February 11th, 2013 – Lectures on Lectures on Lectures

Back to class today. After a delicious breakfast of paratha, we walked over to the house of the person who drives us every morning. We had a lot of classroom time today. First, we had a faculty lecture about climate change. After tea time, we had a guest lecturer who spoke about women in Delhi – a hot topic that we all had a million questions about. She made us all feel really scared about being a woman in Delhi. She talked a lot about the recent rape, and provided a lot more details than any of us knew.

After, we broke for lunch and I had veg tali, which is an assortment of sauces, rice, and naan. Super delicious. Then we had another faculty lecture about surrogacy and marriage in India, which was very interesting. There is a lot of trans-national surrogacy in India, so many Americans come here to have an Indian surrogate because it costs a lot less. After our faculty lecture, we had another short and informal debrief about how our guest speaker made us all scared. We talked about how we have to not just take what our guest lecturers say for granted.

After class, we took autos to a local market, but most things were closed because we got out of class so late. Then we took autos home and did a bunch of homework (we have so much work and projects all of a sudden…not sure when we are going to find the time to do it all, but we’ll figure it out). Delicious dinner. Neighborhood day tomorrow!

February 10th, 2013 – Oh yeah isn’t that in India?

Woke up at around 9 to get ready for the mall. We ate breakfast, and then headed over to the mall at 10:30am. The mall is like a palace and very upscale. There are actually three malls that are all connected. The mall had a forever 21, zara, steve madden, and others. The prices were the same as in America though, so it wasn’t too exciting. But it was cool to see the type of crowd that went to the mall. My host family says that they go to the mall almost every weekend.

After that, we came home via auto and did our readings for class tomorrow. At around 4:30 we walked over to another homestay house, stopping at a really pretty park on the way. We got to the house and learned how to play a card game called King’s Crown (Jason, you would LOVE this game…it’s like Rummy but more intense). We had an amazing dinner, and I have never been fuller in my life. We came back to our house, finished digesting, and got ready for bed. Class tomorrow…

February 9th, 2013 – Spontaneous Happiness…aka Spontaneous Confusion

Woke up this morning at 10:30, which felt amazing! Jill still felt crappy, so I messaged a few people who are staying in homestays around the neighborhood to see if I could tag along with them for the day. I ate breakfast here, and then my host sister walked me over to another house that was right down the road. Then a bunch of us took a bus to the metro. I will never take a bus in India again. It was so nauseating, crowded, and the men loved to stare. It was very uncomfortable. The metro, although very crowded, makes a lot of sense, so that was fine. It took us two hours to get to our destination, which is crazy considering that it is in the same city.

We went to Akshardham, which kind of resembles the Taj Mahal. It is a huge temple that is beautiful, and lots of tourists come to see it. The brother of one of the other homestays and his cousin, who are both our age, came with us, so they showed us around. We paid 200 rupees (about 4 dollars) for the entire day. That money got us a video, a boat ride, and a light show. It was like a theme park in a temple. It was very confusing, but very entertaining. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but if you type “Akshardham” into google, you will see what it looks like.

Getting back home was a challenge. Taxis wouldn’t pick us up at Akshardham. Taking the metro back was fine, but girls cannot take buses at night, so there was no way to get back from the metro station to our house. We could take rickshaws, even though they are dangerous. We called our host mom and she said that we could take rickshaws and be fine. We were fine, but it was scary. I never thought I would be so uncomfortable, or that getting around would be so difficult. 

February 8th, 2013 – Wedding Crashers

Headed to the gate this morning to meet our ride, and drove off to school. We had a lecture in the morning about how the city of Delhi (both old and new) was designed. Then we broke for tea and snacks. After, we had a lecture by the same person about poverty in Delhi. The lecturer was amazing – he explained everything in a way that everyone could understand even though the subject matter was very complicated, which is very refreshing coming from NYC where everyone likes to use big words and confuse people so that they sound smart.

We went to lunch after that lecture and I just had soup because I wasn’t that hungry. The soup was vegetable wonton…so I ate both the won and the ton! Then we took taxi’s over to Dilli Haat which is the same market that we went to yesterday. The person who started the market, who is also an advocate for social justice, talked to us about the importance of the market and how it brings people together from different castes for one common goal: to sell crafts. We then had time to shop, and I bought a few things, but it was a lot more overwhelming than yesterday because there were so many people there.

Then Jill and I took a rickshaw back to our house and played with our host children for a little. At 8 we headed off to a wedding with our host parents. This wedding was outside. It was like a carnival: there was a moonbounce, a dj, more food than I have ever seen in my life, appetizers, ice cream, cotton candy, popcorn, and about 2500 people. Our entire class was there because two of the homestays are related to the groom, so their families said to invite everyone (including the faculty). Although everyone was looking at the weirdly dressed, awkwardly dancing white people, it was still a lot of fun. We had to leave early because Jill wasn’t feeling so hot, but it was ok because it started getting really cold out. We saw the groom coming in on horses as we were leaving, so it was a great photo opportunity. 

February 7th, 2013 – Spontaneity

Woke up this morning at 7am to be ready for breakfast at 7:30…just 5 hours of sleep but totally worth it to be able to attend the wedding. We ate toast, eggs, jam, and bananas for breakfast. At around 7:45, Abishav who is a 23 year old neighbor picked us up and brought us to his house where he and his parents live. Two other girls from the program are staying with their family, and since we are neighbors, we can commute to class together. Abishav drove us to class (about 45 minutes away by car), because he works in the same area. We listened to really fun Indian pop music in the car on the way.

Today we had a bunch of lectures about how to take effective field notes and conduct observational research. During our first lecture, a marching band was playing really loudly outside of our classroom, and the faculty couldn’t talk over them, so we decided to go outside and join in the fun. We danced with the traveling band for a few minutes and then came back inside…super spontaneous and so much fun! After our lectures and tea break, we headed to lunch. A few of us walked to a nearby market and ate 4 vegetarian dishes that we enormous and really yummy (I just hope I don’t get sick from them. There were a lot of people in the restaurant so we figured it would be ok). For 5 people and 4 huge dishes, it came to about 50 rupees each (which is the equivalent of $1 each for lunch). After lunch we had a learning community session where we talked about how we are all doing so far in the program with our fellow. It was nice to have a short check in.

We had some free time after, so a few of us headed to another market place. I bought lots of fun, very inexpensive stuff! Except one of the merchants gave me fake money for change, and a lot of them try to scam Americans into paying double what others pay. Whatever. We then took rickshaws back to our homestays, and got completely lost along the way. But we finally made it back. We talked with our host brother about his wedding, and we saw his wedding album. We ate dinner around 9pm which was delicious!