"an ethnic rajasthani resort"

to all of you who watch south park, i went to hyderabad's own casa bonita tonight.

dhola ri dhani is a rajasthan themed dinner extravaganza. in addition to a monster meal served on the floor, there was:

- a magic show
- a puppet show with flaming puppets
- folk dancing with a guy dressed in a sari
- drumming
- henna
- astrology
- a jungle with dinosaurs (seriously)

etc etc. it was truly mad. we went there for our farewell dinner .. yes, i'm almost done here, in fact i had my first final today. i'll be outta here in about 10 days, hopefully going up north to dharamsala or kashmir and then checking myself into an ashram for a few days to figure out myself before i leave.

lots has been going on, as usual, but i'll write more about that later. i did get in the social pages of the india times though which is awesome, my picture is right there amongst the celebrities and other hot shots. yeehaw.

loves my rupee

a mango costs a rupee!

ONE RUPEE!

that's like, 4 cents!

why we study abroad..

link 1: the real reason
link 2: more interesting facts about our kind

surya namaskar

As much as I gripe about living in the middle of nowhere out here, it can be pretty fantastic at times. This morning, much like most other mornings here, went something along the lines of:

- convince myself to get out of bed at 6:50 am
- wash my face, walk for 5 minutes to the yoga studio
- on the way there, play with the new absolutely adorable puppies for a bit
- 1 hour of yoga (new years resolution will be completed by march and i'll have 10 months to celebrate)
- walk back, play with puppies again and hold them for little girls so they can pet them
- breakfast!
- naptime before class!

It's like a little mini awesome day at the beginning of every day. And there's definitely not 10 inches of snow on the ground which, as much as it pains me to be missing such a glorious demonstration of the radness of winter, is actually kind of a nice experience.

Goan Wild, or Seeing the ___ Side of India

Wheeoooo more fun frolicking in India! Contrary to my natural tourist instinct, we did a whole lot of nothing in Goa. It was absolutely fantastic. The place really does not fit into India at all – plenty of non-Indian tourists all over, including a top choice collection of the locals comprised of tourists who never left. There are also more signs in Hebrew than in Hindi or any other Indian language around the beach.

Life in Goa is exceptionally slow, a philosophy we took to heart and applied immediately. Armed with a rented car, we spent most of our time bummin around beaches with short trips to other beautiful stretches of sand and trees, to an open air trance party, and eating. Oh, did we eat, it was mostly just a trip of killing time between meals. Fresh fruit all over the place, great Indian food, delicious grilled freshly caught fish, pizza, hummous (a treat surprisingly high on my list of things I miss), and more more more.

It was really strange being around so many white people though and not getting stared at all the time for being different. Goa was a strange mix of Indian tourists walking around in all their clothes, beautiful Israelis wearing nothing, and the local hippies who were just livin out their dreams. Can’t say I feel the need to get back to Goa anytime soon, but I would certainly never turn down a trip there.

Relaxing as it was, I do wish we’d been a little more proactive about getting out and about and seeing stuff. My highlight was definitely on the last day when we started walking up a trail that led into the woods from the beach. We passed some little pools in a stream where people were taking morning baths and washing clothes, and eventually ended up at the most perfect hippy hideout I’ve ever seen. About halfway up a hill, in the middle of a beautiful forest, about 8 hippies were living under a huge banyan tree, just chillin and smoking pot. One girl was sifting through the ashes of last nights fire, leaving behind only the fine grey powder in the pit – it was a very strange place. (Pictures soon to be uploaded) We kept going up to the top and ended up following a dried up river bed which was lots of fun to climb. We also made a friend for the day – a stray dog whose territory we must’ve been tramping around in hung out with us, I think he was having a good time.

Kya aor? Decent week in there, nothing particularly exciting. One of the girls on my program who worked in a salon for a few years gave me a much needed haircut. It’s somewhere between a mullet and an ‘I cry alone in my room every night’ hipster kind of thing. Doesn’t really matter though because my hair just does its own thing anyway.

