India! Where cows have absolute right of way.

We ported in Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal in the India Ocean. India is just so hard to describe… it’s incomparable to anywhere else I’ve ever been.. I tried, I looked all around and tried and tried and came up with it is just completely different. it looks like every picture you’ve ever seen of it, but it’s also more than that. Everything is old nothing is new. There is an extreme difference in rich and poor, I saw no extreme wealth on my trip. It’s crowded and busy and loud but no one is really in a hurry. There’s a lot of hanging out, cooking, living, sleeping on the street. The people are so amazing. So smart. It’s unbelievable, the American mind thinks that as India is a 3rd world country, the people must be 3rd world too, these people have been around for a long time, they aren’t stupid, ah they were so smart! But because they were born in India it is infinity harder for them to make something of their lives than it is for me to do so.

Chennai is the most conservative big city in India, though women have much more equality than in the less conservative north. I saw like 3 or 4 women not wearing saris and 5 girls not wearing school uniforms. I would stare and try and figure out why these 3 or 4 women stood out and looked so different, and it would because they had jeans on! So by the way India is HOT. Much more so in the south and there I was one day in long capris and a long sleeve shirt! I don’t even wear long sleeves in the winter. Lets just say there was sweat. Oh and food is spicy so lets say there was dripping! Haha.

Also I want to say that we were set up to be excited for India, but more so to be very afraid! This is the place to protect your passport, pepto with every meal, long lists of food you can’t eat, do not get separated, India will change your life! you will… you know etc. and to extents that was true, but people were so friendly! And at the end of your conversation they would say, you have an American dollar souvenir for me? and I am dumb and forgot that I got all those one’s out of the bank for stuff like this, but, constant begging and vendors got to be so hard on you (but image how hard it is to beg all day) – it really just hit one of the major things I’ll take away from India – such a range of emotions! India was all over the place, you feel sorry for them, but you can’t give them money and only in the right circumstances food because if you give one thing to anyone you will be swarmed by 20+ kids that had been hiding and the kid you tried to help by giving your apple to will be swarmed and beat up. Or if it’s money – which is a big no – he/she will have to bring it back to who ever manages them, get nothing, and you are propagating the industry, endorsing the deformation of children by their parents so that they can make more money and etc. So you feel sorry, but you feel afraid, because it’s overwhelming and you can get surrounded and lost from your group, and it makes transportation lengthy and hard when people are surrounding your bus and stuff and so India is frustrating. And then there would be a kid who would not leave you personally alone. He would follow you from one sight to the next and throw what he was trying to sell you on your arms or in your pocket and grab your arm and tell you he’s sick and hungry and you’re supposed to just ignore but how can you do that? and you get angry! Like I got really really angry once. This kid followed me all day and would be like remember me? and he was trying to sell something I didn’t want and touching my arms and it was ridiculous. And there would be the ones that would be like but you said maybe later! You’re a liar! You lied to me! you liked to Kumar! Or whatever there name would be. But then you’re seeing such beautiful things and it’s so different that it’s exciting and beautiful. People live such simple lives, dirty basic primitive lives. It’s nuts, I mean the realm of topics to think on relating to this is absolutely never ending, health care? Like dental care – so painful when you have dental problems, do these people have this?? I had a mole removed a year ago, do these people have cosmetic surgery?? Well no. not exactly. They brush their teeth with the water on the side of the curb. Anyway probably my favorite part of India was the range of emotions that you had every moment and over the course of a day, especially fear, honestly I was very much afraid often, because of the passion and the amount of people and the fact that I was so different from everyone around me and… I don’t know there are a few scattered European tourists at these places, but the majority of tourists were Indian, and the majority of Indians never get to see the places I have. It was very frightening and overwhelming and wonderful

So our port! We were in a ship yard, like industrial, large empty warehouses, long dirt road to get out of the port, people standing around staring at you talking to you. oh! Way back there I was trying to get started talking about this by saying how we were so conditioned to be weary, like right before we get off announcement “absolutely do not go to the right of the ship, walk towards gate 7 not gate 5, through the ally between the two warehouses, left and out, do not go to the right – this is a critical security anouncement…” something to that effect and when we get off the ship we’re pointed right. But we manage to get to the left and it’s this long dirt road and the whole way we’re being cajoled to get in this or that cab annddd no one is going to even skim this if I write everything because it’s just so long… mmm well that makes me kind of sad but it would be so hard to write everything. But the main point is that everything was very… secure, by which I mean there were officers with huge guns everywhere, which may have added to the fear factor. But there was a very long signing in and out process for the pier and when we got out even more hecklers everywhere.

