I Went to Bhopal Alone and All I Got Was a Two-Night Stay in the Hospital

Just kidding. I also got to visit Sanchi, the 3nd century BCE Buddhist site for which I initially came to Bhopal. Sanchi is located about 50 kilometers from Bhopal, so my plan was to stay in Bhopal, the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh, and go to Sanchi by train to do my research. I discovered on my first day of research that taking the 8 am train without reservations was not a viable option during morning rush hour, as the booking office was swamped with commuters. So, I went to Plan B and took the 30-rupee bus to Sanchi. My hotel was conveniently located a five-minute walk from both the train station and the bus stand, which meant that though I wasn’t in the most scenic or happening part of Bhopal, I could at least get myself around.

This plan worked out fine for the first two days. On my first full day in Bhopal, I did research in my hotel all day. On the second day, I took the aforementioned trip to Sanchi. It’s another UNESCO World Heritage site and was really exciting to visit. There are a few really important female sculptures there so that’s why I wanted to visit. The site is known for its Buddhist stupas, some of which were built by the 3nd century BCE Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (remember him and his pillars and stupas from Sarnath, outside of Varanasi? There was also an Ashokan pillar at Sanchi.), and temples.

When I got there I also discovered that there is an interesting 10th century medieval Buddhist temple that uses a lot of so-called “Brahmanical” or Hindu-style imagery, forms, and symbols, so its style shared a lot of conventions with Khajuraho. Very useful for my research, and I’m glad that I came to see the temples and stupas at Sanchi in person so I could study them closely and find out special connections like the one between the temple at Sanchi and those at Khajuraho. That’s why we do field research, right, to discover and learn things like this? Definitely reaffirmed that it was necessary for me to come to Sanchi for my research.

I spent a very hot day in Sanchi, wandering among the temples, stupas, and remains of former monasteries. The site itself is extremely peaceful and beautiful, and I can understand why it was used as a location for monasteries all the way back in Ashoka’s time. The monuments are located on top of a hill, accessible by a path that winds its way up the hill’s steep precipice. When you get to the top there are beautifully manicured lawns surrounding the main stupas, maintained by the Archeological Survey of India. Some of the monuments have been fully restored, while others are in the process of restoration, or restored but left in a semi-ruined state. After lunch and a visit to the site’s Archeological Museum, I took the train back to Bhopal. Since it was a quick trip between the two, I didn’t need to buy a ticket in advance, so bought myself a 20-rupee general ticket at the counter in Sanchi. This type of ticket for the commuter train has no assigned seating, and since I was traveling alone I glommed onto two older women from Bhopal on a day trip to Sanchi who were kind enough to let me attach myself to them, and we boarded the train for Bhopal. We sat among families and businessmen, everyone squeezing into bench seating wherever they could find a spot. What should have been a forty-five minute trip actually took double the time due to various stops along the way, allowing us the opportunity to engage in a popular Indian pastime: waiting for/on the train. With 16 million passengers a day, it is more than understandable that not everything always runs smoothly or as planned on Indian Rail. During the waiting times I chatted with my fellow passengers and flirted with the toddler sitting across from me, who was very excited about the monkeys playing on a cliff directly above our open train window. I did not share in his enthusiasm. When I returned to Bhopal that night, I wanted to go to a restaurant/sweet shop I had found down the street from my hotel, but it was closed because virtually all restaurants in Bhopal went on a three-day strike on Monday. Luckily, the restaurant in my hotel was seemingly one of the only places in the city that remained open.