Last weekend was great, I went with my buddy to his little cousin’s sacred thread ceremony. This is most easily explained as being a Hindu Bar Mitzvah, according to my understanding. This little 10 yr old Brahmin (priestly caste) boy was being initiated into his journey to the priesthood. They shaved his head except for 5 tufts left to represent the 5 virtues, got his ears pierced, and they dressed him as a sage and he had to collect alms from his family. Then they fed us. They fed us so much, ay carumba.

Following this we went to my buddy’s grandma’s house a few towns over. We had a great Indian day – after the ceremony we had a fun train ride through the country side, more food, then walked through a night market where I bought a lunghi and a pancha (both are fabrics that men wear wrapped around kind of like sarongs – lunghis are pyjamas / laborer clothes, panchas are the traditional south Indian legwear), Indian stylin’ sandals, radios (a great purchase), sweets, and we looked at saris and cricket bats. It was a good time.

It’s been a pretty fun week on campus, too. Mostly because we had a rave on campus in a dusty field. Our generally peaceful campus became a crazy party for a night as a couple hundred students went out to bust moves to mostly bollywood tunes with a few strange remixes of the stuff from good ol’ u s of a as well. Most of the entertainment here was provided by the hordes of really drunk Indian men jumping around and yelling, carrying each other above their heads, and sweating a lot. Girls who get down seemed to be in short supply, so when 2 of the girls from my program got going, they were each surrounded by their own personal circle of about 30 guys, even though there was only about 10 ft between them.

I had my first test too, in my political science. Keep in mind that I’m at a graduate school here. The course (“paper”) is on India’s foreign policy, and we had to briefly explain Nehru’s rationale for choosing non-alignment, and then explain whether or not we agree with him. An opinion paper for a test? Oh, India..

Met a couple more people here, some very nice girls. One is from the northeast part of India, where they get treated pretty terribly by the central government. She’s from a community that lives in the mountains that is slowly going extinct. I also met a couple of KGB babes from Russia. They went to KGB school – one is fluent in Hindi, and they had to study things like psychology and the like to prepare them for KGB services. You think the Cold War’s over, Russia’s just warming up for round two.

So it’s been another weekend, this one no less interesting and full of stories than the rest. Most notably, I went into the old city on Friday, something they told us explicitly not to do. It’s a special day for Muslim worship, so there were cops swarming the place, and the riot squad was out too, decked out in blue camoflauge (did anyone tell them Hyd is landlocked?). I have also located my favourite block in Hyd – there’s a small park with a clock tower with key & lock stalls as well as bird sellers around it (the birds are rad, such beautiful colours). There’s also a pretty mosque across the street, delicious samosas, and meat vendors across another street, where there are goats, chickens, and children running around all yelling loudly. Not to be outdone, the various salesmen of various things call out and compete for your attention over the racket of the animals and kids. All of this is put together over the beautifully orchestrated traffic noise and chanting from the mosque into one hell of a symphony.

Yesterday / last night was a pretty memorable one – a few of us went into town to go see a friend and so one girl could get her hair cut. Well getting there turned out to be an ordeal as we had to take 2 shared autos, then get a little yellow auto, who took us to the wrong place. When we asked him to take us to the right place or at least show us how to get there, he said he had to go pick up his kid from school. I only handed him 30 rupees as I was not about to give this dick the 60 rupees we had agreed on for our destination because we weren’t at our destination. He wasn’t about to accept this and started yelling at me, so I started staring him down. At this point we had attracted a crowd of onlookers from the bus stop who were very much enjoying seeing the farangis who can’t speak telugu fighting with the driver. I didn’t really feel like walking away from the driver and risking him getting violent, as I wasn’t sure who our audience would side with if it came to that, so I gave him the remaining 30 rupes, put a curse on him, and watched his thieving ass drive away. We got directions from someone who said our destination was a landmark and anyone should know it, so we got in another auto and he took us to the wrong place, again. But at least we were closer, so one auto ride later we were finally where we wanted to be and eating much deserved ice cream.

