New Friends in Old Cities and Horn Desensitization

1/30/2011 Varanasi, India

Sad to leave, but happy to arrive. In the little more than a week that we have been here we have grown to call our supposedly “temporary” hostel home. While the 150 rupee ($3 US) room never got any bigger, and the shared bathroom never became less occupied, we somehow managed to become very comfortable in our living situation. Maybe it was the great people who worked there or the interesting travelers that wondered in and out, or maybe the wonderful rooftop where we spent our mornings meditating and doing yoga or watching the monkeys and kites fly from rooftop to rooftop. Or possibly it was its location in the heart of the labyrinth which housed the hundreds of venders and shopkeepers who kept our stomachs both very happy and very unhappy. Regardless, our home away from home had grown very dear to us.

On the other hand, the place where we were moving was an opportunity we could not pass up.

Our new friends whom we had grown quite close to over a week of trials and tribulations of building a treehouse for the school where we were working, had invited us to stay for free at a beautiful compound where they were residing. No mattress, no hot water, and no restaurant, but 5 minutes from the school, instead of an hour, a kitchen, and really good people in the end won out.

Also today, we finished the treehouse! Yeahhhhh! An accomplishment we celebrated with pizza (yes pizza!), apply pie, and a fresh green salad! All firsts for Brooke and I since we departed the States. Wonderful!

1/31/2011 Varanasi

Walking along the crazy streets full of traffic today (no other kind of street here in India) a thought occurred to me. When I go back to countries without such crazy drivers and without the constant use of a horn, I will be much more likely to be hit by a car. Why? I have become immune to car horns. Well, immune might not be the best term as I do still hear them and get annoyed by them, but outwardly you would not even know. You might see me walking along a street with hundreds honking right behind and in front of me and it would seem as if I were deaf. I’m desensitized I guess you would say- there are just so many honking horns at all time and for all reasons, that I no longer even react. I figure they will go around me or, more likely, I am no in the way at all but they just want to exert their presence on the world. In other more sane driving countries the horn would be used more likely to warn you of something like the imminent danger of them hitting you- and I would not react, not even blink. When the time comes to return to the US, it will take some adjusting to!

Also of interest today- the tree house was christened today at the school by scores of very happy children!

Kites, Treehouses and Culture

1/28/2011 Varanasi, India

With my spirit not yet ruined by all the hustlers in India, I decided to take a chance and accept a guy’s offer to help him fly his kite. As it turned out, it ended without the usual request for money and I had one of my better cultural exchanges here in India. Indians and especially those from Varanasi are fanatical about kite flying! From the top of our guest house we can sometimes count over 100 of them bouncing around in the sky while their strings weave a brilliant spider web from the clouds to the different rooftops across the city. On this day we were along the Ganges and started talking to a group of guys flying their kites high above the opposite bank a couple hundred meters away. About 20 meters down river from us there was another group of guys also flying around the same area. After a few lost in translation moments it was finally explained to me that the two groups were in the middle of a heated kite fight. One at a time a kite from our group would go up against one from the opposing.

Whoever was able to cut their opponents glass covered string would move on to be pitted against the next in line while the loser sadly watched his kite slowly flutter to the ground where the children raced to collect their gratuitous prize. I was never actually allowed to fight, but in between rounds I became the good luck charm as after each time I flew the kite the owner won his battle. This happened an unprecedented 13 times in a row often with my kite winning so quickly, I would never even get the chance to see the attack. The entire hour we were flying there was great conversations and cultural exchanges as we shared in the jubilation of each win and the camaraderie of knowing that no matter how many scornful looks we received from our opponents, they would never figure out our secret weapon (Me). When our magic finally ran out on fight number fourteen, Brooke and I shook everyone’s hand and broke away from our new Indian friends to become tourist again, cherishing our small glimpse into this great culture.

1/29/2011 Varanasi, India

Environmental Presentation… Great to be working! Today we gave our first of two environmental presentations to the children of Asha Deep Vidyashram. This deserves way more than just a simple sentence, but we’ve already written a lot for the website which will be updated this week so better to check that out instead- www.GROWInitiative.org. (Including from the second of our presentations, teacher trainings, treehouse building, etc.)

Interesting Motto...Even for India

Monkey Business!