Chenni is really… mm well it is were a lot of outsourcing is. So it’s modern, though it doesn’t look it. Interestingly though there’s a company in India outsourcing to the US! Did I mention that?? I think that I did but how nuts is that. so of course we got scammed on a lot of rickshaw fares this whole day and again the last, because Indians like to bamboozle you, but it added to the experience even though I was grossly cheated by several hundred rupees every time I got in a cab.

(I am taking so long to write this journal but I am glad because originally I was giving up hope and just going to outline what I did but now I am reenergized and if it’s not being read by you people in America –haha- at lest I have it for myself. But the point of this brief interjections is that I’m in class right now – architecture NOT getting easier, I am kicking myself not taking CMN classes, yesterday they got out after 10 min and tom they are meeting on the 7th deck for smoothies and cookies ! – but so we just sailed by 2 really cool looking islands! And as they were on our port side – they are African islands!! My table discreetly looked at them through the little telescope (as discreetly as that could be) that my dad sent me – by the way they all want one and I am supposed to ask where you got it Dado? BUT! Cool islands. My ARCH professor is an amazing woman. Almost 90, born in Germany lived there during WWII, had two kids that died fairly young, has traveled everywhere is a religion and science expert, she’s funny, she’s a big inventor, just invented some electric car engine, I already mentioned she built some modern part in the Suez Canal, all sorts of things, she is amazing. But I am not interested in architecture engineering, Jack can do that, I want to look at beautiful buildings and talk about what they look like on the outside, we just had a spot test that included explaining how thunder clouds work... I am just realizing right this second what the heck does that have to do with anything?? I made up a very creative answer that the Stanford engineer next to me scoffed at. Anyway I went to a woman’s working forum/panel thing last night, it was really awesome and inspiring. … by the way, that relates because Doris Wilsdorf my prof was 1 of the 8 women. Anyway, this might be a drawback of waiting so long to write about India.)

So we also learned about the Indian head bobble! It was cool because before our ship cleared two women from the American consulate came on and taught us a bunch (so did a … Yoga troup, and we learned some yoga and I bought 2 posters and a some Yoga dvds… because I love yoga, who wants a yoga poster? This is a test to see who my true yoga friends are and also who/if anyone reads this. he he) and it was really cool because they were cool but the head bobble is this crazy head shake that they all do that means yes and no and maybe and I don’t understand you and sure and ! it was especially apparent in Chennai and on our last day I was very much overwhelmed by the head bobble and wished they would just make up their mind!

So the first day we virtually went on a rickshaw tour! We were hustled into some guy’s rickshaw and he never let us pay (until the end) and kept trying to take us to places we didn’t want to go and waiting for us at stops, there are more rickshaws then people needing them, so it was advantageous for him to do so, even before bamboozling us, but it would have been smarter for us to move on, as we could have negotiated a much lower fair, but how are we supposed to know what stuff costs? We tried our best and it was kind of a relief having a guaranteed means of transportation. Our driver was wearing man wearing a skirt like bottom and with paint all over his face, not at all uncommon, by the way.

So that day we went to a ZOO! As you saw some of my pictures. Our tour guide guy bought himself a ticket – 5 rupees, which is like 15 cents so it was not a big deal. The exchanges is like 39ish to the dollar (by the way when I exchanged back I got 41!! !! !!! which was horrible and I was really pissed. A few people chose India to pay me back what they owed me so I spent a ton of money but whhhhattteevvver I guess I’ll have to restrain myself if Egypt.)

Lunch we ate in a hotel – we were supposed to eat in hotels… everywhere was supposed to be unclean for us but I ended up eating a real meal before I left so that’s a good thing. It was funny because the restaurant we ate at was a Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese food place. Haha I had Thai which was the spiciest thing I’ve had in awhile and I was crying. It was good though.