Next few hours were peaceful and enjoyable.

Then we go out for dinner and it’s four restaurants before we find one we’re satisfied with, but the meal is delicious. So now it’s 11:30 pm and we’re a few hours late to meet up with our friends who had gone out, but we decided to go find them anyway because they had rented a taxi for the night and could probably give us a ride home to our middle of nowhere campus. We find them at the Taj Krishna hotel, the most deluxe hotel in the city, on their way out from Ahula, the nicest club in the city. The bar is just closing, because that’s what they do here at midnight. I meet some Indian dad and his son who are from Boston and the dad is looking to party and show his kid a good time (he was sweet), and even offered to have us come back to booze at his place, but we (now I realize regretfully) declined, and instead went to a penthouse apartment to have one more drink before going home.

4 hours later, at around 4 am, our taxi has gone home already with some people who didn’t want to stay out, and we need to find a ride home. Two guys we know offer to take us to food and an auto stand where we can probably catch something. So we get street dosas which were delicious and really fun to get from some random cart down some random street. Then I’m off to go wake up auto drivers to try and find someone who will take us.

We get one, and we’re on our way, and this is where the night gets interesting. We’re driving along and suddenly I hear the girl next to me screaming, and I quickly realize that a motorcycle has pulled up along side us and one of the riders has grabbed her purse. Luckily they didn’t get it, and we’re all kind of reeling from this looking forward to getting home and into our beds finally when suddenly something smashes against the side of the auto. It sounds like a glass bottle and then we realize that we’re all covered in egg.

5 am, we get home and I finally see my glorious and beautiful bed. After comparing stories with another guy in the house who spent his night with his friend talking their way out of police fines, my bed and I are reunited and life is good.

Plenty more has been happening here but I’m sure you’re bored of this right now. I have to give a presentation to Indians about Gandhi’s non-violence philosophy in my English class this week, which should be interesting as I’m the last person who should be addressing them about such a topic, so I’m off to do that. Leaving on Friday for Kerala, the state who has proclaimed itself “God’s Own Country”! Looking forward to 8 days of chillin on a raft, wildlife sanctuaries, ayurvedic massages, and visiting Jew Town (yes that’s where the synagogue is and I couldn’t be more excited). There’s also a huge festival in honour of Shiva while were there, and I’m hoping to see some nayyam or whatever it’s called – these spirit possession dances they do. Zabardast!

p.s. turns out Barack Obama is the nicest guy ever: http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

so perhaps you've been wondering what's been up over here

well, last weekend we went on an organized trip with the group to Chennai and Pondicherry, former french colonies. it was very strange to see and hear French in India. the local authorities do a good job of keeping the streets where the tourists hang out looking perfect and french. we were mostly doing more rural stuff, such as a visit to auroville.

what a weird place.

a more logical but not chronological explanation of the trip may be in order.

so we visited the ashram of the late sri aurobindo, a philosopher who has influenced a great number of indians as well as some of the new age types back in the good ole u s of a. he died though, and "THE MOTHER" took over. an indian woman born in france and raised as such, she devoted her life to sri aurobindo and took care of his ashram for him (strangely enough, her remains are enterred in a big shrine in the main meditation area), established the education centre (the only people i saw there was a big crowd of funny looking french tourists attending a presentation of dynamised water [explained to me as enlightened and smart water that has 'listened' to mozart and bach]), and also established auroville.

auroville is a small village built to put the ideals of sri aurobindo and THE MOTHER into practice. there are no laws or politics, supposed to be no money, and other such communal values. it is technically outside the jurisdiction of the indian government i think. it is about 50% indian and 50% white - the foreign population now experiencing some poverty because they came here decades ago and have now run out of money and don't have useful skills (the communal thing didn't work out so well). there's also the Matrimandir (http://www.worldspirit.org.uk/images/india-matrimandir.jpg) - we didn't go to it but it's the meditation spot for the whole area. auroville is also surrounded by a poor indian population that is hired to do work around the village.

