Christmas in Prague & Berlin

Saying Goodbye

2011-12-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

I wasn't there in 1970 when Vaclav Havel was banned as a writer for his circulation of a petition of 10 points against Soviet politics.

I wasn't there in 1977 when Havel was jailed for nearly five years for his leadership in the Charter 77 organization that called for human rights guaranteed under the Helsinki Accords.

I wasn't there in 1989 when Havel helped orchestrate the Velvet Revolution with hundreds of thousands of Czechs taking to the streets to overturn Communist rule.

And I wasn't there in 1992 when he became the first president of the independent Czech Republic.

But on December 23, 2011, my last day of my European vacation, I was here in Prague. And even though, I missed all the critical events that made up the life of this influential man, I knew I couldn't sit out of his historic farewell.

So like thousands of Czechs, I headed to the Prague Castle at noon to stand outside of the gates to bear witness to his state funeral. The funeral mass was held inside the St. Vitus Cathedral, where the audience was limited to family, members of the ministry, and international political dignitaries, such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and the Clintons. However, organizers hung huge screens outside the castle walls to project for the people the entire service.

In some ways my experience of the funeral may have been more limited than my American friends who watched from home. They too had access to the same projections, and their versions probably came with subtitles. But standing there in the frigid morning air with all of those people offered an emotional perspective that TV can't capture.

I'm talking about the way the crowd remained silent and un-clapped after the speech given by Havel's political rival, and current president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. It was the tears that streamed down people's faces as Karel Schwarzenberg spoke of Havel's belief that truth and love would always prevail. It was the spontaneous ringing of keys that erupted out of the crowd at the end of the funeral, re-enacting a 1989 revolution tradition.

Now there are those who say that Havel was a revolutionary and artist before a politician. There are those close to him who believed an exclusive state funeral was the exact opposite of what he would have wanted. And those people organized a different memorial event that night, to which my friend managed to get us tickets.

Held at the Lucerna Palace, a movie theater built by Havel's own grandfather, young people and old gathered to listen to bands on three stages from 8pm to midnight, in an ebullient celebration of a life. Artists who performed included dissident bands from the 1980s whose freedom to perform Havel fought for as well as famous artists from around the world (there was a particularly moving singalong to Suzanne Vega's a-cappella version of Tom's Diner).

We sang. We danced. We said goodbye.

A Tale of Two Museums

2011-12-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

At the risk of becoming wildly unpopular, I have to admit that I kind of hate museums (with a few small exceptions). I've tried to like them. I swear, I have. Almost every person I have admired who is smart, interesting, and well-rounded has put "going to museums" on the list of their likes. I'm not sure if there is anyone out there who wants to love museums as much as I do. But I've coming to terms with the fact that I find them disconnected, sterile, and a bit boring, really.

But in Berlin, visiting museums is almost a non-negotiable. The city has been at the center of two horrifically oppressive times, and for those who live there, and for all of us on the outside, there is a need to make sense of those atrocities. There is need to understand the reason for the loss of so many lives.

So in one day, I visited two museums: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Mauer Museum at Checkpoint Charlie.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the first of the two I visited, is less of museum than a experience. To find the entrance, I had to work my way through the Field of Stelae, which is made up of 2711 concrete blocks that were erected to commemorate the Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust. Once inside, the museum ushers you through eight different rooms - revealing eight different ways of making the horrors that were inflicted on the Jews real, tangible and present for the visitor. It starts with a timeline that offers a big picture view of the main events that made up the national socialist terror policy between 1933 and 1945, but then all of the rooms that followed gave meaning to those facts.

I read the personal diaries and letters from victims,unable to know the future, navigating through changing laws, forced migration to the ghettos, rumors of concentration campus. I looked at genealogies of full, healthy families, ripped apart by the Holocaust. I heard the names of murdered and missing Jews from all over Europe. And I listened to the stories of survivors as they recounted each brutality they had to suffer.

It was intimate, and personal, and devastatingly emotional - an absolutely exceptional museum.

And then I went to the second museum...

I believe that the intent of the Mauer Museum was to document the cruelty of the Berlin Wall, memorialize those who died trying to escape East Berlin for West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie, and highlight the successful attempts made to escape Communism.

In actuality, it was a jumbled, disjointed, incoherent, haphazard collection of stuff from the time period (and other time periods) translated into four different languages. Sure, there were parts that I enjoyed. Mostly, it was learning about escape techniques - the triumph of human ingenuity over oppression: cars with secret hiding spots in the trunk, tunnels that were dug, hot air balloons that went into flight, persons hidden between surf boards.

But finding those stories was like digging through my grandmother's attic, passing over objects unable to speak their memories for the tidbits that somehow already made sense to me.

BERLIN

2011-12-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and took a five hour train ride to Berlin. The whole ride, I felt a little bit like I was in the first scene of Cabaret, sitting in my compartment with the ticket agents periodically coming in and asking me for my tickets in non-nonsense German. Of course, instead of sharing my space with a gregarious German who wanted to show me all around town, I was across from a sullen backpacker who typed away on his Apple computer the whole time.

But none of that mattered when I actually got to Berlin. Berlin! From the moment, I stepped in the train station, I knew that this is the type of city that can only be spoken about with exclamation points. Outside of New York, I have not been in a place before that pulsated like this. It is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages and just plain stuff happening.

A walk down Oranienstrasse presented a bevy of stimulating things to see from quirky shops, hip bars & clubs, dynamic modern building, and cozy little coffee shops.

Now I would be completely shallow to not mention that a lot of what is thrilling about Berlin is due to its complicated and devastating history. Multiculturalism stemmed out of years of occupation by various countries. The sleek, jaw-dropping architecture grew out of a need to rebuild post-war.

But Berlin is not a city that hides from its past. It looks it square in the face and keeps on moving on.

Architecture

2011-12-20T23:43:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I am no architecture whiz.

In a city like Prague, that offers a dazzling array of architectural delights, this lack of skill is a major handicap. Sure, I can easily suss out the difference between Soviet architecture and everything else, but other than that I'm a bit at a loss.

This is what I do know.

The old town of Prague is like a sketch stolen out of a fairy tale. I can't tell you what century the cute shops and homes were built in, what era the Prague Castle or the Charles Bridge hail from, but when I think of "once upon of time," this is the setting that I imagine.

I also know that films like Amadeus and others that depict early days in Vienna or Berlin are often filmed in Prague as the city has managed to preserve its most historic creations through years of war and modernization.

I know that the new town of Prague has breathtaking examples of art nouveau and art deco architecture. As well as some post-modern buildings, like the Dancing House by starchitect Frank Gehry.

And when I went to the symphony this evening to hear the Czech Christmas Mass, even though I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it, I was swept away by the grand staircases, the high arched ceilings, the matted drawings on the wall, and the general Old World glamour of it all.

Slices of Life

2011-12-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

Today was my first exploration into the city of Prague. Here are a few impressions that stood out to me.

*Prague is an incredibly homogenous society. And yet, not a single person stared at me.

*Czechs, on average, are larger than me. Thus, door knobs were often too high; doors too heavy.

*Christmas markets are lovely outdoor activities. Yes, they sell cheesy gifts that I would never buy but they also have festive decorations and serve hot wine and roasted chestnuts (actual roasted chestnuts!)

*People of Prague believe that beer helps with digestion. I have no scientific evidence to prove or disprove this, so in the interim I had my fair share of samplings over the week.

*Public transport system is somewhat baffling to me. From what I can tell, it is mainly based on the honor system.

*Pickled camembert cheese is considered pub grub. Seriously.

End of an Era

2011-12-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

Sitting in a restaurant in a small South Bohemian town, my friend looks down at the phone. A text message has come through: Vaclav Havel died.

Fragmented memories flood my mind, but I can't piece together a coherent image of the man. I read this New York Times article to help connect the dots.

A dissident. A playwright. A movie-maker. The first president of the Czech Republic. The moral leader of a people coming out of occupation.

I look up at my friend, and while I realize what for me is an impressive biography of a fully lived life, for all those around me, it was bigger than that. It was the death of their Kennedy. It was an end of an era.

We jumped back in the car and drove the two hours to Prague. Back in the capital, we went to the places that made sense: the places where the people of Prague gather in times of trouble and joy; the places that are the soul of the country.

At both Wenceslas Square and the Prague Castle, images of Havel were on display. Flags were at half mast or swapped out with black cloth. Air was cold but thick with grief. I stood at the fringes of the monuments, an outsider to this collective mourning. And I watched as person after person came up to light up a candle for the man who gave light to so many others.

La Vie Boheme

2011-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

Taking advantage of the weekend (and my friend's car) we decided to spend my second day outside of the city. We headed to an area of the Czech Republic called Bohemia, which is dotted with small, quaint towns, built around a town square.

I had first imagined that all of the towns in Bohemia would be artistic and hippie-ish, like tons of mini-versions of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. In my mind, this was the only plausible explanation of why we refer to hippies as "bohemians" and that the big dance number in Rent was "La Vie Boheme."

So I was a little more than surprised when we arrived in the first town of Tabor and its main attractions were a church, a castle and an analog clock that displayed the full 24 hours. Certainly interesting, but not the mecca of creativity I expected.

As it turns out,the real deal behind Bohemia's rep is much more complicated. Tabor and some of its neighboring cities in the 15th Century were strongholds for a radical religious movement that was a departure from Catholicism that pre-dated even Lutherism. This put Bohemia at odds with the Catholic monarchy that was ruling in Prague. The king, realizing his weakness in being able to rule the areas outside of Prague, decided to disempower Bohemia by playing what amounts to a massive practical joke.

You see, the Romas (commonly known as gypsies in the States), are a nomadic group of people who have strong connections to dance and song. Knowing that Romas were a disliked group within Europe (who have historically suffered discrimination), the king used his legislative power to issue Romas travel papers indicating that they were from Bohemia.

In this way, he created a PR nightmare for the people of Bohemia. From then, and apparently for centuries afterward, everyone came to associate the people of Bohemia with gypsies.

The Tourist Paradox

2011-12-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

As an avid tourist, I always struggle with the same goal whenever I step out of the U.S.: what can I do here that doesn't make me feel like a tourist?

We all understand that there are two types of things to do in any given place. The things that tourists do and the things that locals do. Tourist activities include, going to museums, eating at over-priced and underwhelming restaurants, bartering for kitsch that you don't need, and of course, hanging out with other tourists.

Now figuring out what locals do is a little more elusive. You can thumb through the fine print of the latest edition of the Lonely Planet or grab a local nightlife daily , but generally this is a hopeless endeavor. The real way to get on the inside is to visit a local, and even then that has some major pitfalls.

My first night in Prague was luckily an immediate walk to the inside of local culture. A dear friend picked me up at the airport and we quickly readied ourselves for a Christmas party. I mean, you can't get any more local than a house party. Side-stepping the packed city center and all of its beautiful, breath-taking attractions, we went to the outskirts of town - the suburbs if you will.

Except the suburbs of Prague aren't like the suburbs in the States. They were created when the population of Prague doubled under Communism. So while the city center feels like a romantic European city, the outskirts are a heavy, hulking reminder that this place was once under Soviet control. The soul-less housing project is made up of several high-rise buildings that are identically built with incredibly functional and fully uninteresting cookie-cutter layouts inside. The type of construction where the sound of your heel echoes through the building and the walls are eerily cold and drab.

There was, however, a lot more warmth inside the apartment of this friend of a friends. They had splashed the walls with brilliant colors and decorated with IKEA-ish furniture trying to counteract the very nature of the apartment architecture itself. They filled my glass first with mulled wine (and later with mead), as it was a Christmas party after all. A variety of savoury and sweet snacks littered the table, my favorite being a puff pastry filled with sauerkraut and blue cheese. The apartment was also filled with American blues music - as with this being the second week of December - the guests had already overdosed on traditional Christmas fare.

So there I was, really doing it. First day out and I was in a decidedly non-tourist position. An early success!

But wait, the night had just begun. And the tragedy of the tourist paradox came to light: I don't speak any Czech, nor do I know anything about Czech pop culture. I sat silently for a bit, awkwardly smiling while I had no idea what was going on in the party conversations. Occasionally, someone would take pity on me and ask a few questions about my plans in Prague in halting English. This was usually followed by a generous recommendation - how about I visit so-and-so tourist attraction while I'm here. It can't be missed.

Final Day

2011-05-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

Today was my final day in La Paz, and my main plan was to have my first actual Bolivian meal.

After my friend conferred with her Bolivian boyfriend for potential eateries, they came to the unfortunate conclusion that vegetarian Bolivian food was basically just a bowl of rice.

Sadly, due to the altitude in La Paz, the rice is notoriously bad. Another French meal, it is!

I must give the Bolivians some credit though. They beat out the Paraguayans in veg options. The best Paraguay could do was chirpa, but that only counts if one chooses to ignore that one main ingredient is pig fat. Bolivia at least offers empanadas with cheese fillings. But vegetarians be forewarned: the cheese is pretty raw and pungent in the region. As my friends and I like to say, it tastes like it`s straight from the teat.

Border Crossings

2011-05-27T21:44:00.001-07:00

I woke up in Argentina, had to ride across the country of Paraguay (stopping in Caagenzhu to pick up my luggage), and wind up back in Bolivia by the end of the day.

What seemed like a insane agenda, turned into an interesting people-watching exercise. You learn a whole lot about a country when you take multiple buses to ride from one end of it another.

Here's what I've got:

There are two main types of buses in Paraguay. The first are fancy schmancy Coach-style buses for long-distance travel; they recline easily and have built-in footrests, but require you to suffer through a lot of Paraguayan music. The second type are local buses that have harder and stiffer seats, but the positive trade-off is no music. Unlike Bolivia, neither of these buses have assigned seating, so they are subject to overcrowding at times and many people standing in the aisles.

When a bus driver shakes his finger at you, he's not admonishing you like a small child. It's just the Paraguayan equivalent of shaking your head to say "no." As in, "no, this bus will not stop at the airport."

Buses that have different routes may be assigned the same bus number. Also, buses may go off their assigned routes to try to pick up additional fares. Both of these practices are confusing.

There are many ways to say "hello." To a stranger, particularly a young one, a thumbs-up sign will suffice. Between female acquaintainces, one kiss on each cheeks. Between male acquaintances, a handshake. Between males and females, the female decides: if she doesn't lean in for the kiss, it's a handshake all the way.

A wide variety of people will enter the bus, speaking various amalgamations of Spanish and Guarani (the indigenous Paraguayan language). 20-something women wearing all spandex outfits a la Paraguayan pop stars. Blond-hair youth who are possibly part of the Mennonite population or are children of Germans who fled after WWII. Indigenous children, leaving their make-shift homes of tarps and sticks, in search of food and opportunities in larger cities. Older women selling chirpa (in a bagel shape instead of the corn dog shape) up and down the aisles, while salespeople of both sexes may try to sell items like necklaces and combs that one can easily get at a local store (and yet, they seem to make a killing on these items anyway).

The bicentennial for Paraguay was a big deal. Looking out the window, town after town displays proudly the national colors. In some towns, trees are painted white with red and blue ribbon wrapped around.

Caution should be exercised when exiting the bus. Full stops are not guaranteed.

The Fall(s)

2011-05-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government warns against travel to Ciudad Del Este, the second largest city in Paraguay. The main concern is that this city, which lies at the meeting point of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, may be a safe haven for Al Quaeda due to the porous borders between the three countries.

Ironically, it was exactly because of these porous borders that it became necessary that I travel there. You see, Paraguay used to be home to one of the most incredible waterfalls in the world - Igauzu Falls. This was back in the day when Paraguay was a major political and economic player in South America and had the hubris to take on both Brazil and Argentina in wars. Paraguay lost in the end, and with that defeat, came the devastating loss of the falls (not to mention a dimished status in the region).