We also went shopping a lot, I bought a lot of really cool gifts! Everything seems so cool because it’s all handmade and you know it took a lot of time. it was crazy because everyone knows semester at sea – it’s even in the newspaper. And everyone knows that semester at sea comes every 6 monthsish and turns around their economy and it is very interesting to see the effect of SAS on an entire cities economy. I was very happy, I bought a sweet hat.

Went back kind of early because, like I said the port was sketchy and especially would be so in the dark and had dinner on the ship with friend Jackie and laughed so hard I cried and cried because we aren’t allowed to sneak out so much as a sandwich but did so by putting it down our pants, then watched Entourage. Though some people did it, there was no going out in India, places close early, drinking age is actually 25, being drunk is illegal and there’s so much bamboozlement that drinking would be… ridiculous, those who did are really really dumb. Oh also I had to be up and in the student union at 3:45 to leave for my trip! AM!! Can you believe that? traveling to Varanasi took all day. And that is just a thing, like transportation in India is endless, and faulty and time consuming and that is part of it. So about my group – so wonderful! So so much better than my China group. First of all there were about a fourth of the people 25 of us (opposed to 80+). More guys – which is great because guys are generally more chill about things and just their presence makes girls chill out more too. My trip leader was a really relaxed funny guy (instead of the librarians) and India was overwhelming and crazy, people got separated from the group and were late, he didn’t assign dock time and reprimand but went back to find the missing person and got us on our way without wasting time making a big deal of it. The kids on my trip were also really great. So nice! No one really knew anyone and everyone was just there to experience India for themselves, so we all interacted and got along well, it wasn’t really clicky until the end, and of course there were a few oddball people but generally it was a good respectful pretty funny intelligent group. : )

Also I don’t really have that many pictures of India because no liquids or batteries were allowed on flights at all so we had those things in 1 big group bag that we checked on (all 4 of !) our flights and it would always be until we got to our hotel that we had access to those things – including my hand sanitizer and deet so long story short I’m getting malaria, will die quickly because I will have complications from other sanitary related diseases and won’t have many pictures for others to remember me by.

But I wanted to say I was worried about flying in India – which was silly because flights were so nice! Every seat had a tv screen in it with channels for you to watch and so I watched Friends and the Hogans and the Wonder Years, music videos, Cribs, and a few Bollywood films while flying in India! Haha, the Hogans! Honestly. and every single flight, even the hour long ones included meals or snacks – good meals and snacks! Indian food, mostly vegetarian but with deserts too, like the most delicious chocolate brownie, which we just don’t get here at SAS. We get very little free chocolate by the way, so we load up on peanut butter, which is horrible and I am a tub of PB.

So we had a 5 hour layover in Delhi, so we got on a tour bus and went to a nearby largest statue of Shiva ever and our guide was like want to get out? And this man next to me was like ‘no we don’t have our cameras!’ so as this has become a big deal to me I did some yelling about how life is about living now not about pictures and how ridiculous that is, so now I feel kind of bad about that but… as I have said this issue has become a bit of an obsession to me… haha, sooo it was a cool statue. the bathroom there was the first bathroom I have had to turn away from. I usually suck up the holes in the ground and go for it but couldn’t do this one, for various reasons. But the statue was being cleaned, which was interesting because the method was this big bamboo structure built up around it, and someone led a guy on our trip up it, I just walked around and met some people on our trip. It was cool because you don’t really picture temples and really religious things to be… well hectic or in the middle of everything else, but all these places are either right downtown or this one was right (stress right) off this big freeway and so people would motor bike up, brake say a prayer, bike off, that was very cool.

Back at the airport waiting around I got some Baskin Robbins (!) and this girl was like “oh my god is it pasteurized!!! ???!” and I was just so pissed. haha uh well it was dangerous to do stuff like eat ice cream because it has water in it but I guess I was annoyed because this girl was nnnuuutttsss, she was one of the group oddballs that didn’t really go with the flow well and I had already reached breaking point with her by noon our first day. She had already said a million crazy things and I was done with trying to deal with her. Haha uhh… this trip very much helps you learn how to travel well and with different types of people (I hope I have friends on my Egypt trip! I’m nervous.)

So by the way going through security was separated by men and women and women had to go behind a partition when we were scanned for metal and it was really intense, though my ticket read “Emily B” and I never needed my passport, not sure how that would prove me as the rightful emily b anyway but yeah, women behind a curtain was a major cultural difference.