we visited a potter there who doesn't subscribe to the values of the community as such but chose it as a place where she could develop her pottery as an art form. interesting tidbits from our visit: contrary to THE MOTHER, she pays for things with rupees. the locals sometimes set up money-less relationships where they just trade things, but generally, she can't afford products such as the local rice because it sells for so much. she also couldn't afford her own pottery if she were to buy it in a store. she also knows a couple of murderers who live around her.

moral of the story, it was very interesting. fun to visit, might be a bit weird to live there, but cool that some people have made it their home sweet home.

just in case you're interested, i haven't read these entries so they may contradict everything i've come to understand, but it may give you a better sense of the dealy-o:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroville
enjoy!

we did a lot of cultural stuff, the most outstanding by a long shot was a visit to a rural school that both gives kids of lower casts or who need shelter a standard education as well as teaches them kuttikathak dance. they put on a performance of tagores 'deliverance' for us, and hot damn it was amazing. the makeup was unbelievable and these kids did a truly impressive job. seems like a pretty cool place - there were also a few people from switzerland there who were around to give the kids a seminar in acrobatics!

we also visited many temples, a sari workshop, a brahmin vedic school, and a church-complex on the beach in chennai. whoa, weird. neon lights, a meditation room, brides in saris.. we were there on a sunday so it was pretty bumpin', and it was definitely strange to see the indian interpretation of christianity.

rounded it all off with dinner at a diner on the beach (i had a HAMBURGER! sorry, india), where there was a cute little baby monkey hangin out.

last week, i didn't have class for most of the day, so i went in to the old city and tried to get lost. damn it was fun. there were so many beautiful mosques and temples, and i stumbled across such crazy stuff - meat markets, a series of stalls selling all kinds of locks, burqa shops, and all sorts of animals, people, and buildings. i was able to butcher enough hindi to make sense out of what was going on around me! i'm starting to feel comfortable here in terms of being in the city and getting around. (this might be dangerous.) i'm starting to make sense out of the kind of mentality that is needed to succeed here, but there's clearly still a lot left to grapple with.

things have also been pretty fun around campus. had a very interesting discussion with a poli sci guy and this one cat who's renounced paying for stuff and the like and lives as though he's already reached enlightenment. i'm not going to be able to explain this very well, but basically he sees us all as being enlightened and we become more so through our experiences and mistakes. i've had a very interesting past few weeks as i learn more about the immensely diverse perspectives on life and what it means to be in this world. i'm in a class called modern indian thought and we've been learning about hinduism - i had no idea. apparently, putting judaism, christianity, and islam under one banner would be truer than the range of things that are commonly called 'hinduism'. no one knows for sure where the concept of castes came from, and it's hard to tell how prevalent it is here. it's sort of like the concept of race back home, but less easily distinguishable.

i think the reason i still feel somewhat out of the loop here has a lot to do with my completely different background. a big element of that is time - westerners view time as a linear thing, and as such, deadlines, appointments, and the like are much more strict, and the concept of life is also linear. the indians have a cyclical view on time, an explanation of which is unsurprisingly beyond me, but i'll get back to you on that one soon.

i've been making friends with some of the yemeni guys (their tea and coffee is DELICIOUS!). one of them is really funny, he's always making fun of the indians (velcome, vhat? vater, etc.). he used to be on the yemeni national soccer team! been chillin with them though, learning crazy yemeni card games and the like.

this weekend i'm going to goa, a portugese colony in the good ol' days, the hippy refuge of the world when san francisco couldn't cut it anymore in the 60s and 70s. not sure what we're going to do there yet, but my plans are:
- rent a scooter
- find a beautiful beach
- eat a fish
- meet a hippy
- visit a spice plantation
- get an elephant shower / ride an elephant / kick it with elephants
it's a 16 hour bus ride each way which should be a great time.