Ever thought you wanted a pet monkey? Well come to India and you will find more monkey business than you could have ever imagined. Here the monkeys are more like the squirrels in their abundance but much more amusing to watch. There are good monkeys, bad monkeys, big monkeys and small monkeys. Some are mischievous, and some are docile, but they are all adorable with their human like characteristics! Here are just a few of our favorite monkey highlights:

While lying on our bed in our hostel our door slowly began to open. Gently and silently a cute little monkey head pokes around the door. While we were “aaawwwing” how adorable it was the mean little bugger darted in the room, grabbed our bananas, hissed at us as I started to get up and like Kiser Sosee, was gone never to be seen again.

Not learning our lesson, we were walking along a rocky beach on the Ganges with exposed bananas looking forward to a lovely breakfast overlooking the river when Brooke felt a little tug on her hand from behind. By the time she turned around the money was running up the rocks with half of our breakfast! Still not learning our lesson, seeing the monkey was 50 meters away eating half of our lunch we stopped paying attention for just a moment to situate our beautiful dining spot. A split second later the same damn monkey using his magic monkey warp speed, grabbed the rest of fruit leaving us shaking our empty bowl and dollop of yogurt at him as turned around to show us how tasty the bananas were to eat.

This one is actually cool! Monkeys swim! To our surprise (and delight since they were truly adorable doing it) we found monkeys in Rishikesh cooling off in the Ganges by diving in and swimming, actually under water, clearly just for the fun of it. With crystal clear water, we can say first hand that a monkey under water is a funny site.

Its worth a shot!

OK, so we admit it. We are very bad at blogging. We have about five very interesting partially written blogs, and hundreds of cutting edge, creative ideas that we just can’t seem to find the time to get them to their cyberspace home. In our d
esperation, we have decided to take a different approach and write many small blogs about any interesting thing that happens during the day. Let us know if we are too boring.

1/25/2011 Varanasi, India

The two things that were most interesting to me today were:

1. Hearing at least 10 horns within 50ft of a “Silence No Horns” sign at the local University.(HORNS ARE CRAZY HERE!!!)

2. A street vender selling necklaces inadvertently making fun of the size of Brooke’s head after his necklaces would not fit over it. While he was explaining how his necklaces were not the problem through demonstrations of how they would fit over any normal persons head, he realized his customer might take offence and he started backtracking. He then tried to explain how her head was just a little abnormally big and how it was really fine…it fit her body… not that her body was too big… no, no.. she had a very nice body… not that he was looking of course. We left cracking up, the poor guy still trying to pull his foot out of his mouth.

1/26/2011 Varanasi

Yeah!! Finally doing some GROW work, sort of. Today we worked with the Asha Deep Vidiashram NGO / school (More information soon on the GROW site) helping them with their struggling computer lab while planning for an environmental day and teacher trainings later in the week. After the daily power outage stopped our work, we enjoyed a long but adorable ceremony put on by the 250 children of the school to celebrate Republic Day. We finished by helping to build a tree house (yes a tree house) in the school yard with some other great volunteers. Good day!

Also on the 26th: My first time wearing a saree.

Sarees are the typical dress for women here in India, and they are beautiful. It’s about 6 meters of fabric wrapped around your body, starting with the skirt part and then wrapping up and eventually the rest tossed over the shoulder. Just getting the contraption on was hard enough, but I did well enough and could pass rather respectably for someone who knew what they were doing (as long as I was just standing perfectly still with a slight lean to my right so it didn't fall off my left shoulder). Then the problem came- after a very long period of having no stomach issues, diarrhea hit while I had on the worst possible outfit. Toilets here are the squat variety and this is usually not a problem, except for me of course when I’m wearing one of these damn sarees. For one thing, underneath I had on pants, so not only was there 6 meters of fabric to somehow bunch up and keep away from the disgusting floor while I squatted in the dark (no light in the bathroom) but I also had to maneuvering my pants away as the rest of the fabric is continuing to fall off my shoulder threatening disaster. To add to the fun the door at this school does not have a lock and therefore I needed to keep one hand free to keep a poor innocent child from walking in and having nightmares the rest of his life of the of the bright white butt of the foreigner who almost hung herself with her own saree while taking a poop! All that and I won’t even go into cleanup! But somehow I survived the experience learning a very important lesson. Wearing a saree and Indian street food…NOT A GOOD COMBINATION!

