the trip include an elephant ride, a hike into the Periyar Tiger Reserve, a tea factory tour, an ayurvedic massage (which I actually wouldn't recommend if you're used to/expecting anything remotely like a Western massage....it was kind of strange experience), and finally ending with an incredibly relaxing evening on a houseboat in Allepey.

Since all of the pictures from that trip are now on Facebook, I'm just going to conclude with a picture from today's event with the kids from our daycare. These are a few of the kids, their teacher, and a camel. These kids are rowdy, mischievous, and super adorable.

Diwali, Caves, and More!

I guess its been awhile since I've updated. The last few weeks have been pretty action packed, so there hasn't been very much down time recently!

Work however has been a bit slower since everyone has mostly been wrapping things up in preparation for DIWALI. We have a week and a day off for Diwali, which is crazy to me. Its like Christmas, but bigger. I'll be celebrating at my friend Priyanka's house on Sunday, which is the actual Diwali day. Over the past week there have been plenty of fireworks going off though. Kind of like it was during Ganesh festival, but even more so. This morning at 6:00AM, I was woken up to what sounded like a bomb going off next door. No bombs, just insanely loud fire works. And by fireworks, I don't really mean pretty, fourth of July, light up the sky fireworks, but super loud street popper fireworks. I haven't actually seen any of them, I've just heard all of them.

Last weekend I traveled to the city of Aurangabad with my friends Eve and Kim. We went there to see the nearby Ellora and Ajanta caves. This was actually the most amazing thing I've seen in India so far. The Ajanta caves have these Buddhist carvings and paintings in them, with the earliest ones dating to the 2nd Century B.C.E. I think that's the oldest piece of history I've ever seen in my life. The Ellora caves include some Buddhist caves, but are more known for the Hindu and Jain caves. The main Hindu cave you see when you enter the the cave area has the most elaborate carvings, and the cave space is huge too! The carvings and statues are incredibly detailed. Here's an example:

While the Ellora caves were much more intricate in their detail, I think I may have been more blown away by the Ajanta caves. Most of them are very similar - a dark space with a Buddha in the back, some with paintings on the walls, some with pillars in the caves - but something about it was more appealing to me. You can't take pictures with flash in the caves in order to preserve the paintings on the wall, so everything is lit with very low lights. Here's a sleeping Buddha:

The only thing that was not enjoyable about our weekend trip was the amount of harassment we received from vendors trying to hawk their souvenirs on us. I didn't even ask this one guy about the small statues he was trying to sell, but he bargained the statue from 250 rupees down to 50. The conversation went something like this:

"Madam! Statue, 250!"
 "Sorry, not interested."
"Ok, 200."
"I don't want a statue."
"Ok fine fine, 150"
"Really, I'm not looking for a statue."
"Ok Madam, 50 Rupees!"

Despite the fact that 50 rupees is than a dollar, I actually wasn't trying to buy a Buddha figurine, especially not from someone who is harassing me by bargaining for me. In the bus station the next day, I tried a new tactic - pretending like I don't know English. "No habla English" seems to confuse people, so some of them stopped talking to me after that.

While this kind of thing is annoying in the moment, I am sympathetic to the fact that someone must come from a level of poverty unknown to me in order to harass people like that. Its hard to see that at the time of these instances though. All I can think or feel in the moment is something like "Uggghhhhh I miss America," which makes me sound insensitive, but its hard to get beyond that feeling in the middle running away from someone who won't stop hawking their trinkets on you.

I'll be out of town for about 10 days beginning Monday. After spending Diwali with Priyanka, she and I are traveling to Kerala to meet up with Kim and Eve to travel around the state. Indians refer to Kerala as "God's Own Country," so I guess it must be good! I'll update again after my return.

And just because they're cute, here is a mommy and baby monkey snuggling at the Ellora caves.