suggest yourself relax

things are starting to get interesting here. 2 weekends ago a bunch of us set out on our first trip within india. it randomly turned out to be a holiday and thus a long weekend here. even though i feel like they probably have the same holidays every year, they still can't manage to schedule them in advance. thus, the friday before the weekend even the professors didn't know which days they were going to have and not have classes. they said we would have monday off so we traveled from sat - mon, but when we got back it turned out that there were classes on monday and tuesday was the day off for the festival.

as my yoga teacher always says in his excellent accent and pretty good english, "suggest yourself relax". this is the motto that we have all realized is the only way to really deal with india - there's no way of knowing exactly what's going on, and it's best to just take a seat and figure it all out later.

so anyway, the trip. all the trains and buses were full of people going to their villages for the holdiays, so we had to show up to the train station to get on a more local train that they just sell tickets to until it leaves. thus, the train was pretty full.

got to warangal, found our hotel, and went to the thousand-pillared temple. very beautiful and very old - 1163 ad to be exact. it was hard to focus on the temple though because we were immediately swarmed by around a hundred school kids who all wanted to meet us and take pictures with us. (pictures in my album) there was a small group of girls who kept following us and we didn't know why until we realized they were daring each other to touch us. it's strange being white here.

early the next morning we went to vijayawada. a relatively uneventful train ride - the highlight was probably the guy sitting across from me who played music on his phone every time we slowed down - the only 2 songs he had were 'we will rock you' by queen and some early backstreet boys song. it was a strange soundtrack to have in india.

after getting rejected at a restaurant where we sat down and they refused to serve us, we found a restaurant and took out our aggression as we feasted in the 'fancy dinning room'. we had heard the undavalli cave temple was beautiful, so we got in rickshaws and asked them to go. they didn't seem too confident about it, but off we went.

imagine our surprise when they pulled up to the police station, got out to talk to the officers, who then came towards us looking very serious and asking us for our "papers".

i don't really understand why because i thought it was a big tourist site and it's just outside the city, but the rickshaw drivers had no idea where this place was. the "papers" the cops were asking for was our guide book with the name of the place. so after doubling the fare our drivers took off again, got lost again, and took us down a bumpy road (it's amazing what you can do with three little wheels, makes you wonder why anyone in the states would ever need an suv) past an onion farm and a big banana plantation.

we made it though, and it was certainly amazing. don't know how to put it in words so check my pictures. i met a guy there named sandeep who really wanted to show me around a bit. i followed him for a bit but then went to join my crew while he and his two friends stood awkwardly around. in the end, as they were about to leave, he asked me for my phone number. as i was giving it to him i realized how bad of an idea it probably was. it's probably good that i didn't fake number him because he texted me right away with a very strange poem about friendship and came back to make sure i got it. then he left for real and i waved to him and his friends as three big guys crammed onto a scooter and scooted off.

as we were on our way out of the grounds, surprise, a class of school kids! you'll never guess what they wanted to do. so we took a few pictures, told them where we're from, etc. during all this chaos, guess who showed up! sandeep came back, having picked flowers for us all! so we said bye to sandeep and were saying bye to the school kids when they offered us a ride into town. with no plans in mind we piled on to their school bus and the serenaded us all the way back to town. well actually we were driving in the absolute wrong direction but we figured something would work out eventually and so we had fun with the school kids and then got dropped in a suburb that evidently never sees white people on its streets. we found the right bus though to get back, transferred to another bus. everyone was very helpful - the whole front of the bus was trying to help us figure out where to get off, the bus driver even stopped the bus for us so we could figure out what was going on.

that night, kai and i left the girls watching tv to go out and explore. (it's amazing how few looks just two white guys got compared to when we had 6 girls with us.) we found a little wine shop and bought some beers and went back into a very dimly lit little bar where they brought us snacks (mostly chicken bones with a bit of grisly meat and tons of spice paste). we met a couple of the local friendlies who provided us with plenty of tips and entertainment.