1/27/2011 Varanasi

So today is Brooke and my four year anniversary. So what better gift for me to give than a surprise fresh chocolate croissant and an Indian vasectomy. All started off to plan as I snuck out of bed and weaved my way through the narrow alleyways to the “German” (no German things there) bakery right as the pastries were coming out of the oven. Perfect! To make sure the bread was hot when I returned I jogged the kilometer return trip ducking between bicycles, goats, buffalo, and venders and skipping over garbage, cow patties, and small dogs. I was one corner away from home when I had to dart between a frail looking holy man and a large bull (a typical maneuver here in Varanasi) when the bull all of a sudden swung its head and its horn caught me in the left thigh, twisting me around and into the holy man who surprisingly felt more like a boney brick wall then an 80 year old man. A very scary moment but miraculously everything was intact down below leaving only a small scratch on my inner leg and a bit of a stiff shoulder from the 80 year old gladiator. In the end Brooke did wake up to a delicious chocolate croissant, and unregrettably, the vasectomy will have to wait for another day.

The Right Way

With India’s population currently over 1.1 billion the competition for any kind of business is stiff. Sometimes this unfortunately means that people will do whatever it takes to get ahead, often at the expense of others or the environment. When we traveled to the northern Punjab territory it was nice to see that it sometimes goes the other way as well. Mr. Singh, owner of Virasat Haveli in Rajewal, Punjab just outside of Amritsar, conducts the business of his home the right way. As is the custom in India, when Mr. Singh’s father retired he handed his holdings over to his sons, the eldest taking the city business and Mr. Singh taking over the old farm house. He now splits his time between the countryside farm and his home and own business in the city. Normally maintaining a country property like this would be very expensive to pay security and maintenance, but instead, he has a mutually beneficial relationship with many people from the village in which everyone profits from the place.

When you get to the Virasat Haveli you will have a warm welcome from a plethora of people who work there, mostly in the kitchen. Although Mr. Singh gets some of the profit when there are paying guests for the night, the restaurant (which serves some of the best food we’ve had in India) profits all are shared amongst the villagers running it, Mr. Singh takes nothing. His hotel patrons get great food and an enhanced experience, and Mr. Singh has the added benefit of more people there to help with the upkeep and make it a success, not the other way around.

He takes a similar approach with his fields of wheat, potatoes and other crops. Pesticides which are very detrimental to the environment are also costly. It would cost him 1,000 rupees to apply the pesticides to his fields, but instead he goes the organic route. He takes those 1,000 rupees he saves by not applying chemicals and keeps it in the community. Village girls come over after school to pull the weeds and get their pocket money for the week.

It is interesting that at least the second mutually beneficial relationship Mr. Singh has with the villagers, with the local girls, would never go over in the US. It would be considered exploitation of child labor, or something else would not be ok with it. But at least under the circumstances that it is, everyone is doing well by everyone else- the money stays in the community, tourists get the chance to get an authentic experience of a rural Indian village, the environment is improved through his organic practices and many people are employed. If you ask us, Mr. Singh is doing things the right way and would be great if others would model themselves after him- we certainly loved our experience there, a highlight of our time in India!

Merry Christmas, in India

We have spent almost the whole of Christmas day at a religious center, but it is not a church and we are not surrounded by Christians. Some who see our gleaming white skin that can’t help but stand out in a crowd have wished us a Merry Christmas, but by and large it could just be any other day here. We are instead at the Golden Temple, the holy shrine of Sikhs. We have learned much about their fascinating and peaceful religion, and been amazed at their kindness. At this temple complex you can sleep and eat for free, they serve food all day long and must feed thousands daily. The food is quite tasty, we can attest! Besides being recipients of such amazing generosity here

of the Sikhs, we also got to do our part and help- peeling onions for about an hour, there must have been 30 of us sitting on the floor peeling with a mountain ridge-line of tons of onions between us.

Another part of our day was at Mata Temple, a Hindu cave temple, and last week we paraded down the streets of Jaipur with the Muslims in one of their biggest festivals of the year. We have learned much about other religions and cultures while here in India and are all the better for it. More so than learning about the people and their religions, we have experienced their amazing kindness and generosity, traits common to Christians as well and we are reminded of the threads of humanity that link us all.

Our hearts do ache for our own familiar traditions, being with our families singing Christmas carols and sipping on hot spiced cider while looking at a snowscape outside, all tucked in by a fire. But our lives are full of too many adventures for that right now, we’ll just enjoy future Christmases as home that much more in the future.

To everyone out there that we love, Merry Christmas, and a very Happy and Blessed New Year when it comes.