Jan 15 A Fun Day

SOME THOUGHTS
One of the most striking things to me about India is that there are people all over the place. I now understand something that an Indian man told me before I came to India. He said when he came to the US he wondered where all the people were. He had a friend who was sent as a missionary to the US somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia and he didn’t last long because he was really bored. He was not used to being in so much space with so few people. He only lasted a few weeks. India holds 1/6 of the world’s population so there are just people everywhere like you wouldn’t believe! I mean EVERYWHERE. Everywhere you look there is a person or group of people.
It was also very interesting to me that there are usually many people doing one simple job. There are lots of jobs that we just don’t have much of in the US. Everyone with even the smallest amount of money has a driver. It is very cheap and traffic is horrible. Heather has a friend who recently moved here from the US because her father works with the World Food Bank and her driver took us home after we went to the Gandhi museum together. Also, when I went to the big mall, City Walk, every single store had a security guard! Every store. Our apartment complex has men who sit at the gate each day to lift the gate. Since there are so many people labor is very cheap and there are many low paying jobs. I mean I ride around the city in auto richshaws each day and each trip costs from 40-100 rupees. The exchange rate is around 49 rupees to a dollar so its much cheaper than a taxi in New York!

There are things about the city that just hit me. Over and over I am reminded: Oh my gosh I’m in India! It’s a thrilling thought. I’ve wanted to come to this side of the world for so long. Sometimes its exciting. But its also difficult and very strange. Today we gave our richshaw driver one American dollar because he wanted to see what it looked like. He tried to give it back but we just let him keep it. It totally made his day. He probably doesn’t know what the exchange rate is, but when he finds out that the dollar is worth almost 50 rupees he’ll probably be really excited. India is a neat place. The culture and mindset is so different


EXCURSION

Today I went with Heather and Jake to the Lotus Temple and to Iskon Temple. We went to the Lotus Temple last weekend but it was not opened to go inside so we went back. It is supposed to be a temple for all religions to come and worship. According to Bella, most Indians believe in god and simply want others to believe in some sort of god. It does not matter which one, they respect all, but you must believe in a god. Inside the temple was like the inside of a lotus. It was incredible, but not good for sound. People were singing inside and the echo was terrible. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures inside, but I have included some pictures from the outside. It really is an amazing building. We had to take off our shoes to go inside. When we left several people asked to take pictures with us! It was really funny. And several people took pictures without asking. Before this, I’ve never been stared at so much in my life! People just stare all the time. Its funny. In the US I’m not that interesting, but here I am very rare. People are just fascinated, especially when they find out that I am from America.

From the Lotus Temple we could see another temple so we asked about it. It was Iskon Temple which is a huge and beautiful Hindu temple. We walked over to it. The walk was eye opening. We cut through a park and there were homes outside which broke my heart. There is a picture below. There were children playing and a woman with a basket on top of her head. Right behind this huge and probably expensive temple there were lots of people living in this park.

The day got even more interesting when we approached the temple. The guards were fascinated by my camera and kept asking us to take pictures with and of them. They wouldn’t let us go in until we’d taken a ton of pictures! They giggled and thought it was the greatest thing ever. They asked us to send the pictures to them and gave me an address. If I can do it I’m definitely going to send the pictures.

Once we finally went in we had to wait about ten minutes before we could take off our shoes and talked to an Indian man who was visiting his adult children in New Delhi. He was very nice and spoke great English. We asked many questions about the US and then eagerly told us about places in India we should see. We walked around, trying to be respectful. We didn’t want to offend anyone and we didn’t know very much about Hinduism so we tried to discretely and respectfully walk around the outside. We stepped inside just for a moment to see and then came back out. I was struck by the beauty of it. It was comparable to a huge Catholic church in Europe. As we started to go a man caught us and invited us in. He showed us around and explained to us who the gods were. There was some type of ritual thing going on inside so we observed. It was beautiful inside too. Paintings on the ceilings of gods and there were three huge altar-type things where there were statues of the gods. I took one picture inside of one of the shrines. He then asked if we wanted to be blessed. Heather and I declined but Jake did so. I am a Christian so I did not want to participate. I enjoyed seeing the temple and learning about it, but I did not want to participate in the ritual. I think that it is very important to know about and understand other religions. It helps one to better understand his or her own religion and to respect others. We were appreciative for the tour and thanked him on our way out. Hinduism is a strange religion to me. It is very mystical. The temple, though similar in certain aspects, was very different than anything I had ever seen before.

MY PLACEMENT

Today was much better than the past two days. The main teacher who has been so difficult to deal with was not there so that was the main reason. There was a new lady there who is 24. She was really nice. She couldn’t speak much English so we could not communicate much but she was a pleasure to work with. Today I did not plan anything I just helped kids one on one with what they were doing and tried to smile a lot. At the end Jackie and I took pictures and unfortunately I don’t really have good ones because they just crowded around and started yelling, but next week I am going to try again. I wanted to post some videos but unfortuantely the site isnt  letting me post them so I will figure how to and do that soon.This weekend I am going to talk to my sister who is training to be an elementary school teacher for some ideas. Next week is a new week.



INTERVIEWS

Today was a great day overall, but not as good for my project. I was excited to talk to the head of Mobile Creches today as Jaggi told me I would, but then it did not work out. He has scheduled it for next week. I am not sure what happened but he has gotten it arranged for next week as well as a meeting with a leader of Vidya, which is the NGO that Daniel Lala works with. I also was supposed to meet with Bella today but both of the meeting times we had picked I came by to discover she was not there. Indians have a very different view of time than Americans. They are late for everything by hours! They truly have no sense of time! I will hopefully talk to her tomorrow and then have several appointments next week.