the next day we took a 2 hour bus ride though beautiful countryside to go find "the definition of awkward" (- davita). we didn't know exactly what we'd find but we wanted to get out of the city and found this side-trip in our guide book. turned out there wasn't a whole lot goin on there but we spent a bit of time at the museum about the 27 m buddhist stupa that was once there - apparently this place (amaravathi) was very important in the development of buddhism in india, but you wouldn't know it. but it was a very nice day, great to get out of cities, and fun to be off the beaten track.

early the next day we came back on a surprisingly empty train! 6 uneventful, spacious, and beautiful hours later we rolled up to hyderabad, happy to be home. on the way back we talked with an ayurvedic doctor who told us all about the many uses of cow dung and cow urine. she also told us how the exact place that we had just come from was the best place to be that night for the festival - apparently they make sweets with freshly harvested rice and ghee, and light the fields all around the town on fire after having harvested them! wild.

but we were back in hyderabad, so the next day we went to the crafts village to check out some kite flying, sand decorations, and other fun cultural stuff. it was all great, but the kite aspect of the festival was truly amazing - the skies were all dotted with kites being flown from roofs in every direction we looked, it was really amazing. they use a special kind of thread that is covered in powdered glass so that kids can cut down each others kites (estimates are that around 300 pigeons were killed by said threads - they don't mess around here).

last week was relatively uneventful compared to the weekends so i won't waste space. saturday was absolutely one of the craziest days of my life though in terms of contrasts. we all got on a bus at 9:30 am to go to the MV foundation girl's camp - a camp where they take young girls who are child labourers in their villages or who need shelter from abusive homes - and give them 6 mos - 1 yr of education, enough to catch them up so that they can keep going to school somewhere. the foundation tries to get all kids in schools and to end child labour, and considers any kid who's not in school as a labourer.

two of the girls told us their stories about how they got there, and they were incredibly powerful. these poor girls talked about losing parents, abusive homes, getting married at age 12, running away from home, and committing suicide. we spent the rest of our time there playing with all the girls though, which was a ton of fun and it was great to see even the girls who had told us their stories still having a good time and not having totally lost their innocence and ability to feel young. we taught them 'head and shoulders knees and toes', duck duck goose, and the boogie woogie and they taught us dances about rain and village life and such.

a few hours later, we were on our way to this guy's penthouse to party. his family owns the building so he has the top floor to himself to throw parties - it's furnished with a bathroom, a bar, 2 sofas, speakers and a sound system, and a lamp - streamlined for the weekends (which last all week for these people). so we hung out there for a bit and then went to the nicest club in the city at an absolutely beautiful hotel. since we were with a local movie star we all walked right in, past everyone, to our reserved vip area - couches right on the dance floor with plenty of free bottles of vodka. as usual we were the life of the party and took control of the dance floor for the night. once it closed we went back to the penthouse for a bit before going home.

the best part of the night was actually back on campus, where a couple of us who still had some energy went to the field at 4 am to go heckle with the students at the cricket tournament that had been going on all night (and proceeded to go on for the next few days).

so while the day was of course a ton of fun from start to finish, i've never gone between such extremes in a society in so little time. it was one of those 'holy shit india' moments for sure.

i think that's enough for now, more to come soon!

a booming good time

I haven’t really been able to sleep through the night this past week, which is very annoying. Maybe the jet lag is making me a light sleeper, but I’ve been woken up in the wee hours by the most random things. Monday and Tuesday, there were mosquitos buzzing around my head. Wednesday, in an effort to keep them away, I had my fan on, and I woke up cold (yes, cold in India). Yesterday the heavyweight championships of dogs was taking place outside of my window, and all of these stray dogs were brawling over the heaps of trash outside my building. This morning takes the cake though – I woke up to a series of explosions. There’s a lot of rocks around Hyderabad so when they do construction they have to blast the rock to clear it and I’m pretty much used to the sound of explosions around the city by now, but it was just strange to wake up to rattling windows.