Varanasi was a lot smaller airport. More Muslims, though Varanasi is the most holy Hindu city in the world. And it was AWESOME. First we went to our hotel, kind of a long drive through rural India very cool VERY cool. That night we took and open rickshaw (2 people on the back of a regular guys bike) to river Ganges, it was so cool to be completely in India. Like this was our first experience totally in India not looking down from a bus but with people and noise and shops and other bikes and bumpy roads and everything surrounding you. we went to the night ceremony, which involved a lot of singing and fire, a lot of ceremony, they’ve been doing virtually this same thing forever and it was really cool. I’m not sure exactly what was going on but I think it was along the lines of putting the river to sleep. Our tour guide was kind of creepy and hard to understand. He’d say a really horrible statistic, look away and smile be quiet for at least a minute and then say some other weird thing.

Anyway like I said transportation and organization of transportation always took a long time, and in Varanasi at night there are blackouts. So after the ceremony, in the total dark we are all standing being heckled I am going to say to death for about a half hour. It was horrible but also cool at the same time. it was so different and such a culture shock. It really hit you hard and it was so relieving to finally get on the back of your bike, but then we were still in a traffic jam and still being heckled to buy stuff! It was such a weird feeling ‘escaping’ into the bus or into our walled hotel. It brings a lot of questions and things to think about.

Every day we were on the road by 5am, this first morning was the big one, why one goes to Varanasi, to see the life on the river in the morning. Where people bathe, wash their clothes, swim, cremate their dead, just hang out, everything! It was amazing we rode up and down the river on a big boat and watched them living (which is kind of a strange concept) it was amazing. After that we spent a few hours walking around the city all through these little alleys and cows and people and it was crazy! This is hard to explain but it was probably the best morning of my life because it was so weird. I had no idea where I was but we were just walking around India and seeing things is what it was. And then our guide decided we were going to go into this temple…

We didn’t know what was going on, we were just walking, but we walked past a metal detector in a little doorway and some armed guards. And then our guide told us to go in we had to hand our cameras, any and all bags so we just handed that stuff over to a random guy, and then we went through the 1st metal detector. After a bit we had to take off our shoes and socks, and then wash our hands with water because we had touched our shoes, then we walked a bit more down this ally lined with all these armed guards and there were some holes in the wall and you could see a bunch of rubble and monkeys playing on the rubble and then we went into this little crowded dark room with several guards who were there to check you but they wouldn’t let us in for some reason. And there was yelling in Hindi and ! it was nuts and I had no idea what we were doing really or where we were going or why.

So we had to back up (bare feet walking through stagnant water and whatever else on the ground) and stand in a line (at this point there were less than 15 of us) and it felt like sign our life away, our name address, passport number – which I couldn’t remember ! and then we went back to the temple, the Vishwanath Temple, and it was so crazy… I don’t know how to describe it. We had to get checked again and then it was just overwhelming, this little space, with so many people, all white marble with clean (it was clear at least) water running along the floor. And so many people! And they were all so passionate and I kind of wandered around in a small circle and then got ushered/pushed into this little little room where people were rubbing this hump on the floor and putting flower offerings and other stuff and it was really scary and then I got pushed out of that room and there was just such a high energy and it was really really scary. But amazing to be there. When we left we found out that this Temple is in international news all the time because it’s a huge target of Muslim terrorist attacks! At least once a month someone is shot and killed there. And all the rubble was because it used to be bigger and part of it had been destroyed! This place is the most important Hindu temple in India because the God Shiva resides in like 12 … or 7… ? or … places and this Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi is the number 1 place he resides. So that’s why we had to sign our lives away and get searched, because we could have died and they would’ve had to identify us !! !! ! yikes. it’s crazy how it’s such a significant place and I had no idea but could just feel it! Defiantly a trip maker, the energy was so intense.

I don’t know Varanasi was so cool because it was so real, in New Delhi it was hard to relate because we were in a big bus a lot looking down. That night we got to a seemingly really fancy hotel, but it was government run and pretty much a metaphor for the whole country because once we got into our room it was kind of … well overlooked. There were hairs and no warm water and the power didn’t work after midnight and before 5am, which were the only times we were in the building… but as I said we were hardly there. We got up eeaarrllyy and got on a train to Agra. It was awesome to see the countryside. The people living on the side of the railroad tracks. Just sitting and hanging out, coming out of their houses, going to the bathroom!