It is said that now the falls are best seen from Brazil and experienced from Argentina. The problem for this American traveler is that there is a $200 visa requirement to visit Brazil, and while there is no visa required for Argentina, I would need a multiple entry visa to get back into Paraguay. I, of course, had only a single entry.

Therefore, I had to get a bit creative about how I crossed the border, which is what brought me to Ciudad Del Este.

From Ciudad Del Este, one can grab a bus that drives through Brazil-without stopping at any checkpoints- and into Argentina, where one's passport gets stamped at the border. On the way out, one's passport gets stamped at Argentina again and then the bus goes through Brazil and into Paraguay without any additional security measures.

This seemed like a perfect solution, right?

On the way in, everything went according to plan. The travel time was long - more than 4 hours from Caaguazú - but even just getting a glimpse of the falls was worth the hassle. The falls extend far beyond the lens of any layman's camera. It is miles of water gushing over a precipice into what can most accurately described as a green isle encased in fog. But really, it seemed more like a scene cut out from a page of some fairy tale, especially when at one point a rainbow appeared, completing the picture that had already felt like magic.

Drunk from the spectacle, I wanted to see more. As the park was closing, I jumped over "closed signs," climbed under chain-linked barriers, ran under water-drenched canopies, to take in the view from ever-different angles. Eventually a run-in with a park ranger, put a stop to this Indiana Jonesing, and I had to resign myself to going back to Paraguay.

I was told the bus ran every 40 minutes with the last bus to Ciudad Del Este leaving at 7pm, and so when I arrived at the bus stop a few minutes before six, I thought I was making pretty good time. It wasn't until somewhere between 6:15 and 6:30 that I became worried. Questioning the other people waiting for buses did not ease my concern; the general consensus was that the last bus left for Paraguay at 5pm. By 6:45, I was forced to believe them.

I began weighing my other options. Option A: I could take a bus to Brazil and walk across the border. Fail: Putting myself between two countries in which I didn't have proper documentation didn't seem like the best idea. Option B: I could take a cab across the Paraguyan border. Fail: I would most definitely get stopped at the border, and I was not confident enough in my sweet talking skills to get through. Option C: I could stay overnight in Argentina and take the first bus out in the morning.

Option C was not ideal. The next day, I had to catch a 5pm flight out of Asuncion (approx 8 hours from Ciudad Del Este), which I hadn't actually purchased a ticket for yet.

Looking at the options, I knew there was only one thing I could do. But with withering hope, I stood at the sad little bus stop until 7, singing to myself, "Don't cry for me Argentina..."

Do It Yourself

2011-05-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

During my time in Paraguay, I am based mostly out of Caaguazú, a mid-sized city of about 63,000 people, where the wood industry dominates. In large cities, it is easy to let the excitement of the crowds, the various restaurants, activities and attraction sweep you away as you devise complicated agendas to make sure that you don't miss a thing.

In places like Caaguazu, you have to develop a more do-it-yourself attitude.

Two of my favorite things to do is practice yoga and dance. Both of which are tricky to do in Caaguazu. Before moving on, let me be clear about the context, Caaguazu is not like the urban areas you might typically imagine - there are no skyscrapers, or building over three stories really; there are few traffic lights and paved roads; chickens, stray dogs and other animals wander about; and while it's big enough that you don't know every person who passes by, it's small enough that you say hola (or tranquilo) to everyone anyway.

Yoga was surprisingly easy to find. My friend passed a sign several weeks ago that advertised yoga/pilates classes. The big questions were: who in Caaguazu would actually attend a yoga class and where would this teacher have come from in the first place?

The answer to the first question was immediately apparent. No one yet attends these classes in Caaguazu. Even though my friend and I showed up at the completely wrong time for class (due a slight mis-remembering mistake on our end), the teacher was so excited to have people in attendance, she offered to just have the class for the two of us anyway.

As for the teacher, now what she lacked in actual skill in teaching yoga, she made up for in enthusiasm. She was a small, round, older woman with small squinty eyes and a big smile. In Spanish, she would exclaim "how beautiful," "so flexible!," "so strong!," as she would offer us a patchwork of poses in no apparent order that she may not have seen real people actually embody before that moment. At the end, this tiny woman, who could have been my grandma, had us come to sit and led us in a closing three OMs. Neither of us expected, the guttural sound that escaped from this woman's body. It had a passion, volume and earnestness to it that filled up the entire room, rocking us out of the moment and despite our best efforts, into fits of laughter.

With the yoga class as a minor success under our belts, we moved on to dancing. We knew for a fact that there was not a club or dance hall open in Caaguazu during the week, so we went with the next best alternative. We hosted a dance party in my friend's house. With a "if you build it, they will come" attitude, I spent the rest of the day blowing up balloons and making decorations, while he spread the word to foreign volunteers, his English students, and even the people whole worked at the chipa store.

By 9pm, we had a motley crew gathered for a mix of Paraguayan and American music. Early on a party-goer mentioned that when it comes to dancing, Parguay isn't really a Latin country. As we lined up, boys across from girls, and began doing the two-step, I fully understood what she meant.

A Sketch of Paraguay

2011-05-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

This may seem like a no-brainer, but Paraguay is definitely not Bolivia.

Even though Paraguay can boast having the first railway in South America and being the biggest exporter of beef to Argentina and Brazil, it doesn't really have any tourist attractions to speak of.

Not like having a robust tourist industry is a must-have for a country. It's just that what I write here about my time in Paraguay will be less about what I do and more about what I experience. Because in the next five days, I doubt anything monumental will happen but instead there will be a series of small observations and seemingly unmemorable moments, which when pieced together will create a panoramic picture of what I will forever know to be Paraguay.

Here are a few snippets to start:
1. If you're black, you will be stared at. Most likely people will think you're Brazilian. Sadly, my Portuguese is worse than my Spanish.

2. Even in big cities, you can have small town moments. Like walking to the corner store for chipa (a food sort of like the crust of the corn dog sans the hot dog), and sitting outside with the shopkeepers, helping them roll the dough onto long wooden rods and place them over the charcoal to cook until they are crispy on the outside and warm and doughy on the inside.

3. The best variety of Paraguayan takeout food can be found at supermarkets. Much like at Whole Foods, you load your selections onto a plate and are charged by the pound. Unlike Whole Foods, most of the salads use mayonnaise as its dressing and at the end of line is a microwave in case you need a little nuke.

4. The signature Paraguayan drink is terere. It's made by putting tea leaves in a special mug that has a strainer to hold the leaves and a built-in straw to reach the liquid below. Cold water is poured over the leaves and the first sip goes to Saint Thomas (which is to say, the cup is placed at an empty setting and everyone waits a few moments before serving continues). Then going clockwise from the host, or the youngest family member, a person is offered the cup and sips until it is empty. The host then refills the cup and passes it to the next person in the circle, serving himself/herself last. During this whole process, I only thought about Hepatitis B once.

Race and Politics

2011-05-24T17:20:00.000-07:00

People have written whole books - dedicated their entire careers - to the issue of race and politics in Bolivia. The interplay between the two is so complex and has such a long history that I can't possibly do it justice here. And yet, I can't not write about it, because even being here for only a week, I can see how it's so visceral in the day-to-day life of Bolivians.

Here's the short story. There's a thinly-veiled rivalry between La Paz and Santa Cruz- the highlands and the lowlands. La Paz is the legislative center of the country and the largest city in the highlands. The people who live there are short, dark-skinned and mainly indigenous. Santa Cruz is the economic powerhouse of the country and is the largest city in the lowlands. The people who live there are paler, taller and mainly part of a white elite. Ask someone from La Paz and they will probably tell you that people in Santa Cruz are racist and less cosmopolitan. Ask someone from Santa Cruz and they will probably tell you that people in La Paz are backwards and uneducated.

The longer story (to the best of my understanding): For about 400 years, Bolivia was ruled by a small white elite. Even though the government is located in La Paz, those who lived in the mostly white Santa Cruz had enough political clout ito get money and resouces funneled to the then 30,000 person city. Somehow in the 1990s, the population as well as the economic capacity of Santa Cruz exploded and now the city totals 3 million, including some people from the highlands who have moved down there to take advantage of the economic growth.

Fast forward ten years, and in the early 2000s, a strong political movement arousefrom the indigenous majority of Bolivia (totaling more than 80% of the population) about their lack of representation in government. They fought back against their history of white, elitist rule, and in 2005, celebrated a serious victory by electing Bolivia's first indigenous president.

And that's when things got complicated. Santa Cruz suddenly felt like they had their legs cut out from under them. With a non-white president based in La Paz, they argued that the interests of the lowlands were not being fully considered by the government. They started lobbying for regional autonomy, arguing that the size of the region and its economic import necessitated local rule (the most extreme fringes of the party even talked about cessation from Bolivia). In attempts to curry more support for their cause, the Santa Cruz political machine pit indigenous groups against each other- pointing out that the president and the new migrants from the highlands taking local jobs did not look like the same as the lowland indigenous people.

How will these divisions among regions and race resolve themselves? Well that's anyone's guess. But in the present, it affects almost every conversation you have with Bolivians. Even ones that seem as innocous as: where else should I visit while I'm here?

A Layover in Santa Cruz

2011-05-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

It takes about 2 and 1/2 hours to get to Ascuncion in Paraguay from La Paz. However, due to the various flight schedules, it's impossible to get from one city to the other without having a long layover in either Santa Cruz or Cochabamba. Given that I have a friend in Santa Cruz, I decided to have my 7 hour wait there and take advantage of the opportunity to explore a new place.

My friend studies public participation in the budgeting process in local governments in Bolivia and Venezuela. He had a few meetings in the morning, but we made plans to and have lunch around 11am, which left me three hours in the early morning to walk around on my own.

I meandered around the city center for a bit, taking in the scenery. Santa Cruz is notably different from La Paz. Flatter, hotter, more humid. I began shedding layers from my La Paz standard outfit. First losing the zip-up hoodie and scarf. Then the long-sleeved t-shirt. Finally, I rolled up the bottoms of my jeans. It was the kind of humidity that reminded me of summers in New Jersey - the pressure cooker heat that will eventually give way to a merciful downpour.

Overheated and sweaty, I stopped to take a breather in the Plaza de 24 Septiembre with the many Bolivians who were resting on benches, chatting with friends, or playing chess against new and old opponents. As I sat, I saw a group of people congregate. It started with a few but quickly grew larger. Maybe to about a hundred bodies. A hundred bodies holding signs and chanting. They walked around the border of the Plaza but soon turned down the street 24 de Septiembre toward what I would later find out was the Mayor's office. I didn't think much of it at first. In fact, I got up and popped into a call center to confirm my plans with my friend.

When I walked out of the call center, I immediately saw the uniformed men. All with higlighter yellow vests over their black clothes, helmets on their heads with clear visors attached to protect their faces. They held their guns closely to their bodies and jogged in unison in the direction that the protestors had marched just 10 minutes before.

No one in the plaza seemed to notice when the first shots were fired. Their dispositions were so calm - their routines so unchanged - I doubted that I had heard them myself. Maybe it was a car backfiring. Or firecrackers for some Bolivian holiday that I had no knowledge of.

But then the cars on 24 de Septiembre started reversing. Cars backtracking one or two blocks so as to turn off this main street. The shouts got louder. The sound of shots got rounder and more hollow. And all of a sudden the sky opened up, and it began to rain.

I retreated, with many of the other Plaza dwellers, to an awning nearby a church. The rain muted the voices and blinded me from the nearby protest. The air took on this earthy smell, like the familar scent of my hometown in June. Except this clearly wasn't home. And I really didn't know what was going on or what I was supposed to do.
So I stood there. And waited. Waited for my friend as if we could still simply just have lunch.

A Vacation From My Vacation

2011-05-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

I just came back from two days in Coroico, a small mountain town three hours outside of La Paz. On the ride there, my ears popped as it was the first time since being here that I have descended below 3400 meters.

A major plus to a lower altitude was much warmer weather and the ability to see other living things that depend on oxygen again, like birds and squirrels (and less fortunately, mosquitoes and gnats).

We stayed at a cute eco-lodge called Sol y Luna. We sat by the pool, hiked, practiced yoga, read novels. A nice getaway before the more basic leg of my trip.

Salar de Uyani

2011-05-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Do you know that moment, when you're standing at the edge of a beach and you look out into the ocean as far as you can see and the water just seems to stretch out into infinity?

Now imagine that every drop of that water receded, that somehow it got sucked up from the Earth, and all that remained to prove it was ever there was a bed of salt that it left behind.

That, in a nutshell, is the Salar: a sea turned into a desert of salt.

When we started the tour in Uyani, seven strangers and a driver, it was all fun in games. We left the ghost town to explore the first Bolivian railway. In a way that would never happen in the US because it would be considered a liability, we climbed in, on top of and around the abandoned railway cars, snapping pictures the whole time.

That playful mood continued when we got back in the jeep, but slowly winded down as we got closer to the Salar. It was like the Earth was flat and we had just driven to the end of it. In all directions, it was a complete white out.

While the long view, seemed static, the upclose view was more robust. In some areas the salt was in mounds, drying out under the sun before the locals could scoop it up and bring it to town to sell. In other areas, the salt arranged itself to form strange hexagonal shapes. At times , the salt looked like small balls of snow skating across ice. At other times, it looked like ground up cornmeal. There was even a hotel made completely of salt: tables and chairs carved out of it, the floor mainly a dusting of the mineral.

And, of course, no desert would be complete without an oasis. And it was like a mirage that this small island of cacti emerged from the completely white scenery. It had apparently been an Incan prayer ground, with the cacti dating back more than a thousand years.

Excursion to Uyani (Or, Reasons Why I Hate Tours)

2011-05-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Traveling Rule # 31: If six tour operators tell you something is not possible, but then the seventh one tells you it is possible, chances are the seventh one is lying.

Even though I hate tours, I decided to book one to the Salar de Uyani, Bolivia's famous salt flats. A tour is preferable because in order to visit the Salar you need a heavy-duty jeep and intense navigational knowledge. Besides, I only need to be told once that it is not uncommon for locals to enter the Salar, get lost, and never be found again to hand over my bolivianos to a guide.

Two days was my ideal tour length (one day was too short; three days bumped up against my flight to Paraguay). The tour operators I first encountered told me it was impossible to do two days due to recent rainfall and that I could only book a one-day or a three-day tour.

Well... I am not a girl who easily takes "no" for an answer, so I continued on from tour shop to tour shop until I met a man who said that two-day tour would not be a problem. The plan was that I would board an 8pm bus in La Paz, arrive at 7am the next morning in Uyani and the tour guide would pick me up at the bus station for the tour.
Fast forward to 7:30 pm that night. I am at the bus station gate and go to hand the bus operator my ticket when he passes me a phone. A phone call? For me? Oh yes, it's the tour operator I booked with. He says that a two-day tour is impossible; he can only do one day or three days.

I could have killed him.

At this point, it's 30 minutes before my bus leaves, and I am fresh out of options. So I agree to the one day tour, but I am not happy about it. The bus was underbooked, so I grumpily laid out as best I could across two seats, placed the sleeping bag under my head as a buffer against the bumpy road, threw an Alpaca blanket over me and did my best to sleep for the next 11 hours.

We reached Uyani at pretty much the same time as daylight. The bus driver pulls to a stop, and it might have been my terrible Spanish, but I think he tells us that we can't leave the bus until our tour operators come to get us. Suddenly, I feel less like a consumer of a tour and mor e like a prisoner of war.

My tour operator finally comes and calls my name. And like I've won the lottery , I gather up all of my things and hustle out of the bus. The morning is hazy; it is frigid outside; and the streets look so bare that if I would have had to guess, I would have said no one had lived in that town for 20 years. I look to my "guide" and instead of walking me to the tour office, he hastily gives me walking directions.