I think there’s also something living in my air conditioner, as I can hear it burrowing, even though I’m on the third floor. I have to give it a couple of raps every now and then to make it go somewhere else. It could be anything, which is very exciting.

This past week has been crazy stressful – there are tons of classes here that seem interesting but there’s no logical system in place for organizing them. Classes change times without notice, professors may or may not show up but you still have to wait around at least 40 minutes, and they might meet m/t, m/w, t/th, fr/sat, or any other random combination, making it excessively hard to fit them together.

A lot of the classes do actually seem pretty good, so that’s a plus, it will be fun learning about India through them. One that I definitely won’t be taking though am kind of curious about is Gay Indian Literature. I went to the first class to check it out, and the professor might be the gayest and most perverted man I’ve ever met. I think the best way to describe him is that he’s incredibly cheeky. Anyway, at the next class, I didn’t go because I had a conflict, but apparently he asked “where is that little Canadian boy?” and went on to explain to the class of about 15 people how he thought I looked very cute in my pants but wished that they hadn’t told me it’s not appropriate to wear shorts here so that he could check out my legs. According to some people who know more about him, if I took his class, there’s a more than 100% chance that he would invite me to come over and sleep at his house. Gay culture is pretty marginalized in India, hence why straight guys will cruise around holding hands and putting their arms around each other (they do it all the time here), and apparently the university just sort of turns a blind eye to this guy and his big bag of personality.

Having a great time though – last weekend was a winner. On Saturday a couple of us went out to Lingampally to find a Hindu temple we’d seen earlier. It was closed, but around the corner there was an elementary school that was just getting out. First we were waving at them in their courtyard, then suddenly there were 10 of them on our right, then 20 on our left, then 30 on our right, then we were just getting straight up swarmed by these little munchkins who wanted to shake our hands and pose for pictures (they get a huge kick out of seeing their pictures on digital cameras).

That was definitely really exciting, and it’s funny how big of a kick they get out of foreigners here. Random strangers will always ask us to pose for pictures for us and people always want to shake my hand. I’m a freakin VIP over here.

Next day we took a bus tour of the city and saw a couple of cool things briefly – the Qutb Shahi tombs, HEH the Nezam’s palace (quite a construction), some more tombs, and the light and sound show at Golconda Fort – a super sweet place with a super tacky show.

Last night we went out to the F Bar – I think it stands for “Fashion”. Everything there was really cool – three years ago. The music was extra-dated, which was really entertaining. It was actually pretty expensive by Indian standards, so we were cruising with the high rollers last night. We also had our own car and driver for the night, cause we’re classy like that. Chetan talked to him in Telegu and apparently for 1000 rupees ($25) he’d let us drive the car around, and if we got pulled over we’d just have to pay the copper another 1000 rupees. This place is crazy corrupt.

So Tuesday is a big kite flying holiday, which is awesome, but somehow they forgot to mention this to us. I feel like this is probably something that happens every year, yet NOBODY knows if class is canceled for it or not, not even the teachers. The holiday is on Tuesday, but I think classes are canceled on Monday and not Tuesday – we’re all learning very rapidly to just stop worrying and let things work themselves out here.

In honour of this holiday, we’re taking our first trip! We were going to go to these crazy caves but alllllll the trains and buses filled up so we’re going to do a more local circuit and go to see some temples and a wildlife sanctuary and stuff.

it's a dog eat dog world, literally.

Two nights ago, a group of us went out to go see what we could find in terms of nightlife. We went to Banjara Hills – the ritzy area of Hyderabad – and went to a hookah bar for dinner and kickin’ it. Definitely interesting to see, but what made the trip unique was our experience with the auto-rickshaws. Right off the bat, going through a kind of slummy area near campus, we’re pretty sure we saw two dogs eating another dog.

As we kept going, we got stuck in some traffic, which was a prime opportunity for the local children to come swarm our rickshaw and beg for money. Being the only white people in a million mile radius, swarm they did. On both sides, they were touching their hands to their mouths and then to our feet, which is the most degrading thing they can do to themselves in this society. These kids were probably about 6 years old, and they were fighting over the little bit of food that they got from someone on a scooter, right in the middle of a very busy road.