To quote one of my favorite authors, Salman Rushdie, “Things (being things) didn’t work out quite as planned.”  After my very tiring day in the 110 degree sun in Sanchi, I decided to stay at my hotel for the day on Tuesday and do research. I came down with a fever in the afternoon, and it rose as the night went on. I wanted to hold off on going to the hospital until the following morning, but I felt miserable and went to the hospital around 1:30 am. The extremely kind manager of the hotel came to the hospital with me, made sure I was settled in, and bought my first round of medicines for me (apparently in the ER here you buy your prescribed medicines/IV solution, etc. at the chemist located on the first floor of the hospital, rather than the hospital supplying them for you and billing you for them at the end of your stay. You can return any unused medicines at the end of your stay and get reimbursed for them.). He came back to check on me the following afternoon. The nurses and doctors at the hospital couldn’t have been nicer to me, and my Hindi was definitely useful and a conversation starter (no pun intended!) throughout my stay. All of the nurses were young and couldn’t have been much older than I am. I think they were all very curious when I first arrived, and I asked one if they got a lot of American patients in their hospital and she laughed and replied “No!” Everyone was very worried as to why I was alone. It seems that every other patient on the hall had at least two or three family members with them at all times. Once ladies who were visiting family members overheard or found out that I could speak Hindi, they would come into my little curtained-off section to ask “Kyaa hua?” (“What happened?”) and to inquire as to why I was alone and what exactly I was doing at the hospital, and in India. Which leads me to my diagnosis– bacterial infection! Acute gastroenteritis, to be exact. Which was peculiar to me because I had had no stomach pain and was pretty sure that I had dengue fever, as most of my symptoms matched up with that. But luckily bacterial infections are easily treated with antibiotics. This is at least my second bout with gastroenteritis since being here, but the first time was much less severe. I was supposed to get released this morning, but they told that they didn’t want to release me until tonight or the following morning. I had a train booked to return to Delhi on Saturday night, but since getting hospitalized my Academic Director and I agreed that a one hour flight would be better than an eleven hour train ride, so I booked a ticket for the only daily flight from Bhopal to Delhi tomorrow morning after the hospital agreed to release me tonight (Oh, happy day!!). The thought of spending another night in the hospital was really getting me down. To further complicate matters in this already complicated situation, my Indian cell phone doesn’t work in Bhopal, which made it extremely difficult to reach my Academic Director, my (understandably very worried) parents, and the travel agent to book a ticket to Delhi. The hospital staff were overwhelmingly compassionate and let me use not only the hospital telephone to call within India but also the staff laptop to Skype my parents back in the States. I’m very grateful to them for making the experience much easier and less stressful.

So that’s my hospital story! I guess I get a punch on my “Big Girl Card” for spending two nights alone in the hospital in an unfamiliar city in a (not-so-foreign-anymore, actually-feels-like-home) foreign country. Tomorrow I’ll fly “home” to Delhi and start my research there a little early. The show must go on, and besides, I’ve got a thirty page research masterpiece due in three weeks! Sorry that this post is so long; I wrote the majority of it this afternoon while rounding hour forty of my stay at the hospital. There’s only so much lying in bed doing nothing that one can do after forty hours, though I’d guess that I probably slept for over half the time I was in the hospital– I was (and still am) pretty run down! Looking forward to being back in the familiar comfort of Delhi and seeing some of my friends and teachers. I’ll end with a favorite Rumi quotation, “You know how it is. Sometimes we plan a trip to one place, but something takes us to another.”

Here’s to good health,

Caroline

Travel Rules

I’ve managed one week of my independent study! Right now I’m sitting in the Ladies’ Waiting Room at the train station in Jhansi, waiting for my afternoon train to Bhopal, where I’ll be staying when I am doing research in Sanchi. I had a four-hour “layover” at the train station waiting for my next train so I got a 10 rupee lunch (about 20 cents) at the canteen across the street. This is the first time I’ve traveled alone here so I’ve noticed/realized/discovered a few things:

• Whenever I’m looking at the train board or when I went outside to find food, everyone who approaches me asks if I’m going to or coming from Agra. As if that’s the only place that a foreigner can travel to and from in India.
• When you travel alone there is no one to watch your bags, which is very inconvenient when you have to go to the bathroom or check to make sure that you’ve gotten off of the waitlist for the train you’ve been waiting for for four hours.
• After hours of searching, I finally learned where the fruit is at the train station. At train stations there are all of these kiosks of chips, snack foods, chocolate, and fried things but nothing really fresh. But on a stop during a previous journey, one of our teachers had gotten some fruit at a train station, so I knew it had to be available. Well, as soon as my train pulled into the station, several fruitwallas (fruit sellers) rolled up out of nowhere with carts full of fresh grapes, oranges, and bananas. I was so happy to see fresh fruit because I had not really had any during my week in Khajuraho. Four little bananas and an orange were Rs. 20. I can’t eat the fresh grapes here unless they have been thoroughly washed. Same applies for fresh vegetables. However, if something has a peel, like a banana, orange, mango, pomegranate, or pineapple, it’s fair game! I always think of a line from one of my favorite movies, Drop Dead Gorgeous, but apply it to fruit and veg: “I don’t eat shellfish. Mom always says, “Don’t ever eat nothin’ that can carry its house around with it. Who knows the last time it’s been cleaned.”” Gotta make sure you can peel everything. Salads, unless served at my school where they wash everything or at a really fancy restaurant, are a no-go as well, which is a major bummer.