I walk these five blocks alone, pack on my back, my down jacket zipped all the way up, feeling like the main character in a post-apocalyptic novel. And I can't help but think to myself...yeah...i'm going to need to get my money back once I return to La Paz.

One hour task = 1/2 day

2011-05-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

I remember someone once telling me that when you travel to India, you have to plan your days differently. That instead of expecting to complete a long list of tasks, maybe your task list would consist of just one thing, and maybe that one thing was "eating lunch."

Now, that was never my experience in India. La Paz, on the other hand...

I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to buy a ticket to Paraguay and book a tour to the salt fields of Uyuni in Bolivia. I figured I'd spend the rest of the day shopping or visiting museums or relaxing.

My friend and I left the house at 10am and by 2:15pm, we'd only managed to cross two things off our to-do list (well, really, one and half as I could only successfully get a one-way ticket to Paraguay).

Here are some of the barriers to getting things done in Bolivia.

Protests: It's hard to go a week without their being a protest in Bolivia. I think this week I've already seen two. The protests tend to be around real issues that affect real people - the price of sugar and oil, rights for miners and indigenous peoples. The problem is, so far as I can tell, is that many of the protests are reactive with no clear overall vision for change. So while a compromise might be brokered in the short-term, there is nothing to prevent the government from similar actions next week or next month. Anyway, the numerous protests cause streets to be blocked off and lead to the next major problem.

The traffic: The traffic in Bolivia is no pretty thing, and the multiple traffic circles around the city don't help much either. Apparently, pedestrians used to be a bit terrorized as they tried to use the zebra crossings (aka crosswalks, for all the Americans out there).This has eased a little due to the work by a non-profit that hires at-risk youth to dress up in zebra costumes and dance in the crosswalks during red lights. It's an entertaining reminder to drivers that this is the time to let others use the crosswalk.

A general lack of urgency: So people from the northeast of the US are notorious for being a toe-tapping, quick-moving bunch, and in my experience, we find that pretty much everyone else in the world moves too slowly for us. So I am willing to admit that my perceptions are very much colored by what I am used to back home. That being said, I saw more than one eye-brow raised when I requested a tour that left tonight for the salt fields (as if, I wasn't at a travel agent in the most touristy place in the city and they didn't get requests like this all of the time). We had about six travel agents tell us that it couldn't be done until...well...it became clear that it could be.

Isla del Sol

2011-05-19T05:29:00.000-07:00

When I know I am going on a hike, there are a few basic things that I would make sure that I had: two bottle of water, thick hiking socks, a hiking partner or at least a cell phone, a map and something energizing to eat.

The trick about yesterday was that I didn't realize I was going on a hike, and so had packed with me...none of those things. My pack consisted of two half-filled bottles of carbonated beverages that I hadn't finished because I thought they tasted like metallic, ankle socks, a cell phone with no charge, a sketch of the island from my guidebook, and four granola bars.

Disaster.

How'd I get here? Let's rewind a bit. To get to Isla del Sol, you have to take a one and half hour boat ride from Copacabana, which leaves only twice a day: at 8:00 am and 1:30 pm. On route to Copacabana, I had met two English-speaking, middle-aged Bolivian men, who I couldn't quite decide whether they were kind old guys taking pity on the American girl with broken Spanish or hardened criminals ready to rob then murder me at any minute (hey, you can take the girl out of Newark...).

Anyway, with only one route to Isla del Sol, I couldn't lose these guys. We had lunch together (fresh trout from Lake Titicaca), took the ferry to Isla del Sol together, hiked to the peak of the mountain together, got neighboring rooms in the same hostel together, had dinner together. You get the drift.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit here, that if I didn't slightly suspect that this was an elaborate scam to take advantage of an American tourist, my time with the Bolivians would have been wholly pleasant. These men told me stories about ancient Incas, like how the Isla del Sol was predominately inhabited by men and Isla del luna - which was about an hour away - was populated by woman, and archeologists still can't quite figure out how Incas traveled between them. They also told me about how the sorry Bolivian soccer team managed to topple the mighty Argentinians because it was a home game and at this altitude the opposing team literally ran out of breath. They also told me of how they both lived illegally in New York for years and how they cried on September 11th when they saw the towers fall.)

Despite how interesting and kind these men seemed, I had to ditch them. So I got up around 7am the next morning (which wasn't so hard given that now that I am older I have developed more sophisticated fears of sleeping in hostels...bed bugs, fleas, lice), checked out, and decided to take what I thought was a gingerly 2 hour walk across the island and then grab the 10:30 ferry back to Copacabana.

The trail was clearly visible, but because it was so early, the only people on it were me and farmers herding either mules, sheep, and in one instance, wild hogs. At first I enjoyed the quiet of the walk. The stillness and expansiveness of the blue waters, the sounds of the rocks under my feet, the stunning view of the Cordilla Real in the background. But as I walked I realized that I was getting farther and farther away from the docks where the ferries were. Being the map-less optimist that I am, I thought that if I continued forward there might be some shortcut that looped me back to the docks. And maybe there was. But as I got very near to what appeared to be the most northern tip of the island, I was chased off the trail by a small pack of yapping stray dogs.

To make, an already long story short, I ended up at the docks at around noon, parched, tired, and hungry, with blistered feet and four hours of waiting time till the next ferry. But as I laid on the sun-soaked grass and looked out across the waters, I can't say that I wasn't happy.

The Road to Lake Titicaca

2011-05-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

I have to be honest, I wasn't pumped about going to Lake Titicaca. It's listed as a must-see in most Bolivian (and Peruvian) guidebooks, but I couldn't really figure out what the big deal was. It's just a lake, right?

But after two days of city living, I was easily convinced that a trip to the lake and then a night on the island of Isla del Sol would satisfy the taste of the outdoors that I needed. With the help of my trusted taxi driver, Arturo, at 8am I boarded a mini-bus for the 4 hour journey to Copacabana, the closest city to the lake.

The most important thing to know about the road to Lake Titicaca is that there is a huge body of water that falls right in the middle of it. For some, this would seem like a difficult obstacle. They might drive around the body of water adding hours to the trip, or maybe some industrious organization or government department would build a bridge to link the capital city to this important site. But no, a entirely different system has been rigged up.

All four wheel transport stops at the edge of the strait and the passengers disembark to buy a modestly-priced ticket to be ferried across the river by one of the many 16-20 person boats docked there. Then the cars, vans, buses, or whatever, are then precariously perched onto these large floating wooden flats, which are slowly pulled across the water.

On the ferry, you are able to easily spot your mode of transport (most likely still holding your backpack and other large valuables in it), teetering along. Cap-sizing is not an uncommon occurrence.

To make matters a bit worse, apparently if anyone is to fall into this body of water, none of the fisherman will jump in to save you. Its perceived as an offering to the river god. Which I must admit, is one thing I wish I hadn't read in the guidebook before going on this trip.

La Paz

2011-05-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

From up above, La Paz is a beautiful city. It looks like it was dropped into a giant punch bowl, except that punch bowl is made up of dramatic red mountains. At the edge of the mountains, your eyes can take in the full energy and expanse of the capital.

But down on the ground,it's a bit harder to make sense of La Paz with its windy roads, traffic-filled streets, and unmemorable architecture.

While I may struggle with where I am, I am always clear on who I am with. Outfits are very telling.

There are the professionals in business suits nearly sprinting towards work.

Police in green uniforms that remind me of 1960s TV series like I dream of Jeanie or Wonder Woman. The policemen in laced up commando boots, the policewomen in high heels, both heavily armed.

The kids - at the least ones you see in the late afternoon - are all in school uniforms, and the men hunched over with the baseball caps on their heads and the ski masks over their faces are just protecting themselves from the chemicals they use to shine residents' shoes.

There are the tourists, of course, most hailing from Nordic countries or Israel. The newly arrived (and ill-prepared for Bolivian nights) are wearing shorts and flip flops, while the more seasoned sport these draw-stringed stripped pants, which are sold cheaply at numerous local shops but I have never seen a local wear.

The indigenous women swish through the streets with their long, bright, bell-shaped skirts. To keep warm, they wear socks up to to their knees, and have a knitted triangle shaped shawl (most likely made of alpaca), draped over their shoulders and pinned in the front. The outfit is made complete by a derby-style hat that sits a bit bit tilted ontop their heads.

But I'd say the overwhelming majority have on some sort of casual wear, consisting of fitted, stone-washed jeans, converse sneakers, and cropped jackets.

And what about me, you ask? Well I managed to break my purse on day one, and so I couldn't look any more American walking around with my fanny pack buckled around my waist.

Planning for the Day

2011-05-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

Now that I have acclimated a bit to the altitiude, I can put behind me the Garfield-style vacation (sleep, eat, sleep eat...). Both of my friends are off to work for most of the morning, which leaves me on my own to spend the next six or so hours as I want. Planning my day is one of my favorite things to do on vacation. It's always a bit of challenge in finding the balance between having some sort of destination but the freedom to change directions if I unexpectedly disover something far more interesting. Then there's figuring out the things that I normally do - that are so habitual that I don't even think about them anymore - that I will have to adjust because I can't really do them in this new environment. For example:

Taking it slow: It is obvious to me that I won't be running around trying to hit site after site today as the act of inhaling is hard enough at the moment. Also, forget practicing yoga today or going for a short hike; I got winded when I got up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Figuring out the map, fast: I'm usually a bit casual about directions. I'm not overly concerned about getting lost. In my opinion, if I get a little bit off track, I'll have the opportunity to see something new and then can grab a taxi and have them figure out how to get me home. However, last night at dinner, there was a lot of talk about a series of taxi kidnappings.: people held hostage for days being forced to take out their daily limit from the ATM each day; women gang raped; and most horrifyingly, a woman who had her insulin pump stolen from inside her body. I'm packing two maps for the day.

Wearing every article of clothing that I packed at all times: I was aware that it was winter in Bolivia, but it being so close to the equator,I figured it couldn't get much colder than 60 degrees. What is kind of right during the day, but at these elevations the air holds no heat when the sun isn't out. So my jacket, scarf and long underwear aren't really just in case items anymore but are instead a featured part of both my daytime and night-time attire.

Remembering not to throw the toilet paper in the toilet: Putting toilet paper in the toilet has been a big no-no in every South American country I've visited. Most of the times it doesn't flush, which is a good thing, because the alternative is that it does and gets stuck in the pipes clogging up the whole system. And yet, I seem to have trouble holding this information in my mind. To avoid being the worst houseguest ever, I've already staged two MacGyver-like rescues of the soggy wads of paper and placed them appropriately in the garbage receptacle that can be reliably found next to all household and public toilets. This, of course, has been followed up by the most rigorous handwashing regimen that the world has ever seen.

Winded

2011-05-15T16:18:00.001-07:00

When I saw the pretty blonde girl sprawled on the floor of the customs area of the Bolivian airport, I should have realized that I might have a problem. She laid there, her head propped up with a rolled up sweatshirt, her knees pulled in closely to her chest. Her boyfriend, or at least that's who I assumed he was, looked a bit more dignified - he managed to maintain a seated position with his hiking boots pushed firmly into the floor and had the capabilities of actually filling out the various forms needed to officially enter in Bolivia.

These were the signs of classic altitude sickness. La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, is at the highest elevation of any capital in the world. And for those not used to the thin air, the oxygen deprivation can have pretty extreme effects: loss of balance, splitting headaches, fainting, tingling in the extremeties, drowsiness, inability to sleep, lucid dreams, nausea.

But I thought I was too hearty of a traveler for all that. I had been to both Peru and Ecuador and the main side effects I experienced was a need to take it slower as a hiked up to even higher elevations. But I dutifully took the precautionary measures: I popped an altitude sickness pill, drank a week's worth of water in about 2 hours, consumed some cacao tea (a local remedy to help adjust to the altitude), and even took a nap between my plane landing and lunch.

So when the headache started mid-afternoon, I was caught a bit off guard. It began with a feeling like a mild head cold. And then I realized that I was having trouble following lunch conversation (granted I was eating lunch with three Americans who were deeply immersed in Bolivian politics and so even on my best days, I would have had trouble keeping track of the roster of names that came rolling off their tongues). By the time the food arrived, the dull fog in my brain became a searing headache - like something deep in the core of my mind was doubling in size by the second and was ready to bust out of my skull.

I closed my eyes, and my lunchmates noted that my color wasn't so good. When I got up to stand, I had to admit to myself - and others- that I felt awful. My friends walked me back to the apartment where I am staying. One of them - a tall, friend from college- gave me his arm to hold onto as we walked. And like the good friend he is, he sweetly massaged my damaged ego, by retelling all of his fainting stories.

The yoga on $5 a day or less project

2010-04-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

From March 29 to April 4 my normal yoga studio was closed for spring cleaning and so it was up to me to figure out how and where I was going to practice this week. This opened up the opportunity for me to do three things.

1. Practice yoga with my friends who have expressed interest in the past but have never tried it
2. Sample different studios and styles of yoga
3. Prove to people who say that yoga is too expensive that you can practice every day in New York City for little to no cost (or conversely, fail miserably and be sad that something that I really enjoy is unaffordable to the masses).

From these, the Yoga on $5 or Less Project was born.

After hours and hours of research I found that there are a lot of affordable options out there. Here's what I found.

Free classes
Lululemon Soho
Vinyasa
Yoga-apparel store that hosts free vinyasa yoga classes almost weekly
http://www.lululemon.com/newyork/soho

Vira Yoga Soho
Anusara
M 7:30-9am and F 8-9:30am
http://www.virayoga.com/home.htm

Donation-based classes (pay as you wish)
Atmananda Noho
Vinyasa
M-F 12:30-1:30; MWF 4-5
www.atmananda.com

Do Yoga Do Pilates
Vinayasa
All classes
www.doyogaandpilates.com

Laughing Lotus Chelsea
Vinyasa
M-F 2:30-3:45
http://nyc.laughinglotus.com/

Om Yoga Factory Hell's Kitchen
Vinyasa
T 4-5 and W 10-11am
www.omfactorynyc.com

Reflections Yoga Times Square
Kundalini/Rasa
Sa 2-3:30; Su 1:30-3
www.reflectionsyoga.com

The Shala Yoga House Union Square
Ashtanga/Vinyasa
M 8:30-10pm and Su 12:15-1:45
www.theshala.com

Shambhala Yoga and Dance Center Prospect Heights
Vinyasa
M 6:30-7:45pm; T 7-8am; T/Th 5:30-6:45; F 12:30-1:45
http://www.shambhalayogadance.com/

Yoga to the People Multiple locations
Vinyasa or Power (depending on the location)
All classes (about 8 are offered M-F; plus Sa & SU)
http://yogatothepeople.com

Reduced price classes
Om Yoga Union Square
Vinyasa
Su and W at 9:30; M at 1:30; $5
www.omyoga.com

Integral Yoga Institute NY (also free first time class) West Village
Hatha
F at 6:15; $5
http://www.iyiny.org/

Yoga Vida Washington Square
All classes are $5 for students
www.yogavidanyc.com

First class free
Sivanda Chelsea
Hatha
www.sivananda.org

Yoga Sutra Midtown East
Ashtanga/Iyengar/Vinyasa
www.yogasutranyc.com/

Yogaworks (first week free!) Multiple locations
Vinyasa/Ashtanga
www.yogaworks.com

Day 6: When Less is More

2010-01-11T23:19:00.000-08:00

EAT:
There are two main ways that people tend to judge the food scene in a place. One method is to go to the best of the best restaurants. The Zagat becomes your bible. You ask for recommendations at every turn. Yelp for four star ratings. And in this method, you certainly learn what it means to eat well in a place.

But the problem is that no one eats at Chez Panisse every night. Le Bec Fin is saved for special occasions. Balthazar isn't going to tell you what families with two children and a dog eat like. And so to get the non-touristy take on food, you gotta go with option number 2.