We spent the whole day in Agra it was awesome. We went to an old beautiful palace and then later in the day to a giant fort you could see the Taj from. And then we went to the Taj Mahal and it was ammmaaazziiiinnnnggg! We arrived in the late afternoon for sunset to watch the Taj sparkle. It was, like I said, amazing. We sat and took it in for awhile, walked around, walked inside, it was so crowded! Oh so inside are the remains of this leader of India’s woman he loved and the only way to get in and out is through this one little door and it was really hectic. I got lost from my friend and it was scary again! there were all these people taking pictures, though pictures weren’t allowed, and an armed guard telling them to stop but they would do it anyway. And I was getting pushed and scared and this guy said to me ‘something something “God has given you so much.” And it really meant a lot to me, because I was like, yeah… you’re right. So I sat for awhile and watched the sunset behind the Taj Mahal, and then I bought a Taj Mahal snow globe.

We spent most the last day traveling, I bought a Indian Cosmopolitan magazine out of vending machine and the flight was, as the others were awesome. We got back to the ship right around 2pm so I went out for my first authentic authentic Indian meal, walked around Chennai and along the beach (actually really very dirty) and went into the Indian Ocean! !! well by way of the Bay of Bengal. It was a great day! And India was a wonderful country!

(bet you wish I could rap up 2 days in 2 paragraphs every entry eh? eh he he EGYPT TOMORROW !! !! !! !!! ! well almost tomorrow, technically the day after tomorrow.)

Today I got up at before 6 to see us enter into the Red Sea, on our left was Africa! My first glimpse. On the right was Yemen! We were closer to Yemen and could see some houses and a light house! I used the telescope thing my dad sent me finally : ) it was really windy but it was cool and you could see the moon and the sun and it was awesome! Also awesome was last night I did Yoga on the back of the ship and as we were doing it the sun went down and the moon came out right off the horizon directly behind the wake of our ship, which has been enormous lately because we are again going at full speed to avoid pirates! Passing by Yemen is very dangerous for us. There are captains and crew members patrolling the decks the past 30 hours on lookout. I don’t know if I mentioned this but 2 weeks ago a ship was machine gunned and just yesterday the man who bombed a U.S. ship 10 years ago was released from Yemen prison! Just in time for us to drive by I guess. so this morning a little fisher boat, 3 guys in it was speeding toward us, it seemed like they wanted to beat the ship! Which was crazy, but in the end they pulled along side us and I think they just wanted to catch our waves or something, but it was kind of a weird scary moment where I thought maybe I should run inside, because I was standing against the railing and had they whipped out a big gun I’d have been right in line. It kind of goes along with how they have been conditioning us to be so afraid because we just waved with these guys and it was really cool, but at the same time we are in a really dangerous area and it’s good to be aware. I am feeling very out of touch with what’s going on at home, all the LA kids have been sad and worried about their mansions burring down, and there are a lot of them on this ship. Global studies has been cool, learning a lot about the middle east and Arabic nations. Very hostel though! Obviously there are some strong opinions surrounding these issues and we’ve had one very aggressive speaker from Palestine and our regular core teacher Mac has worked in foreign affairs his whole life and is very pro imperialism’esq but everyone speaking has been fairly liberal and there has still been a lot of confrontation! Kind of stressful and overwhelming but very interesting. I can’t wait to start learning about and to be in Egypt! I’m going to buy another round of post cards I think. and hopefully send my existing ones from Thailand and India!

So many exciting days on the ship! Lots of good food. Lots of Sex and the City and Friends watching. And warming up for the sea Olympics! Which are tomorrow! And I am in the scavenger hunt, and we had coin wars and I don’t know who won yet but we are the Yellow Sea and I donated the thousand 200 dong bills I got when someone screwed me over in Vietnam – 200 dong is a worthless amount of money (16,000 to a dollar) that a lady gave me as change to be mean. But! It really helped a lot. And yesterday! We sailed by a volcano island! A VOLCANO ISLAND! It was ERUPTING!! Lava spewing all around up in the air! Like really vibrant red lava sloshing around! Man. And tonight we’re having a bar-b-q and a HALOWEEN DANCE! !! !! !! and I’m being a PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH!! Ahhhh. Wonderful.