The mornings have been much more uplifting though – I had my first yoga class at the centre on campus yesterday, and it was great. Classes are 6 days a week, and apparently after a week I should be able to actually do some of the poses! There was a girl there who was in lotus position upside down, so we’ll see if I make it that far. I kicked it up a notch today and am going to try and get myself to the 6 am class 6 days a week - they have a three month yoga certification course, and I figure what better place to become a certified yoga instructor than in India? It seems a little ridiculous that someone like me could make that kind of progress in just a few months, but you gotta go big or go home.

Gotta pick classes soon, this is our shopping week, and I have about 15 classes that I want to shop. There are some that look really interesting, like Sociology of Illness and an English class called ‘Reading Dalit, Reading Black’. It will be nice to start up classes and have some kind of purpose in my days here though for sure.

Last night some of us went out for dinner on a rooftop - it came to the equivalent of $25 for 8 of us, and we were in the shadow of an enormous Indian Santa Claus - I get a huge kick out of all the Christmas stuff here.

...and we're off!

It’s New Year’s Day in India, and it was one hell of a year. I made it to 2008 a good 12 hours or so before you all did which is a fun thing to be able to say. If you had asked me a year ago today what I would be getting up to over the next 12 months, ending up in Hyderabad would have not even been a germ in my mind. But here I am, and I couldn’t be happier.

Well maybe that’s a bit of a generalization – I don’t actually know how I feel. Mostly overwhelmed, also terrified, excited, hungry for all the delicious food they feed me, sweaty, jet lagged, who even knows – I haven’t felt this many emotions at once in a long time. My body and mind are just confused, and I have a feeling the posts on this blog are going to get very interesting very quickly. I’m down to do anything here; I’ll sacrifice sleep for adventures in a heartbeat. I’ve got my malaria pills and a ton of Imodium, and am off to see what I can find.

Just took a nice hot shower which is a great way to deal with the chilly Indian winter nights. The days are warm though which is nice – it’s been up around 30 degrees Celsius here during the day. It’s a bit warm for winter apparently (even the Indians are sweating!), but nothing like summer, where I’ll be trekking around in 45 degree heat. A little bit different from the -30 whiteout I was in while skiing a week ago at Sunshine.

I’ve always been a strong believer in food being one of the most important parts of any traveling, and that is certainly proving to be true here. Feeding time is the best time, as we’re getting delicious Indian food every day and it’s an adventure at every meal. As a lefty I have an interesting challenge in front of me, as the left hand is traditionally only used to wipe certain lower parts, and it’s rude (sinister?) to use it for anything else. Including eating. I’m officially off cutlery though, and am tearing bread, mixing dal, and scooping rice entirely with my right hand!

Well there’s lots to come but here’s a quick recap. Flew through Dubai, which I’ve been dreaming about for months. It was just as weird as I expected it to be, and then some. Crazy welcome to this part of the world – huge palm trees, different kinds of people all over, people sleeping on their own personal carpets lined up along the moving sidewalk, etc etc. Got to India and am still trying to figure out where I am – I keep pointing towards the ground trying to point at my house to try and place myself on the globe, but am having a damn good time over here. Have been walking around the campus a lot passing things like water buffalo on the streets and monkeys in the trees. Getting out into the city too, where it turns out people love me – on the bus the other day a guy gave me his business card, another guy took a picture of me with his cell phone, and a third was waving at me and wanted to shake my hand. Our crew here makes up pretty much the only white people I’ve seen which is refreshing but also leads to us getting a lot of surprised looks. Went to a crafts fair where everything was beautiful and still dirt cheap, and am looking forward to going shopping for fabric and getting some rad Indian clothes made up for me by my new tailor.

Look at my pictures! They’ll be posted on my Picasa site – the link is somewhere on this page. Check back here early and often for more news from India!