In this option, you judge the food scene on the low-end options. The holes in the wall. The little eateries on the corner. Hospital food. Now this tells you a bit more of how much people care about what happens on their plate.

So on Monday, I ate where most people choose to avoid: the college cafeteria. I had chatted with some Stanford students and the general consensus was that the food there wasn't that great. Some said it was "good," others said "decent," but no one was wowed by it.

At least no one other than me.

The menu was far more interesting than I would have guessed from the lackluster reviews I had received. They had offerings like mushroom pizza with truffle oil. But just because a description sounds good doesn't mean you're not going to get a plate of reheated frozen vegetables. So as I ordered my sweet potato and sage soup and my latina salad (with black beans, corn, jicama, lime juice and queso), I tried to dampen by expectations.

When I got my soup I braced myself for the worst. The main cause of my nervousness was that the soup was white in color, which is somewhat troubling since sweet potatoes are typically orange. But I took a sip anyway, and it was amazing. The pieces of fresh sage floating int he soup provided a burst of earthy flavor. I suspect it was also heavy on the heavy cream, which created this rich, comforting texture that made me want to go back to the Intercontinetal Hotel and curl up by the fireplace. The salad was also well above average with its light, spicy dressing, although probably not something that I would write home about.

DRINK:
I met a friend for happy hour drinks at Elixir in downtown San Francisco. I asked what wheat beers they had on tap, and the bartender said they didn't have any (which was puzzling as it looked - and tasted - like my friend was having a wheat bear...but hey I'm not a professional so I will trust his word on it). I then asked what was local, and he mumbled something about a Berkeley beer that I didn't catch the name of. I ordered it, and after one sip I wish I had heard the name. The beer tasted a bit like urine and I would love to avoid having that experience again. For my next round, I got the non-wheat wheat-tasting beer, which was a satisfying way to close up my last night in warm weather San Francisco.

YOGA:
So for my last yoga class in San Francisco, I wanted to mix it up by trying a style of yoga that I had never done before. My first thought was to go to a Bhakti flow class with yoga personality Rusty Wells who is rumored to teach these wild, somewhat eclectic classes. However, Rusty doesn't believe in renting yoga mats because he finds it unhygienic (which it usually is), and that made it logistically impossible for me to go there as a yoga tourist on this trip. My second thought was to go to a Dharma Mittra style class at Yoga Loft. Failure. The class was cancelled. So I ended up taking a beginning Hatha class at Yoga Loft instead.

Generally, I really enjoy fundamental classes. Getting back to basics helps me refocus my attention on some alignment issues that I have gotten lazy about. It's a nice check in to make sure my foundation is strong. However, this class was baffling to me. After two sets of lunging sun salutations, the teacher had us turn our mats so that they were parallel to the front of the room to do standing poses. This choice was strange and unusual as we could have just easily moved our bodies to face the right side of the room while leaving our mats where they were. It seemed like an unnecessary addition the class.

Then over the course of the class there were some other inefficiencies. She had us get up on two separate occasions to grab additional props and then had us also leave our mats to return these props before continuing our practice(as it so happened it turned out that keeping these props neatly by our mats would have been better as they would come in handy later in the class). Again, bizarre.

But perhaps the most unsettling part of the class for me was all the chit-chat. The teacher talked and talked and talked about every pose. And as she was waxing on about the importance of minute movements of the thigh bones, I was wondering if any of these newbies had any idea what she was talking about. By the end of the class, we had done no more than 10 poses.

This class made me look forward to my return to New York for my teacher who is less talk and more do. Like his teacher Pattabhi Jois, he teaches with an understanding that yoga is "99% practice, 1% theory."

Day 5: The Intercontinental Hotel

2010-01-11T23:16:00.000-08:00

My friend and I escaped the hustle and bustle of San Francisco to spend a night at the luxurious Intercontinetal Hotel in Monterey. We are two people who love hotels. We don't care so much about the sites. We love the opportunity to take a bubble bath, the fluffy bathrobes and slippers, the large screen cable television, the small bottles of skincare products...we love it all. We ate in the hotel. We drank in the hotel. We didn't think about yoga in the hotel. Overall it was an excellent day.

EAT:
When I go out to eat, I like to order items that I can't make at home. Sometimes I choose things that would require too many ingredients or equipment that I don't have. Sometimes I choose things that aren't particularly difficult to make but are incredibly time-consuming. Or sometimes I choose things that should be simple but I have managed to repeatedly fail at making.

So as I skimmed the menu at the C restaurant and lounge at the Intercontinental (trying very hard to ignore the fact that someone thought it was clever to bold all of the letter Cs in the menu), my eyes naturally fell on the diver scallops.

Anyone who has ever had my scallops (and I'd like to take this time to apologize again) knows exactly what failure tastes like. Scallops are absorbent little suckers, so one of my biggest mistakes was to be overzealous with the lemon, creating an entree that forced all of my dinner guests' lips to pucker. Another issue is that scallops have that ambiguous white color which gives little clue to whether you have undercooked them or overcooked them (both of which I have done on separate occasions...and, well honestly, sometimes on the same occasion).

These scallops were delightful. Propped up like islands in a bowl of mushroom and leek stew, they were flavorful, cooked in the middle, and lacking that rubbery texture that comes when they are overdone.

The dessert was equally good. My dinner partner and I shared their upscale version of a banana split. The bananas were wrapped in a shell of crystallized sugar, and instead of your ordinary ice cream flavors, the chef swapped in gelato: pistachio, chocolate and a vanilla with a raspberry sauce. The weakest link was the chocolate gelato, which was far too rich for the dish. Otherwise, it was pleasurable ending to the meal.

DRINK:
I drank something called Absolut Pearadise while sitting by a fire on the hotel's deck listening to the ocean lap up against the beach. 'Nough said.

YOGA:
Couldn't bring myself to practice yoga. Got a (hotel) massage instead.

Day 4: Hurts so good

2010-01-09T17:15:00.000-08:00

EAT:
While I haven't had California sushi before this trip, I just had a feeling that it would be amazing. So I was very excited to I have lunch today at Fuji Japanese Restaurant. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to my high expectations. The volcano roll was fantastic, crunchy, flavorful, filling, and I would recommend it for anyone who goes there. But overall, the raw fish in the sushi was good, but not great.

DRINK:
I went to a dive bar called Mervyn's in Mountain View this evening. It was like one those sad bars that I have seen only in dramatic movies set somewhere in the rust belt. It was a small airless room. A wife and husband with their coats still on taking up one of the four booths in the place. A bunch of older solo drinkers were glued to the stools near the bar. One wild-haired woman had a glass of a whiskey and a Bud Light in front of her and muttered to herself all evening. No fancy cocktails could be ordered here. I was vetoed when I asked for a Jack and ginger. But there was a juke box in the corner and the drinks were cheap. Who could ask for anything more?

YOGA:
The thing about being a yoga tourist is that you don't really know what to expect from any class that you go to. Sure you may know what style you're choosing, but there is so much variety within schools of yoga that the title doesn't tell you much. So you try to look around for hints and clues of what is to come. Are students carrying water bottles? How many props do people grab? Is there a harmonium set up in the corner? These things are important signs.

When I arrived at Yoga Tree San Francisco at the Castro location, I noticed that there was a large group of people who showed up incredibly early for the 11 class. It was 1045 and at least 10 to 15 people had already arrived (note: there was on average 15 people total in attendance at all the other yoga classes I have taken this week). First sign: big class.

Then the doors opened to the practice space and the earlier class poured out followed by a gust of warm wind followed them. Heated room. This is another sign.

And as I walked in to set down my mat, I saw a staff member with a mop in hand and towels wrapped around the feet, sashaying across the floor to wipe up the sweat. My neighbors were not only unrolling their mats but had rugs and towels too. And then I knew.

I was about to get my butt kicked.

By 11am about 75 people filled the room. This is the largest class I have been to that wasn't a special workshop. There is something intense about chanting with so many people in one room. It's like the vibrations echo within your body. Like your insides are hollowed out and replaced with an echoing church organ.

And then the class began. Extensive lunging sequences. Quad-burning ukatasana sequences. Leg lifts. Arm balance after arm balance. Ab work. Bind here. Bind there. Midway through the class, one of the assistants brought me a towel because it looked like I was going to slip off my mat. It was the type of challenging yoga class where your mind can't wander, because you need all of your energy and focus just to make it through the hour and a half.

Yes, it was hard and I could already feel my body becoming sore, but boy was that savasana sweet.

Day 3: And still not a single sun salutation

2010-01-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

EAT:
Every time I go to a Thai place, I want to order the pad thai but then force myself to choose something more out of the ordinary. But I'm on vacation now so when I got the
Cafe Osha menu I barely glanced at the other options before deciding that the standard rules would not apply.

My pad thai arrived a little bit faster than it would seem possible to cook a dish. The presentation was exquisite. The portion was generous. All that was left was to taste it.

The bean sprouts were cold and crisp, contrasting with the warm, tangy noodles. The crushed peanuts and well-seasoned tofu added texture and complexity. But the prawns proved to be the weakest link. Not only were they bland, they were cold in a middle.

But not all was lost on eating today. I enjoyed a delicious home-cooked dinner at a college friend's house and brought desserts for us to enjoy from Tartine Bakery. The bananna creme tart was delicate and smooth. The chocolate chip cookies were crisp and buttery with nice chunks of chocolate. And the lone chocolate walnut cookie I treated myself to was moist on the inside and had a satisfying nutty crunch with each bite.

DRINK:
Two wine consultants were in attendance at the dinner party I was at. I drank very well but I can't tell you what it was.

YOGA:
The first yoga class I attended was a lunchtime flow at Satoria Yoga Studio. The teacher was petite, blonde, and had a chipper, high-pitched voice. In what I can only imagine was an attempt to prove that she was more fierce than her appearance otherwise suggested, she had a lion tattoo etched onto her upper arm. Perhaps not the most yogic of choices...

In her one-hour class she created a sweet, non-competitive atmosphere. This was a class designed to help people briefly escape from the tension and stress of the work day. And it nearly succeeded. We got all the way to savasana before someone sent a vase crashing to the wooden floor and cried "oh shit!" so loudly that it jarred us out of our peaceful stillness.

My second class was at Yoga Kula, an anusura-style studio. I have never practiced anusura before and so I didn't know at all what to expect. Did I sign myself for a rigorous, physically intense experience or was I going to sit in a circle with my eyes closed for an hour and half shining my heart to the sky?

Luckily the pendulum swung somewhere in the middle. The teacher started the class relaying a story that he read in the newspaper of a man who started off with a red paper clip and made exchanges with person after person after person - trading up with each interaction - until at the end he got what he was aiming for, a year in a palatial house. The teacher then related this to the yoga practice. How we start on the mat as red paper clips and have the opportunity to make exchanges with ourselves that will get us closer to the physical expression we are looking for.

This was the abstract theme of the class. The physical theme was on finding the internal spiraling of the thigh in various poses. We did a bunch of exercises that seemed like something straight out of a Lamaze class to access this movement. The teacher would check in to see if we were feeling a burning sensation in the thighs. My neighbors would nod knowingly, and I desperately wanted to join them, but after intense moments of concentration I would ultimately have to admit that I just didn't get it.

One of the last poses of the evening was half moon. My inability to balance was inspiring mental images of me falling over and toppling my fellow yogis like dominoes. But then the teacher encouraged us to rotate the inner thigh and suddenly it clicked. I found the subtle adjustment and everything about the pose became easier. There was lightness in one leg and steadiness in the other.

I had traded up.

Day 2: Donuts and burritos and pears. Oh my!

2010-01-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

EAT:
I don't like donuts. I know, I know they are fried and covered with sugar: what's not to like? But I can't help it. The Krispy Kreme phenomenon was lost on me. I only go into Dunkin Donuts to use the bathroom. Give me a cookie, a brownie, ice cream or pie. Just please don't make me eat donuts.

Unless of course they are Dynamo Donuts. This place came highly recommended. I was told stories of people traveling more than an hour to get donuts at the lone location just to be turned away as they were sold out by 10:30am. With this type of recommendation, and the fact that it was conveniently located near the apartment I stayed at my first night, I dutifully looked up the address and put it in my mental filing cabinet.

Like most things that I file away in this manner, I misplaced the information. I was convinced that it was located just a block away from the 24th and mission subway stop. Walking with purpose toward the BART, I caught a whiff of warm sweetness emanating from a coffee shop. I stopped in my tracks and thought to myself that I would abandon my breakfast plans to order something from this unassuming, roadside eatery. As I backtracked, I made out the words on the awning - it was Dynamo Donuts. I accidentally found what I was looking for.

Decisiveness is not my strong point, so I purchased two donuts. The lemon pistachio, which looked interesting and innovative to me, and the spiced chocolate, which I was told was the most popular choice. I had the lemon pistachio first and I thought it was OK. Probably one of the better donuts I have had, but a donut just the same. But then I bit into the spiced chocolate, and it was like a whole new world opened up for me. Dusted with cinnamon, nutmeg, (possibly cloves), it was as comforting as a mug of hot chocolate in the middle of snowstorm.

Lunch had a lot to live up to, and yet, it managed to surpass my expectations. Burritos in the Mission district of San Francisco are famous for their fattiness, heartiness, yummy goodness and, of course, their true Mexican flavor. They are the kinds of places that aren't afraid to cook their beans in lard and slap on sour cream with gusto. But there is also another popular type of burrito in the Bay area that sacrifices some authenticity for a uniquely California twist of fresh, local farmers market ingredients. We went to Picoso Taqueria, which squarely falls in the second camp. On the recommendation of the friendly owner, I ordered the shrimp super burrito (filled with rice, sour cream, black beans and guacamole). I watched as they hand-pressed our flour tortillas, and yet I was still astounded by the light, smooth-textured taste of it.

Following lunch, we got cupcakes from Love at First Bite. It was pitched to me as having the best cupcakes my friend has had (and she's a native New Yorker). I ordered the strawberry cupcake. And I will admit that the first bite was like an explosion of strawberries in my mouth. It tasted as if it were made with buckets and buckets of fresh strawberries. However, in the end, it was a bit on the sweet side for me.

Then we went to the farmer's market were I sampled home-made conserves (not to be confused with jam, which apparently is made with 50% sugar), ripe pears and creamy yogurt. I was on the edge of feeling like I couldn't eat anymore when I purchased an oyster that made me feel like I dived to the depths of the Pacific Ocean (in a good way). The oyster was so good, I might be fated to never eat an oyster outside California ever again.

DRINK:
I ate too much food. No room for drinks.

YOGA:
I almost feel like it is unfair to critique the "vinyasa" class I took at Yoga Mandala tonight. By the time the 6pm class started, I still felt stuffed from lunch and was experiencing severe jet lag. Dark room, 20 minutes of eyes closed meditation, and I was goner. When the teacher did finally have us start moving(choosing to make us hold poses for a long time as opposed to flowing from one posture to another), I started to feel resentful that she was keeping me awake. I fell asleep during savasana (the final resting pose), which left me in a groggy haze afterwards. As I stumbled out, I heard other people in the class thank the teacher for the experience and describe it as "delicious." I was (and am) only hungry for a good night's rest.

Day 1: Let the games begin

2010-01-07T21:54:00.001-08:00

EAT:
Straight from the San Francisco airport, I headed to Berkeley to meet up with two old friends. When I exited the BART station, I walked right into 60 degree weather (!). Now I know that 60 degrees isn't terribly warm, but when you compare it to the 14 degree New York weather I left, this was cause for a celebration. I made a beeline for a street that looked like it had many cute eateries. And what did I have? Gelato. Nice, cold, creamy chocolate gelato from the Rockridge Market Hall.

I was still licking the chocolate off my fingers as my friends arrived with the expectation that we would be off to lunch. Luckily, since domestic flights have cut costs by stripping away any semblance of a substantial meal (even on an 8 hour flight), I was still a tad bit hungry. We went for Ethiopian. Like every other time I have gone for Ethiopian two things happened. 1) I ordered the veggie combo. 2) I ate myself sick. The food was fantastic (although admittedly, I am probably not the most discerning eater when it comes to Ethiopian). The real highlight was the decor though. We ate off of tables that had glass tops and when you looked into them, there were pulses and beans separated into separate sections to create a little feast for the eyes.

DRINK:
When deciding how to spend the evening, I challenged my friend to come up with a suggestion that was a little bit out of the ordinary. She racked her mind for awhile and came up with Bourbon & Branch. Back during prohibition, this was a speakeasy with 16 different secret entrances and exits (or so they claim). It has stayed true to its roots and operates with an air that something illicit is going on. Reservations must be made in order to get the password for entry. Cell phones are prohibited. Masked doors lead you into different parts of the establishment.

We were in the library, which has a limited drink menu, but shelves and shelves of battered, well-worn books. In other areas of the bar, you can peruse the anthology of labor-intensive drinks that they serve. But only one bartender mans the library and so we were given nine options. I chose the blood and sand - a whiskey-based drink that has enough sweetness to allow for a smooth ride as it wet the throat. Although I must admit, I preferred my friend's gimlet, which embodied everything that you crave on a hot summer day.

YOGA:
No time for yoga. The yoga tourism must wait a day.

One week in San Francisco

2010-01-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

I arrived in San Francisco yesterday for one week. This is my third time in the Bay area, and so I have hit most of the major sites already. People keep asking me what I intend to do this time around. And I wish I could tell them that I had some grand purpose - I wish I could show them some impressive itinerary. But in reality, I am here simply to have the type of vacation that I rarely allow myself to enjoy. It's a week to eat, drink and practice yoga.

Sunday: Friendship Day

2009-08-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday was Friendship Day, and it seemed like a big deal in Bhubaneswar, although I couldn't quite figure out why or how people celebrated it. I spent the afternoon at a coffee shop called Share A Cup that was decorated with tons of balloons and had servers delivering individual cards that said "Happy Friendship Day."

Later in the evening a local radio station came by to host a special competition in honor of Friendship Day. Coffee-drinkers could compete for Mr or Miss Share A Cup. I usually love a good competition, but this one was a bit strange. The first task was to ask someone in the coffee shop to be your friend in a unique way. This resulted in a college-aged boy approaching my colleague and giving a sweet (yet awkward) speech about how she really had guts and how he wanted to be her friend. The radio mic in her face, she could do nothing else but accept his friendship.

Somehow I don't feel like this activity quite got at the heart of the holiday.

Saturday Night: The Upside of Anger

2009-08-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

What does it look like when only men go out to bars/clubs?

Honestly, it looks kind of nice.

The whole purpose behind nightlife in Bhubaneswar is different than it is in the States. It's not about meeting girls or finding a date - which makes sense given that most boys in Bhubaneswar will opt for an arranged marriage anyway - but instead it is about hanging out with your buds.

You drink together. You dance together. You may even hold hands. And engaging in these activities don't make you less of a man, they make you a better friend. It's actually heart-warming to see how guys form relationships and bonds in India without feeling like they need to put forth a cold macho exterior.

Now there is a risk, particularly when girls enter a place where unchecked male only drinking is occurring (I certainly wouldn't go in alone). But when my co-workers and I entered Ten Downing Street at the Mayfair Hotel on Saturday night, it was like a breath of fresh air. We got on the dance floor and no one paid all that much attention to us. After all, why should they take notice of a couple of girls? They were too busy dancing amongst themselves.

Saturday: Denial

2009-08-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

It's August 1. The night before we had sent off the first draft of our case study to the Delhi central office and presented our findings to the Orissa state office. So this was the day that we could finally celebrate after surrendering our minds to the intricacies of planning and monitoring units for seven weeks straight.

The day started off with a lovely brunch at our supervisor's home, and then my coworkers and I went off for afternoon drinks. Our destination was a place called Far Pavilion, which is a restaurant with an enclosed outdoor garden from where you cab lay back and sip inexpensive drinks. I had never been there before but it came highly recommended.

As it so happened, the garden was closed during the afternoon so we headed to the indoor bar. The inside was dully-lit, decorated in a faux Italian style with Michelangelo-inspired depictions of women on the walls. We took our seats in the corner and briefly took notice that once again we were the only females in a drinking establishment.

And this is when things took a turn for the worse. First the waiter came by and suggested that we sit in the restaurant next door. Somewhat confused, we got up ready to comply with the suggestion, but when we entered the restaurant, the lights were off, there was no A/C, and there was only one person inside - the waiter. This wasn't the sort of festive atmosphere that we were looking for. When we pointed out these obvious short-comings, the waiter said that we could return to the bar but he thought the restaurant would be a more pleasant place for women. We thanked him for his perspective and made our way back to the bar.

As it turns out, the management was not as open to us sitting at the bar as the waiter led us to believe. We attempted to seat ourselves in the bar and were denied. The next fifteen minutes were marked by heated conversations until it became clear that this bar was not willing to serve us because we were women.

At the time, I was of two minds about this. One mind was telling me that I was in a different culture, and as such I was subject to their way of doing things. But then seeing how irate my Indian co-worker had become, I realized that deferring to cultural relativism isn't necessarily the right thing to do. At that moment, I saw that I was in the middle of a struggle - the struggle in India of young women fighting for their rights to be treated the same way as men. I saw in my co-worker that it was not enough to walk away and say that we wouldn't spend our money there. This was an opportunity to make an argument - to change minds. That day she showed me that even in a place you don't call home, you cannot accept being treated as a second class citizen.

And as an American girl in India, all I can say in response is "I'll drink to that."

The Final Chapters

2009-08-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

So the last two weeks I was in Bhubaneswar, I fell off the blogging wagon. But there are stories to be told from that time - stories of festivals and friendship, dancing and denial. And so even though I am back in the U.S. I will offer up a brief retrospective of my closing days in India.

Our Case Study in Numbers

2009-07-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Members of research team: 4
Total number of people interviewed: 52
Days till first draft is due: 2
Hours spent working in the office yesterday: 12
Maximum page length: 35
Current page length: 47
Times I threatened to kill a co-worker: 1

Dalma

2009-07-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

One of my good friends and fellow bloggers asked me why I don't write about food in my blog. This is a good question. Food is such a huge part of culture, and normally it is my first entry point into a country that I visit. Dumplings in Hong Kong. Pho in Vietnam. Pisco sour in Peru. My feet tend to follow where my stomach wants to go. However, since i'm living on a university campus, a few kilometers from the main action of the city, it is most convenient to just eat in the canteen.

Make no mistake, the canteen is the epitome of uninspiring food. Its shortfalls are similiar to those of most eateries that mass produce food. When you try to accommodate to a variety of tastes for the cheapest price, you get medicore results. Not terrible. Certainly edible. But pretty boring. Every day we have yellow daal (lentil soup), rice, some kind of mixed vegetable curry, a chutney and cucumber salad.

But all the while that I have been enduring the canteen, I've been trying to hatch a plan to get authentic Oriya food. I have asked people on campus where I can get it, but they mostly point me in the direction of five-star hotels (which, by the way, don't have Oriya food) because they are the most hygenic. Then I found out there is a restaurant called Kalinga Cottage. Since "Kalinga" is a former name for Orissa, I thought I'd have luck there. That thought was absolutely incorrect. The restaurant has a nice assortment of North Indian dishes. But then two friends from Bhubaneswar and my supervisor recommended a place called Dalma to have Oriya food. Apparently, dalma is a special Oriyan dish, often called the poor man's food, which mixes daal with veggies.

So tonight we went to Dalma for the first time. On the waiter's recommendation I ordered the veg thali (a plate with a small selection of a variety of dishes), as it was meant to be the most authentic. I was nearly giddy for it to arrive. The service was fast and within 10 minutes or so, the waiter placed my meal in front of me. It was yellow daal, rice, mixed vegetable curry, a chutney and cucumber salad...oh and a small helping of dalma.

That's right, I've been having Oriya food the whole time and didn't know it. The saddest part is that I think the food at the canteen is actually a bit tastier.

Bathrooms in Bhubaneswar

2009-07-22T10:50:00.001-07:00

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

2009-07-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

According to NASA, this morning from 5:28am to about 7:40am, the moon would cast its shadow over the sun creating an eclipse that could be seen in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. In some areas in India - Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar - a total solar eclipse would be visible for six minutes and 39 seconds. But here in Orissa, we would only be able to see a partial eclipse.

We had heard that the peak of the eclipse would be from 6:26 to 6:30. So even though we had a late night last night, we set our alarms for 6am for what was billed as the longest solar eclipse that we would be able to see in our lifetimes.

After some small hiccups, including waking up the warden to unlock the gates of the nunnery and walking around in circles trying to figure out which way was east, we found the best place possible to watch the eclipse. Unfortunately,the best place possible had some buildings obstructing our view, but it wasn't a big deal. The big deal came around 6:20 when we noticed dark storm clouds coming towards us - completely eclipsing our eclipse.

More than a little disappointed, we made our way back to the hostel and climbed back into our respective beds for a few more hours of sleep.

"Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can do - a total eclipse of the heart"

Bangles

2009-07-21T12:14:00.001-07:00

I wish I could say that the New Year's Resolution I made this past January was lofty and inspiring. I wish I could say that I vowed to volunteer more or be kinder to friends and family. I wish I could say I decided to spend this year devoting my energy towards world peace or fighting to end hunger. But the truth is that my resolution for 2009 was to accessorize more. Seriously.

The good news for my silly resolution is that in India accessories rule. Earrings, nose rings, bindis, bangles, necklaces, anklets, toe rings, regular rings...you name it, Indian women wear it. Of course, there are some rules. No gold below the waist. And some things - like toe rings or anklets on both legs - may be signalling that you're married. But for the most part, everything else is fair game.

When a friend from Bhubaneswar left last week, I inherited her glass bangles. I had previously only worn the metal variety. I know this should go without saying, but the glass ones are significantly more fragile.

The First Attempt
I tried to slip on the first bracelet but it wouldn't move past my knuckles. I told my coworkers that they were too small, but they insisted that they would fit. I gave a bit more of a tug and the whole thing shattered in my hands.

The Second Attempt
Saryu told me that I just needed to be more gentle. She said that the bangles would easily fit if I positioned my hand correctly. She then demonstrated by folding her fingers into her palms in such a way that her hand shrunk to half its size. She then slid all four bangles past her knuckles and onto her wrist in 3 seconds flat.

It was then my turn. This time she would help me. She tried to inch the bangles past my knuckles. No luck. She gave the instruction to squeeze my fingers in. I did my best to imitate her incredible shrinking hand trick. She said "no, hold it like an Indian." Not surprisingly, this direction did not produce the result she was looking for. She slapped the backside of my hand. "Keep your knuckles flat. Like a girl. Hold it like a girl." Failure again. After 15 minutes of her coaxing the bangles and admonishing me for my poor hand posture, all four bangles found a place on my arms.

The Third Attempt
I got the bangles off with the help of soapy water. But then the following day, we were dressing up to go out, and I wanted to wear them again (this is how resolutions go). Focused, I greased my hands and wrist with a copious amount of body lotion, pinched my fingers together, while attempting to prevent my knuckles from jutting out, and with some manuevering got the bangles on in just a few minutes. Success. And I had thought garbha pindasana was difficult.

The Cute and the Beautiful (Photos from Koraput)

2009-07-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

I Just Might Be Famous

2009-07-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

After visiting the Tribal Museum in Koraput last week, I was approached by two men with video cameras. They were from a local news station and wanted to ask me about my experience of the museum. Normally, I would turn down such a request as impromptu interviews are not a part of my skill set. However, I got the distinct sense that they wouldn’t really take “no” for an answer.

I can only hope that my fumbling, wandering , incoherent responses have not been broadcast all over Koraput. Just as I can only hope that the snapshots that people take of me (either by request after a brief interaction or surreptitiously by passersby on their cell phones) have not found themselves all over the Internet.

I understand why I get so much attention in Orissa. I look different. I’m an oddity. There’s something very normal and usual about wanting to take photos of the abnormal and unusual. To be honest, it’s actually not very different from how I take pictures. I rarely click photos of streets in Orissa that look like the ones I see in the U.S. My lens is drawn to that which is different or surprising.

And this is part of the reason why I am nervous about photography and film as mediums. Perhaps my image is now being used as proof that Orissa does attract foreign tourists, which I suppose wouldn’t be a terrible thing even though it’s not particularly true. More troubling for me is that the pictures I take may be understood by others as a generalization of what India is like. This would also be misleading as my job here for the summer is to document the schools and health facilities that are struggling the most – the things that are in some ways atypical.

So what do I do? For now the best compromise I can come up with is to only post photos of the cute and the beautiful. For other pictures, you’ll have to come and visit me so I can give you the entire context behind each image. As for addressing my new found fame, the best course of action for now seems to be to double check before going out that there isn’t food wedged between my teeth or toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

For Anjali

2009-07-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine from Bhubaneswar is leaving today for a few weeks of traveling and then a return to the States. As sad as I am to see her go, I’m also excited for her future adventures in D.C. and beyond. In honor of her, I have created a top ten list of things I miss about the States and hence things that she will soon be able to enjoy.

10. 24-hour diners and all-day breakfast
9. Wearing spaghettis (tank tops) in public
8. Co-ed dance clubs
7. Toilet paper in public bathrooms
6. Roll-on deodorant
5. Fahrenheit
4. Drinking from the tap
3. Anonymity
2. Hot showers
1. Eating sushi, berries and other un-peelable and un-boilable foods

Farewell Anjali. Bhubu will miss you.

Tradition

2009-07-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

I often travel in social circles where people have a respect and even reverence for tradition and rituals. I often hear arguments about how mankind flourished for millennia before modern medicine was invented. Or maybe more accurately, there are treatments and practices that have been passed down –tested and re-tested – for centuries that can just as effectively cure people as pills, procedures and PhDs. I have heard and seen much denigration of mainstream medicine in favor of alternative medicine. And in some cases, it seems right and necessary to question whether MDs are too quick to prescribe a drug or focus too much on treating symptoms over root problems.

However, traveling to Koraput it’s clear that tradition alone is inadequate to treat a population. Koraput has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate in Orissa – a state that has one of the highest IMR and MMR rates in India (71 out of 1000 children do not reach their first birthday; an additional 50 do not reach their fifth). Most of these deaths are entirely preventable through things like immunizations (i.e. TB and polio) or behavior change (i.e. regular hand washing to prevent communicable diseases or stopping children from playing in stagnant water to decrease incidences of malaria). One of the biggest public health pushes right now is to encourage mothers to breastfeed within an hour of giving birth. The yellowish breast milk that is produced during that time contains nutrients and antibodies that can significantly boost child survival rates. But tradition dictates that mothers refrain from feeding the child until the milk is a more whitish color, even if it takes days.

While in Koraput I talked to doctors, midwives and health workers asking them what they think is the biggest roadblock to reducing IMR and MMR. As I am researching government support mechanisms (and because everyone likes to blame the government for problems), I expected answers like insufficient supplies of medicine, delays in the receipt of funds or inadequate trainings. But time and time again, the workers mostly pointed to tradition itself as the biggest challenge to saving lives.

The Backward Classes

2009-07-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

This past week my coworkers and I spent three days in Koraput doing fieldwork for our case study. From what I can gather, Koraput is most known for two things: being astonishingly beautiful and being one of the most “backward” places in India.

Fifty percent of Koraput’s population belongs to scheduled tribes. Scheduled tribes are aboriginal groups that the government of India has identified as having been socially and economically discriminated against and in need of social welfare assistance. An additional, 13 percent of the population belongs to scheduled castes. These are essentially people who were untouchables under the caste system and are now afforded special privileges under the constitution. On top of that, there is a small percentage of the population who have been recognized as “other backward classes.” These people may belong to smaller or hardly known tribes who also have not benefitted from India’s economic boom.

There are quite a number of cultural differences between the backward classes and mainstream Indians. To name a few: they wear different clothing and jewelery, celebrate different festivals, adhere to different belief systems and the norm is to have love marriages.

For tribal people, the main industry is agriculture. However, this has been difficult to sustain in the industrial world as they have been stripped of a lot of their land. Also historic discrimination has created a population that is ripe for revolution. Koraput in particular has been a stronghold for Naxalites, a Maoist group that is using violent means to promote change. In the last year, they have targeted government offices and uniformed officials. These safety concerns make it difficult to get qualified people to stay in the area to do development work.

The government of India has partnered with a number of external agencies to design interventions in Koraput to accelerate the delivery of services. These interventions are in sectors ranging from education, to health, to nutrition, to rural infrastructure to water and sanitation. Part of our job as researchers is to look at some of these interventions to see how they are fairing. I guess I’ll let you know what we find in August.

The Vanishing Sea

2009-07-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

Chandipur is said to have one of the longest beaches in the world. But this is only partially true. To be precise, for 12 hours a day it has one of the longest beaches, and for the other 12 hours it has probably one of the shortest. Following the cycles of the moon, the sea recedes five kilometers each day unveiling long stretches of sand. Later, the sea returns to cover it all up again.

Apparently there are only two other beaches in the world like this: one in Norway, the other in California.

When we first visited the beach, we had to walk a kilometer from the guesthouse before the water reached knee level. But then in the evening, after dinner when we were playing cards, we had as our background music the sound of waves crashing against nearby rocks.

A Weekend Holiday

2009-07-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

This was the plan.

My four co-workers plus a good friend of ours from Bhubaneswar were going to take a 6am train to Balasore together. Then we would split up: our friend to her family friend’s home, my coworkers and I to the beach at Chandipur to find a place to stay for the night. Several people had suggested we stay at a government-owned hotel called Panthniwas, but one of my coworkers had found on the Internet that there were many guest houses, hotels and resorts in the area. She insisted that it would be better to pick among them when we arrived for the option that was nicest and closest to the beach.

Well plans have a way of unraveling. Here’s what acutally happened.

Groggy after a three-hour early morning train journey, we exited the station not quite knowing where to find a taxi. Our friend had a car waiting for her and casually suggested that we join her for tea.

Now, quick-decision making in a group of four can be tricky, especially when an invitation is given. You usually need to exchange furtive glances to attempt to gage each person’s preference. I, however, skipped this step and impulsively announced that I would love to see an Oriya home. And with this we were locked in.

We rode 15 minutes before coming up to these large white gates. As they swung open, they revealed a bright white house standing squat and wide in a sea of green. The extensive front lawn had trees bearing jackfruit and coconut, and there were vibrantly colored plants lining the edge of a large veranda. We found out later that the husband of the family friend had a prestigious and lucrative job with the police.

Our hostess greeted us at the car and escorted us into her living room. She brought us all tall glasses of water and we took our seats on the couch. It was at this moment that a small bit of dread started forming in my stomach. I had forgotten till that second that tea = awkward small talk. The conversation started blandly as we explained where we were from and what we were doing in Orissa. Then it turned to our plans for the weekend. Our hostess asked us if we had booked at Panthniwas. When we told her we hadn’t, an expression of shock and surprise took over her face. "But what will you do if it’s booked,” she blurted out. She went on to explain it was second Saturday – a day when government offices were closed and getaway areas become packed. We explained we thought we’d try another place. To which she said: “there is no other place!” Talking out loud to herself she said, “I mean worse comes to worse you can stay here."

But then she composed herself and told us not to worry. She ushered us outside for a tour of the grounds. As we walked out we heard her well-connected husband on the phone clearly inquiring about accommodations for us in Hindi.

By the time we had seen her massive kitchen garden with vegetables ranging from okra to corn and took a look at her two cows gorging themselves on bushels of hay, a new plan had been arranged for us.

We walked in to find an elaborate breakfast spread out for us. As the couple was originally from South India the breakfast included idlis (a bread that I had previously thought I didn’t like as the canteen manages to make them taste like vegetarian chik nuggets), sambhar (a kind of curry), homemade papad (think paper-thin, large crispy crackers) and two Oriya desserts. My favorite was a version of rabdi, a pudding-like dessert made of condensed milk, sugar and honey. As we ate, we were informed that her husband had found us a place as the sole guests at Forest Guesthouse, a secluded house right on the beach. They had also booked a car to bring us there.

When we arrived at the guesthouse it was much more beautiful that we could have imagined. We were offered two high ceiling rooms with queen-sized posted beds. Attached to each room was a dressing room and a bathroom (with hot water!). The bedroom doors could open up to the front porch for a clear view of the sea. As we took our self-led tour, the caretaker was busily picking up things here and there. He apologized that he hadn’t had a chance to fully clean up from the last guests. I quipped that they probably got kicked out when he got a call from a top official about our need for a room. But then later, when we had our swimming gear on and were walking towards the water, we passed by a few people sitting by a vehicle. There were in fact the previous guests who were asked to vacate the guesthouse 30 minutes earlier.

Mind Your Head

2009-07-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Indians are very expressive with their heads. They have head movements to say yes. Head movements to say no. Head movements that mean probably yes. And head movements that mean most likely no. There are head movements to show that you're paying attention. And head movements to show ok, ok it's time to move on. Head movements for hello. Ones for goodbye. Ones that approve and ones that disapprove.

I've ordered items like club soda in a restaurant and got in response a friendly bobble of the head. I'd then have to wait five or ten minutes to figure out whether that meant that he was going to the fridge to get me one or I was out of luck for the day.

The best advice I have probably received since arriving was that if I want a clear answer to any question, don't look at the head.

An Entry From the Indian Slang Dictionary

2009-07-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

get down intransitive verb : to undergo menstruation : to have one's period. Not to be confused with the American slang meaning to dance infectiously as in the 1997 Backstreet Boys song "Get Down (You're the One for Me)" ::I must go to the toilet because I got down::

Monsoon!

2009-07-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, Bhubaneswar was a pressure cooker. The temperature was escalating every day, the sun was unforgiving and the air had become suffocating from the humidity. Going outside midday was not an option. Power outages were occurring daily. Newspapers were reporting of villagers performing special rituals that haven't been done since 1987 in order to coax the rain to come.

And then the monsoon finally arrived. When it first started pouring, people on campus cheered. Honestly, I wanted to run outside myself and get cooled by the water. It was a relief. Almost instantaneously, the temperature dramatically dropped, and I could wear jeans in the evening again. I started to wonder why everyone warned me against coming to India during monsoon season. It was wonderful.

Then today I began experiencing in earnest some of the problems with monsoon season.

Problem 1: The shower
I have failed to mention that the campus, like most places in Bhubaneswar, does not have hot water. I am the first to admit that I am a big baby about taking cold showers. However, when the thermometer was reading 44 degrees Celsius, it was tolerable - sometimes even pleasant- to be soaked in the icy water. Now that we're at 30 degrees Celsius, I have to give myself a pep talk to turn on the tap and then brace myself for the shock of the frigid water.

Problem 2: Walking at night
There are hardly any sidewalks in Bhubaneswar and most of the small roads are unpaved. As a result big muddy pools of water form in the street, and walking home at night is like navigating a minefield. In slippery sandals, we try to dodge the camouflaged mud puddles, while at the same time being mindful of the crazed traffic. Risks abound as motorbike drivers balance umbrellas in one hand as they speed by and cars and trucks transform into the enemy that at any moment can wield its power by charging a puddle and spraying you with dirtied rainwater.

Problem 3: The mud
It's everywhere. Caked on my feet. Splashed on my pants. In the bathrooms. Tracks running down the hallway. It cannot be escaped. The mud gets so bad (and the water levels so high) that some areas in Orissa become completely inaccessible.

This just might have something to do with why people prefer to visit India in the fall.

Buying Train Tickets in Bhubaneswar

2009-07-04T07:43:00.000-07:00

Matters of the Heart

2009-07-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

When I was in Kolkata I invented a game for my colleagues and I to play. Now this game isn't particularly original - or fun for that matter - but it is a game none the less. The rules are simple. You see a couple while you're out and you ask: arranged marriage or love marriage? Then everyone has to give their guess.

Arranged marriages and love marriages exist side by side in India today. I liken the relationship to that of radio and television. Radio may be the older medium but it has not been supplanted by television. There are people who fervently argue that one is better than the other. There are also those who may change their opinion on the topic depending on the circumstances. And then there are those who couldn't care less between the two as long as they get their entertainment.

Even though I invented the marriage guessing game, I am really bad at it. Horrible, actually. Here's why. I had this assumption that just because you haven't chosen who you will marry that somehow you'd be paired with someone that you would never want to marry. I imagined that talented, pretty young women would be arranged with guys who were three times their age or who had severe flatulence problems and diagnosed halitosis.

But that's actually not the norm. At least from the outside, on a purely superficial level, couples who are the product of arranged marriages seem perfect for each other. After all, these couples are matched based on similar levels of attractiveness, education, family income and social status, with the guy usually two to three years older and two to three inches taller. In other words, they are mainly matched on the criteria that from the outside they look like a good fit.

Love marriages are a whole lot messier than that. Love is not bound by caste or class, religion or age, horoscope or height. Love is what makes you see beyond flatulence and bad breath. Love is what accounts for the lopsided couples I see around.

Now if you want to ask me which of these couples I think are the happiest or are the most likely to stand the test of time, I cannot say. I'm still trying to figure out the strategy to that game.

Fourth of July

2009-07-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

A friend from New York asked me last night if I was planning on celebrating the Fourth of July while in India. The thought had never occurred to me. I usually celebrate the day by going to a barbecue and watching fireworks. Neither of these activities are particularly feasible here. However, I figured I would ask the readers of this blog if they have any Fourth of July traditions that I can share with my international colleagues. Leave a comment with your ideas.

Setting the Record Straight

2009-07-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

We haven't moved. We're still at the nunnery.

I should have mentioned it earlier. People have been asking. But the truth is, I didn't have the heart to tell the story till now.

We had found the perfect little house in Bhubaneswar. It had two bedrooms that were bigger than New York City studio apartments, an additional small bedroom, two bathrooms, our own kitchen, a sizable living room and a terrace. The whole place was newly renovated with brightly colored walls, and we were going to be the first tenants. The rent plus made-to-order meals plus a cleaning service for two months was $8,750 rupees per person (that's approximately US$194).

We informed our supervisor. We informed the UNICEF office. We wrote letters to the university acknowledging that we were taking our safety into our own hands by moving. It was all arranged. On moving day, two drivers came to the hostel, and we packed all of our luggage into the backseat. We handed over our keys to the warden, said a quick goodbye, and piled into the car.

Four staff members, our supervisor, and our UNICEF rep all came to help us settle into our new place. When we and our entourage arrived, the landlord opened the gates, and the staff members started unloading our bags.

Joyously, we entered our new house ready to live like adults again. But then we looked around only to find that the house was completely empty. No dining room table. No stove. No beds. No nothing. Empty. Well, with the exception of the seven witnesses to our aborted plans.

Now just to be clear the place was empty when we first visited it. But the landlord assured us during several conversations that occurred over five days that it would be ready in time for our arrival. That clearly was not the case.

Feeling like the air was sucked out of our bodies, we did the only thing that we could do. We loaded our bags back into the cars, sat down, and had them drive us back to the hostel. The warden met us at the door, handed us our keys and we dragged our stuff up the stairs to the rooms we will inhabit for the rest of the summer.

Dhauli Hills (Buddhist Temple Outside of Bhubaneswar)

2009-06-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Food Glorious Food

2009-06-29T21:54:00.001-07:00

Since arriving in Orissa I have eaten almost exclusively in the canteen at the university. Like most cafeterias, it doesn't merely serve regional food. Instead the menu draws from a variety of Indian cuisines, with each dish prepared in such a way that everything tastes almost exactly the same. For this reason, I have very little idea of what Oriya food tastes like, or for that matter, what any Indian food tastes like other than the north Indian-inspired meals that I've found at restaurants in Jackson Heights, NY or Edison, NJ.

In Kolkata I had an Indian food experience that was radically different from the previous Indian food experiences I've had. My coworkers and I went to a small Bengali restaurant called Kewpie's. Even though it is located in a dimly lit alley far from the glitz and glamour of the restaurants on Park Street, everyone we asked seemed to know of and recommend it.

When we found the place we felt more like we were visiting a traditional Bengali home than a restaurant. The dining area was nearly empty with a few tables placed in what would otherwise have been a living room. We scanned the menu and after a few false starts in ordering, we managed to find a few dishes that we wanted to try that the restaurant actually had the ingredients for.

Bengalis are known for their seafood and I must say that the fish I ordered was the main event (it's the second one listed under fish on the menu if you ever go). It was served inside a banana leaf, lightly crusted in some undecipherable but purely delectable spices. We ate in the traditional Bengali fashion: drizzling the sauce over rice, breaking off a piece of our main course, rolling it all into a ball with one hand and then popping the whole mess into our mouths.

Kolkata in Pictures

2009-06-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

Kolkata (Calcutta) is often called the intellectual capital of India. And while this may be true, the most striking parts of the city for me was the energy, the movement, the dynamism. Just to get into the city from the bus station, we had to cross the most traveled bridge in the world. Over the course of the weekend we rode in cars, buses, boats and subways, and in each mode of transportation we were caught up in a flurry of people and activity.

In Bhubaneswar students on campus and some residents of the city seem to speak with a bit of distrust of the outside. Not many students come from "outside." "Be careful of outside food." When we ride through the main drag of Bhubaneswar, we see few crowds and even fewer women. In Kolkata, on the other hand, residents seem to embrace the outside with tons of people out and about shopping, eating, selling, and more. Also, Bengali women are dominant on the scene and make their presence known with their fiery fashion sense. Bangles, large bindis, nose rings and red-painted feet are just a few adornments the women were sporting.
We visited Dakshineswar Temple, one of the most famous temples in Kolkata, which is meant to honor the goddess Kali. The building was red and white, which are colors favored by Bengalis. In fact, married women traditionally wear these colors only.

We followed this with a visit to Belur Math, a monastery and temple complex that was created in 1938 in homage to Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa by his student Swami Vivekananda. Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa is a respected social and religious reformer that helped advocate for the rights of women. Most notably, he rejected the practices of child marriage, widows being denied the opportunity to remarry, and dowry deaths (the murdering of wives whose parents have not paid their dowries in ways that are meant to look accidental, usually occurring in the kitchen).

On our second day, we visited Victoria Memorial, probably the most recognizable landmark in Kolkata. It was built between 1906 and 1921 in honor of Queen Victoria, also known as the Empress of India. It is currently an art museum, which houses a small section that details India's colonial past (curated somewhat strangely from a British historian's perspective...at least that's how it seemed to me). The grounds around the memorial are vast and provid a nice oasis of calm in the middle of the frenetic city.

The River Ganges

2009-06-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Ganges is one of the major rivers in India flowing east from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. The 2,510 km river is linked to the goddess Ganga and is considered holy by Hindus. The water is said to have purifying qualities and pilgrims come to bathe in the river in hopes of washing away their sins.

The Ganges is also the site of many religious ceremonies and rituals. As the river is considered a pathway to heaven, families spread the ashes of the deceased there. Believers may also come to the Ganges with water bottles in tow to capture some of the river water and bring it back to their ailing loved ones to help them along the journey to heaven.

One of the cities that the Ganges flows through is Kolkata. On our first full day, we traveled to the edge of the river and dipped our feet in. As our next stop was on the opposite side of the city, we then took a thirty minute boat ride across the river.

A Passage From India

2009-06-28T19:10:00.001-07:00

My coworkers and I decided to go to Kolkata (Calcutta) for the weekend. We arrived at the Bhubaneswar train station Friday afternoon at around the same time as the sky opened up and thick sheets of rain furiously came falling down. It was under a cold and gray backdrop that I first caught sight of the blue train that we would be traveling on for seven and a half hours. It reminded me of those trains you see in black and white films in the scene where the starlet's scarf covered head leans outs of the window calling to her lover as he endeavors to out run the train.

This romantic image quickly faded once I entered the non-AC chair car of the train. Replacing it was the odor of frying oil mingled with the faintest smell of chai and something a bit sour, like stale public toilets. The inside had a dingy, fallen look. The formerly white walls were a muddied grayish color accented with a dull peeling blue paint. Six or seven fans were creaking overhead, and small pools of water were gathering on the hard, inflexible train benches as the windows stubbornly stayed open.

We tried to find our seats through the parade of people coming down the aisle. One man selling pakoras out of a flimsy metal plan, another man urging you to buy a bag of potato chips from the crate he was carrying. More men shouting out the goods they were offering: chai, bottled water, and packets of gum dangling from a carrier as if the whole structure were a mobile that belonged in some baby's crib. There were also the travelers, of course, with their overstuffed bags pushing their way toward their seats. And then there were the blind, the one-armed, the crippled, reaching out their hands for just a few coins.

We found our places and squeezed into seats 97, 98, 99 and 100. After settling our belongings, we waited for the train to depart.

Anyone who has ever been on public transportation with me can guess that I was asleep within moments of the train moving. When I awoke, the rain had dissipated and the train car was filled with heavy, clingy air. As best as they could, my fellow passengers had contorted themselves into rest-like positions, mouths half-open and a sheen of sweat on their faces. I was pressed against the window, but when I turned around I saw huge expanses of green land. As the train continued chugging along, I focused in on the leaves and grass holding on to the last droplets of rain.

Rath Yartra

2009-06-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of the biggest and most famous festivals in Orissa. The Rath Yatra - the pilgrimage of chariots - is held in Puri and is meant to honor Lord Jagannath (also called Krishna). Thousands of devotees gather under the June/July sun in order to offer prayers and gain a glimpse of the gods.

In order to beat the heat, which gets unbearable at around 10am, we arrived in Puri at 8:30. Cars are stopped at the main part of town, and crowds of people make a 4 km walk to the temple that houses Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra. Saffron is a color of worship so many of the walkers were donned in bright yellow-orangish clothing. Some worhippers were also doing the walk completely barefoot.
Typically, the three gods are worshipped within the Jagannath Temple, but during this festival a richly decorated and bright chariot is constructed for each. The gods are then removed from the temple, placed in their respective chariots and taken on a journey to their aunt's temple - the Gundicha Temple located 2km away.

Apparently, touching the chariot or seeing one of the gods is meant to be very auspicious, and people face sun, suffocation and potential stampedes for the chance. The pilgrimage of the chariots begins at 4pm, but we didn't think it was wise to stick around for the main event. Even still, in the early morning there were tons of people.

Over the sound of the swarms was a microphoned man leading prayers. At certain points, devotees would reach their arms up to the sky. Throughout the crowd were also men giving out sweets and other foods for pujas, or offerings to the gods.
As we made our way around the festival we found various pockets of activity.Like a minister leading around a sacred cow.
Hare Krishna devotees uniting their voices in sacred sounds.
Volunteers offering spritzes of water to help mitigate the heat.

Men squatting down to get close shaven haircuts.

A coconut seller cracking the fruit open against the ground.

And a costumed man performing a sword dance, until he sees a certain American girl taking pictures and decides to pause and sing her a song.

The White Tiger

2009-06-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

When I travel I like to read novels about my destination. It's nice to be able to place the characters within the appropriate context, and I enjoy when the book mentions a village or a city where I've actually been. Novels also offer a little preview of some of the things that I might encounter during my visit.

On the plane to India, I started the Man Booker Prize winning novel _The White Tiger_ by Aravind Adiga. It reminded me of a darker version of _Remains of the Day_. Told from the perspective of an Indian servant, the author reveals the excesses of the upper class and gives voice to a group of people who are often ignored in conversations about India's economic boom. Put another way, it highlights how the poor have to live in order for the rich to live as they do.

This book has provided a backdrop for me to understand some of the luxuries that have been afforded to me here at this gorgeous university campus in Bhubaneswar. Sometimes I think of this place like a shiny, gilded watch. On the outside, everything is beautiful, golden, simple, clear. But what is masked is the messy, yet intricate dealings on the inside that makes everything work. No one seems to care a whole lot about the inside stuff unless the timing gets a little off.

The four of us have a go-to-guy named Gopal for all of our needs here on campus. He delivers us our drink preferences and biscuits twice -sometimes thrice- a day. When we need office supplies or our Internet isn't working or we have to see someone at a part of campus we haven't been to, he's the one to ask for help. And when our supervisor was off on vacation last week, it was Gopal that made sure that we got to our appointments and that everything was running like clockwork. Honestly, I'm uncomfortable with all of this attention, but as this is the way of life here, I feel like my only option is to make clear my gratitude for everything that he does.

But there is a risk here that I cannot ignore. If I were to get into some sort of mishap, I would not be held responsible. There's a reason why the warden is so strict with us. There's a reason why Gopal is so attentive. Because if the timing gets a little off, no matter whose fault it is, their jobs are on the line. And in a economically depressed place like Orissa, even a bad job is a good one.

More on Birthdays

2009-06-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to the four-star hotel Mayfair Lagoon to celebrate Saryu's birthday. The Mayfair is home to one of three clubs in Bhubaneswar willing to serve alcohol to women. As this was a special occasion (and because we sweetened her up a bit with leftover birthday cake), the warden agreed to grant us a curfew-free evening.

Now don't get too shocked/excited about this leniency. Everyone in Bhubaneswar knows that night-life completely shuts down by 11:30 pm.

We left our hostel around 8pm and arrived at the club about twenty minutes later. The first thing we noticed when we walked through the door was a conspicuous absence of women. Best estimate, I would say that the room was 87% filled with men. One of my coworkers quipped to the host that we'd like to be seated in the female section. This gender imbalance was a stark reminder of how other women in the city living in hostels or with their families also have curfews, and some of them are as early as 7pm.

Despite being in a definite minority at this club, we had a nice time. We danced, ate dinner, and, most importantly, didn't worry about the time. When the bill came, Lisa paid and we decided to settle who owed what later.

Then this morning came and we got hit over the head with another cultural difference. Lisa and I thought we'd be splitting the bill three (possibly four) ways, whereas the Delhi girls thought Saryu would be footing the bill. The debate about the bill went around in circles for awhile with one side making arguments like "Of course, we would pay for you, it's your birthday." And the other side making arguments like "Of course I'd pay. It was my birthday."

When it was clear that this conversation was going nowhere fast, I was schooled in how birthdays are celebrated in India.

So at midnight, all your friends and extended family members call you. You say a quick thank you for their calls and then tell them that you will call them back later. In the meantime, your immediate family and very close friends gather around with birthday cake and gifts. This is the first round of celebrations.

After the Happy Birthday singing and the gift opening, you begin calling everyone back. You may be up till about 5am returning phone calls and sharing your birthday plans for the following day. Then you sleep for a couple of hours before you begin the next rounds of celebration.

During the day you may cut cake and open gifts with coworkers, different groups of friends, and possibly also a significant other. It is not uncommon to cut cake three or four times on your birthday. Then in the evening, no matter your age, you have a big dinner to which you invite everyone that you would like, and in gratitude for all of the gifts, you pay for dinner.

I said it before, and I'll say it again. Birthdays are serious business here.

Birthdays

2009-06-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today was Saryu's birthday. As she hates the food served in the canteen, we made her a little gift basket of her favorite food-like substances, including Maggi noodles, Cerelac baby food, Hide & Seek biscuits and masala-flavored Lays potato chips. Deepika insisted that we present the...um...present at midnight. Thinking that Deepika was really gung-ho about birthdays, I agreed.

But it turns out that everyone in Saryu's circle of friends (and possibly in all of Delhi) are mad about birthdays. Once the clock struck midnight, Saryu was bombarded with phone calls from friends and family. At 12:10 Saryu commented that her parents were terrible for not calling her. I thought she was joking as I don't know of anyone whose parents would call them at midnight on their birthday. But then at 12:12 her parents did call.

Birthdays are serious business here.

The celebration continued during the daylight hours as well. Saryu's sister surprised her by having a cake and flowers delivered to our office. After taking some pictures of the goodies, we ate the cake in the traditional Indian fashion. Saryu dipped her knife into the cake, separating out the first slice. Scooping the slice up with her fingers, she fed one bite to Deepika, then to Lisa, then to me. In turn, Deepika cut out a second slice of cake and fed it to Saryu. She then passed along that slice to Lisa who offered Saryu a second bite. And I, after receiving the hand off from Lisa, fed Saryu the final bite.

Cultural Festival

2009-06-18T20:54:00.001-07:00

So I promised details on the cultural festival, but then I wasn't going to give them because the event was kind of a flop. However, a good friend and fellow blogger encouraged me to write something about it, so here it goes.

The main downfall of the event was that it was poorly organized. It was designed around many competitions like henna designs, tattoos and hair. However, it took place in an outside auditorium with an audience looking on to a stage. The organizers understood that it would be really boring to watch people from afar apply henna, draw tattoos or do their hair for 20 minutes. In order to side step this problem, they decided to have the competitors work backstage, and provide alternate entertainment for the audience to kill time until the competition could be judged. This entertainment came in the form of round after round of musical chairs with ten people going each time.

Now it's been a long time since I played musical chairs, so I can't say with certainty that students at Kiit campus have more intense rules than we do in the States, but I can be sure that they monitor the rules with more rigor. Three people were policing the event, and people were eliminated for touching chairs and running in the wrong direction. After the fifth round or so, I couldn't take it anymore and didn't stick around for the results of the competition.

To be fair, the event started off decently. The MC, who talked a little bit longer than necessary, called people out from the audience to sing traditional Oriya songs. This was followed up by a dance performance that included several female students. The MC then gave a really nice speech about community and the students who contributed to the cultural night. He then asked for all of the international students - the new members of the community - to come to the stage and share a little bit about their cultural festivals.

At this point, I began looking around to see if the other international students would stand up and get on stage. But then as I scanned the audience, looking from one Indian face to another, I realized they were talking specifically about us.

Lisa and I refused to go up by ourselves, so Deepika and Saryu joined us. A microphone was shoved in my hand, and my mind instantly went blank. What on earth could I say about American culture and the festivals that we have to a group of Indian graduate students? I said my name and where I was from and stammered something about how I didn't know what to say. Then I quickly passed the mic onto Lisa.

At this point, Lisa transformed into a Miss Universe contestant. She talked brightly about how she was from Austria and how the film _The Sound of Music_ was set there and showed her culture (which, by the way, is a film she has never seen). She then kicked off her shoes and announced that she would perform an Austrian dance. And the next thing I knew, she was doing a little Austrian jig to Bollywood music. Unbelievable.

Pure Veg

2009-06-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Last night we were working late and decided to treat ourselves to delivery. Deepika was taking our orders and translating it over the phone to the nearby Indian place. This is more or less how part of the ordering conversation went down.

LISA: I'd like chana masala [translation: chickpea stew] and garlic naan.
DEEPIKA: They don't have it; this is a veg place.
LISA (confused): The garlic naan?
DEEPIKA: Yeah, this place is pure veg.

You may be thinking, "since when was garlic naan made from an animal?" Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction too.

In India, people who are pure veg don't eat meat, eggs, dairy, honey, onions or garlic. It's like veganism squared. From what I gathered from talking to my Delhi coworkers, people who are pure veg are typically religious folk. The rationale for them not eating meat is that it is impure or corrupt to harm animals for food. The explanation behind the onions and garlic, however, is a little less clear.

At first I was told it was because onions and garlic are thought of as dirty foods because they are taken from the ground. However, this didn't make much sense to me as pure veg restaurants often serve root vegetables.

The next theory thrown at me was that onions and garlic were considered impure because of their pungent odor. I was willing to buy this argument, but then decided to do some quick, unscientific follow-up research to double check.

The result? Well, according to Lonely Planet, Jains and Hare Krishna are generally the ones who are pure veg, and they may also abstain from root vegetables as they do not believe in doing harm to any living things, including plants. Any other thoughts on this?

Playing Dress Up

2009-06-17T07:04:00.001-07:00

Last night on campus, there was a cultural night organized by the students to celebrate the Rajo festival. The flyer for the event described a night of entertainment with songs, dance, and henna/tattoo/hair competitions. The only catch was that you had to come in traditional dress, which for girls meant saris.

Now in India most women in their twenties who are studying in school or are working at casual offices are not likely to be wearing saris day to day. More often than not they'll be wearing a kurta (longish loose-fitting tunic-like top) with a salwar (breezy draw string pants), a churidar (a tighter pant that is tapered but has scrunched up rings of material at the bottom), or a patiala (think MC Hammer pants made of natural fibers). Among the younger generation, saris are generally reserved for weddings, festivals and other special occasions.

My coworkers and I didn't have saris so we went shopping for them on Monday. It was a dizzying experience that involved going from store after store to choose from an assortment of fabrics the perfect material, color and design. Then we had to go to other shops to find matching petticoats and blouses (usually women will get these specially made but we were short on time). By the end of the night we made our choices: Lisa was to be in dark purple, Saryu in light purple, me in green. Deepika decided to wear a fancy churidar kameez she had packed.

Apparently, there are more than one hundred ways to drape a sari. Between the four of us, we didn't even know one. So we had no choice but to ask for help from the only person we knew who could do it: the warden. We told the security guard that we were looking for her and asked that she come to our room as soon as possible. She arrived at our door within five minutes only to find me standing in the middle of the room in a blouse and petticoat hopelessly holding onto an endless piece of green fabric.

She gave the signal for five minutes and went rushing off. She came back later with another member of the staff who we had never met before. As we would later find out, she was an expert with saris.

So first she checked that the petticoat was pulled and tied tightly around my waist. This is important because if the petticoat comes undone the whole sari falls off. Then she wrapped the fabric around my waist tucking it into my petticoat. Then she tossed one end of the fabric over my shoulder and pinned it into place. The most impressive part came next, as she neatly folded pleats in the front and then tucked the rest of the fabric into the petticoat. The whole process took about 15 minutes.
It was actually kind of a bonding moment, too. The warden sat there with all of us and we actually laughed and had fun. It just might have been a turning point.

Rajo Festival

2009-06-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

For the last three days, the people of Orissa have been celebrating the Rajo festival - a festival for girls. During this time all women get to take a break from their daily work, including Mother Earth (there is no sowing or plowing during these days). Typically, families hang make-shift swings from trees and the eldest unmarried daughter comes out to swing on them. Girls of all ages are also celebrated with new clothes and sweets.

Like many cultural festivals, this one is laden with symbolism. Rajo means both dust and menstruation. So the idea is that during the festival the earth experiences her menstruation and then soon after the monsoon rains will come and she will become fruitful and fertile.

As we are on a university campus in a capital city, we have not seen any examples of these swinging girls. In fact, the campus has been pretty empty as girls returned back to their home villages for the festival. However, there is a cultural festival tonight. Details on that to come later.

And That's Why You Don't Ride the Bus in India

2009-06-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

I love taking public transportation in new places that I visit. I think it's a great way to connect with the natural rhythm of a city. It gives you the opportunity to do some serious people watching, chat with locals and begin chipping away at the invisible wall between tourist and resident. So when my colleagues and I were deciding whether to take the bus or a cab to the village of Konark yesterday, I was the biggest cheerleader for taking the bus.

Now I recognized that there would be some down sides to taking the bus in India. I knew it was going to be very crowded, which opens you up to the possibility of theft or harassment. And I knew that all of the bodies crammed into a non-air conditioned vehicle midday was going to be oppressively hot. And then of course there is the issue of the quality of the roads themselves, which would make the whole experience feel like a never-ending ride on Rolling Thunder at Great Adventure. But it all seemed worth it for the chance to actually feel like I lived in Orissa.

What I didn't factor in while doing my mental calculus, however, was small children. Small children with weak stomachs. Small children with weak stomachs who puke all over my co-worker one and half hours into our three hour bus ride.

And that's why you don't ride the bus in India.

To her credit, my co-worker handled the ordeal like a champ. She cleaned herself off as best she could with bottled water and agreed to continue on with our day trip as planned.

Our first destination was the Sun Temple, which is actually a temple complex made up of three buildings. As our tour guide told us the three signified the life cycle (child, adult, elder); the cycle of the day (morning, afternoon, evening); the seasons (summer, winter, monsoon); and Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (the creator, the sustainer and the destroyer).

Each temple had carvings all along the outside. We had hired a tour guide to give us some context to understand the images. The tour started off benign enough. Our guide showed us the dancing hall where there were images of Shiva dancing and the young Krishna being very naughty by stealing and eating butter.

But then the carvings got a bit naughtier than that. It turns out that majority of the images depicted on the Sun Temple are drawn from the Kama Sutra. So as the images became more amorous, our tour guide became more succinct. He'd point at carvings, mutter something quickly, and then walk as far away as possible as we took a look. Towards the end, he gave up all pretenses of giving this kind of tour to four women. He just borrowed our cameras and clicked photographs of the carvings he'd normally give details about to his groups. As we said our goodbyes, he was very kind and encouraged us to come back again some day....with our husbands.

We followed up the tour with a walk on a nearby beach where a bunch of families were milling around. By this time it was 5 o'clock and the weather was perfect. The sun had gone down and there was a breeze coming up from the bay. We rolled up our pants and splashed around in the warm water. As we were drying our feet and getting ready to go, my co-worker, who still had dried vomit visible on her white top, said "I don't mind taking the bus back."

So we headed to the bus depot, and I sat in the last row of the bus next to the window. As we made our way back to Bhubaneswar, I leaned out the window, letting the wind rush across my face, and watched as scenes of Orissa flickered past.

Deadlines

2009-06-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Deadlines are stressful, especially for me.

Today at work we had our first deadline - a 20 page report documenting the background research we have conducted on Orissa. For the past week, as the good academics we are, we poured over piles of books with census information and survey results, dutifully noting down indicators, demographics and relevant statistics. After a week of research and an intense night of writing, we handed over the report to our supervisor.

But here's the thing. Even though we're living in Orissa, we have absolutely no connection to any of the things that we wrote down. Here in Bhubaneswar we live a pretty charmed life with running water, piped sanitation, paved roads, a western toilet. But this is not at all representative of the state as a whole. By many estimates, Orissa is the poorest state in India, and its development indicators leave a whole lot to be desired. Let's take a look at the numbers.

46.4% of the population is living below the poverty line
The infant mortality rate is 77 per 1000 children born alive
3/4 of the state's children under 3 suffer from malnutrition
60.74% of children dropout before completing primary school
85% of the population live in rural areas
3.8% of all rural households have access to safe drinking water
5.2% of all rural households have access to piped sanitation

So to celebrate the dubious milestone of compiling all of this information, we went to a swanky mall restaurant for dinner followed by drinks at one of the few lounges in Bhubaneswar. Of course, for most of the time we were there, I was worried about another deadline - our 9pm curfew. Luckily, this deadline was one of our last, as we will be moving into our own curfew-free place next Tuesday.

Oriya Hospitality

2009-06-12T01:52:00.000-07:00

While in Orissa, I vacillate between feeling like a celebrity and feeling like a leper.

First, leprosy. So me and my colleagues get stared at. A lot. Pretty much constantly. Long, intense, unblinking stares. This is not too surprising. Bhubansewar isn't the type of place that gets a lot of foreign visitors. People also take pictures of us. Also fair. I recognize this might be the last time that some of the students and staff on campus will see anyone who looks like us. Yesterday, we showed up at the canteen during prime time lunch hour and had a seat at a crowded table. Almost immediately our neighbors all got up and found other places to sit. Now that hurt a little.

The celeb factor manifests itself more in our interactions with the staff on campus. I feel like they must have been specifically told to do whatever it takes to make us comfortable (much to our discomfort). Here are some examples.
1. We are brought tea and biscuits to our office twice a day, every day.
2. We are the only rooms in the girls hostel that have air conditioning. They installed them right before we arrived for our benefit.
3. When my eye was swollen and I went to the canteen to get some ice, they told me it would take one hour. I said no problem, figuring that they didn't have any made. Five minutes later, I was delivered a plate of ice, and it was clear that someone must of taken an ice pick to some poor, unsuspecting freezer just to fulfill my request.
4. One of my colleagues isn't very comfortable with using squat toilets and mentioned this to our supervisor. The next day, plumbers were pouring cement into one of the squat toilets in the shared bathroom of our hostel so as to put in a standard western one instead.

So it should have come to no surprise to us that the campus tour that our supervisor arranged wouldn't be the typical walk around the grounds type of affair. Three staff members picked us up in this:

Move over Jon and Kate.

The most interesting part of the tour was seeing the tribal school that the university hosts. Ten thousand children from scheduled tribes (indigenous tribes that have been classified by the government as economically disadvantaged) attend this boarding school for free. And free really means free : free tuition, free housing, free food, free uniforms, free supplies. From the outside the classrooms seemed nice. However, the living quarters were pretty cramped with several rows of bunk beds filling the room. For some reason, there were a few kids still there even though it's the summer. A few of them were playing in the playground.

And here are a couple of pictures of the ridiculously beautiful place where I work.

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

2009-06-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today was laundry day. Finally. I've been in India more than a week and I needed to clean my clothes. There's no re-wearing outfits when it gets as hot as 45 degrees Celsius (I'm too afraid to translate that into Fahrenheit). I've been asking the warden for days now about how we do laundry and she told me that a guy will come by to pick it up. This evening, as I was attempting to sneak into the hostel past curfew (it was 9:09!), a man came forward to say that he was there for laundry pick up.

Now in the States when you have laundry picked up, they weigh your bag and tell you how much you owe. Not so in India. As I learned the hard way, they charge you by the number of items in the bag.

So three of us handed over our laundry bags to the guy and wrote down our names, room numbers and the number of items we wanted cleaned. Then, to our complete embarrassment, he proceeded to display the contents of our bags - underwear and all- on the floor right at the entrance door of the hostel in order to confirm the number of items each bag held.

Watching someone air your dirty laundry is pretty uncomfortable, but we suspect it was far more mortifying for the warden. She oversaw the whole debacle with a stern stare. Imagine having to watch the new girls in the hostel publicly hand over their undergarments to a man!

On Practice

2009-06-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

My yoga practice is a comfort for me when I travel. Sometimes when things get hectic or I'm feeling a bit off balance, it's nice to move in and out of familiar postures. This is more true now that I practice ashtanga, a style of yoga that allows me to fall into the ritual and rhythm of the same poses in the same order day after day.

Two days ago, I practiced yoga publicly for the first time in India at the campus gym. Now while I'm used to being the only black person practicing yoga in a room of practitioners from another racial group (Asian in Hong Kong, mostly white in the US), this is the first time I've had the experience of being the only black person practicing yoga in a room of non-practitioners from another racial group. Oh yeah, that's right. I rolled out my mat and the 7 or 8 staff members at the gym gathered at the door to stare at me.

Now I recognize why this would be a spectacle. If the shoe were on the other foot, I'd want to check out the American girl who was interested in doing yoga in the campus gym. But let's just say it was really intimidating having an audience. But what to do? I couldn't roll up my mat and go home. Instead I brought my hands to heart center, then inhaled arms up, look thumbs.

This morning when my alarm went off at 6:50 am I just couldn't get my eyes open. Even though I wanted to practice, I figured I just needed more sleep. At 7:15 a woman knocked on the door to clean our rooms. I got up to let her in but my eyes still felt heavy. Since I was already out of bed, I figured I should just brush my teeth and get going. I went to the sink, splashed some water on my face, and looked up into the mirror to find that in fact, my eyes actually couldn't open. Well at least one eye couldn't. It was swollen shut. My best guess is that I got a mosquito bite on my eyelid and reacted poorly to it.

As I looked like Frankenstein, I figured I shouldn't head over to the gym and terrify the small children who happened along my path. And with my eye in its condition, I couldn't read or watch a movie or anything really. What to do?

I shoved my suitcase out of the center of the room. Rolled out my mat. Brought my hands to heart center. Inhale arms up, one eye look thumbs.

Finding a New Home Away From Home

2009-06-08T22:03:00.001-07:00

My colleagues and I are currently staying at the girls hostel that is associated with the research institution where we are working. It is basically a dormitory but I have come to nickname it the nunnery (others have referred to it as a prison). When we arrived we were given a 10pm curfew (for our own safety, of course), but when we missed the deadline by 4 minutes on Saturday night, it was scaled back to 9pm.

My favorite part of the day is when we go to have a meal in the canteen. It reminds me of one of the final scenes of the Sound of Music when the head nun is leading them through the dark corridors and locking and unlocking gates behind them. It's sort of like that. The warden (this is actually what they call her) leads us through the first floor of the hostel and unlocks the gate into the canteen. It must stay locked because the canteen is co-ed and there is a fear that boys will sneak in.

When discussing the restrictive rules to our supervisor, he told us without any irony "too much freedom, leads to trouble."So as you can guess, my colleagues and I have been looking for alternate housing. While finding accommodations in a foreign city is always hard, in Bhubaneswar it is particularly daunting. First of all, since this is not a big tourist or expat destination city, there are very few furnished apartments on the market. Those that do exist, prefer to have tenants who can sign on for at least a year. Further complicating matters is that we are four women. And landlords are not willing to rent to unmarried women (apparently, we might start a brothel or something with all of our unbridled freedom).

We tried looking for guesthouses and hotels that might be suitable and were directed to Utkal Guest House. We didn't know ahead of time that it was also a marriage bureau. For those unfamiliar, a marriage bureau is a place where parents trying to arrange marriages for their children go to get help finding a match. It's like a corporate matchmaker, just bring your child's horoscope.

When we walked into the guest house/marriage bureau there was a calendar of the gods on one wall of the room and a poster of what looked like an x-rated Indian film on the other. The actual guest rooms were OK, a little musty and shabby. But then we looked up to see that there was a red light bulb over the beds. Hilarious. Needless to say we're still at the nunnery, exploring other options.

First Impressions of Bhubaneswar, Orissa

2009-06-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Bhubaneswar last Saturday and the city felt so different from Delhi, it was hard to believe I was in the same country. Sure, the drivers flouted the rules with the same intensity as those in Delhi, but the similarities basically stopped there. Bhubaneswar has huge stretches of green space, uncrowded streets, and murals using the Warli painting style. Warli is apparently based on a pictorial written language used by some of the indigenous populations in India.

Another striking difference is the language. While many people in Bhubaneswar speak Hindi and/or English, the main language used is Oriya. The curly scripts of the language could be seen on signs throughout the city.

And overall, the city has more of a suburban/residential feel. I felt particularly inclined to take a picture of this block because it reminded me of the opening sequence from the Golden Girls.

Snapshots of Delhi

2009-06-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

So for a whole week I have been without phone and Internet. I'm already in Orissa (more on that later) but I wanted to first post some photos from Delhi.

This is from Khan Market. It's filled with shops and eateries. It may not look like it from this photo but it's a bit ritzy. Apparently, the real estate here is the fourth highest in Asia. I went here on my first day to buy an India-appropriate wardrobe.

On the second day of orientation we visited Humayun's tomb. Pre-dating the Taj Mahal this was built under the orders of Hamida Banu Begum, Emperor Humayun's widow.

Another photo from the complex.

And finally a photo of my work colleagues (Lisa, Deepika, Saryu) and I at a party that UNICEF hosted for us on our second night.

New Chick in Town

2009-06-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

I once heard somewhere that there is a special technique for introducing new chicks to an already established coop. In the middle of the night, you must sneak the chicks in, being careful not to wake the others. The next morning the chickens will wake up and instantly accept the chicks, wrongly believing that the new arrivals had always been there. Bring the new chicks in during the day, however, and the newbies will be pecked at and harassed by the rest of the flock.

Arriving in Delhi last Tuesday, I could not help but think of this. Two other UNICEF interns and I emerged from the airport at about 10:30 pm, and we piled ourselves and two months worth of luggage into a taxi cab. As we braced ourselves against the high-speed traffic, the chaotic round abouts, and the aggressive honking, we made our first dim impressions of India. By the time we reached the International Youth Centre (a confusing journey that required our driver to ask for directions multiple times), all was dark and quiet. A man behind the reception desk handed us our keys and almost silently we made our way to our rooms.

For the next three days, in a haze of jet lag, we were ushered from one air conditioned room to another, as the UNICEF staff offered lectures to help orient ourselves to India, UNICEF and the work we will be doing over the summer. We were eased into our surroundings, not really exploring the more populated areas of the city till the end of orientation. By that time, we felt pretty secure with wandering around on our own, and Delhi in its hectic, carefree sort of way seemed more than willing to accept us.

New Country, New 'Do

2009-05-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

Expectations

2009-05-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

My former colleague regularly participates in the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. She once told me that before her first trip out there she wrote down what she thought her experience would be like. Later, after seeing her week long artist community go up in flames, she revisited her writing, and let's just say, things didn't really pan out the way she had predicted.

While I think this is an interesting exercise, I am a little nervous to publicly write out my expectations. I'm afraid that in retrospect, I will look at this posting and think it is a sad collage of Indian stereotypes loosely drawn from Slumdog Millionaire and Jhumpa Lahiri short stories. But perhaps having that in the back of my head, I can avoid making any truly egregious comments.

I've known many people who have traveled to India and they've all seen something a little different. Some focus on the poverty, the begging, the heat, the swindles, the dirt, the natural disasters, the frustrations of getting around and getting things done. Others tell me of the frenetic energy, the bursts of color, the spicy food, the friendly people, the pulse, the love of getting lost in it all. And because I practice yoga, I also hear stories of dedication, devotion, inspiration, admiration and the search for the sacred in the secular.

I suspect my experience will be more mundane than all of that. Bhubaneswar, Orissa will be my home for about nine weeks and from what I have been able to gather, it seems like it's essentially the Cleveland of India (not that I have anything against Cleveland). It's a city and there are some attractions there, but it probably wouldn't make it on any international traveler's top ten places to visit list. I imagine my life will be more about buying dosas daily for dinner from the man who sells it across the street from where I'm living. Or about covering my head, slipping off my shoes and entering into one of the many temples throughout the city. Or maybe more about hearing the persistent sound of hagglers on my way to work, contemplating if this will be the day that I give in and make my choice among the array of goods.

You went to India? What was that like?

2009-05-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

So there is thing that often happens to me. I tell a new person that I've met that I lived in Hong Kong for two years, and he or she invariably asks: what was that like?

I dread this question.

My mouth gets dry. I feel sick to my stomach. And I stammer out some answer that actually have very little to do with what Hong Kong was like. I've been back in the US for more than three years and I still haven't figured out a good way to answer the question. Ask me about the two weeks I spent in Peru, I can respond no problem. How did my five days in Cambodia treat me? I can rattle off a reply. But ask me to articulate the sense of a place that I came to understand over two years in just two minutes. Forget about it.

So now I'm off to spend 10 weeks in India. And I've learned my lesson. I'm keeping track of the piecemeal, fragmented way that I will come to understand what India is like. If you're interested in exploring with me, buckle up: it's bound to be a bumpy ride.