Had a pretty productive week in Khajuraho and got a lot of good information and observing time in for my paper. I liked staying in Khajuraho for an extended period of time, it has a small town, villagey feel and is really beautiful outside of the little town. We had the weirdest weather there! One night Sam and I walked back to the hotel in a dust/wind storm and it rained one morning and absolutely poured yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t seen rain in so long and wasn’t expecting to have it at all in Khajuraho, where it was around 100 during the day and very dry, all the trees dropping their leaves. We went to the temples almost every day to observe, take pictures to refer to in our papers, and visit the on-site museum. Sam did some wonderful sketches and needless to say we both now know a lot about Khajuraho! But only about the “Western” group of temples (named so because of their orientation), which are the Hindu ones. There are also Jain temples in other parts of the area. It was nice to be settled in one place for a week and not always be moving around, like I have been on past trips. Already looking forward to getting settled into my hotel in Bhopal and getting to know the area a bit. There were about five restaurants in Khajuraho so not too much variety to our days/meals. I liked staying there but feel like if I lived in a small town like that that eventually it would feel a bit like Groundhog Day with every day being the same. I love living in Delhi because every day, even the ones when I’m just going to school, is different. There’s always something going on, something that I encounter which surprises me or captures my interest. I’m a city girl, though I definitely can appreciate time spent in the countryside.

Easter is tomorrow! It’s my favorite holiday, but bittersweet this year because this is the first time since I started going back to church in 11th grade that I won’t be able to go to my church for the Easter Sunday service. When I get to my hotel tonight I’m going to try to find a church to go to for Easter tomorrow. I haven’t been to church services here yet, just into a cathedral in Pondicherry to pray. I know there will be at least a few churches in Bhopal. Luckily I brought one of my saris so I can dress up in my Easter best just like I do at home.

I’ve only been on my own for less than 24 hours so I won’t get too ahead of myself but I’m alive, doing fine, and managing quite well so far! A very joyful Easter to all those celebrating, I’m sure the springtime is just beautiful. I have posted some Khajuraho pictures and pictures I took of flowers in the garden at our hotel after the rain storm. Updates from the field to follow!

Love,

Caro

Surprise Post: Friday Reflections

For our final exam, we were asked to write a five page, 1,500 word essay (loosely) on the topic of pilgrimage incorporating our readings and lectures.  I really enjoyed writing my essay and think that it does a good job of elaborating a bit on some of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot since arriving in India two months ago.  So, I decided that I would share it on here (complete with footnotes! So fancy and official!) for all who would like to read it.  As if you didn’t just read enough in my Temples entry.  I’ve also posted a song that I’ve been listening to a lot today… Happy Friday jamz, everyone!

Feist Performing “The Circle Married The Line” on KCRW

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Rasa and Legacy Through Cement Kangaroos

In writing letters to family and friends, and in daily journal entries for myself, rather than trying to capture the overarching experience of having moved to India, I would instead write small snapshots of what my day was like, what I was thinking, what little thing I had done.  It felt more manageable this way, selecting parts from what I have now come to think of as the warm, all-encompassing embrace (and sometimes squeeze) of making my way through India each day.  Rather than making generalizations, passing judgments, or reducing my experiences here to something easily relatable, I have turned to what Phil Cousineau called “the slow accretion of details.”[1] From very early on, I began to inventory, to stow away for later, pieces of my day, experiences ranging from the mundane to the profound.  I found myself letting them sit in my mind, to filter through my brain and settle down wherever they found a good fit amongst all of my other experiences and memories.  I began to fill in gaps in my knowledge about India that I was unaware existed.

These moments from the every day experience of living in India combine with my a priori knowledge of the country, having studied it, both independently and in college courses, for the past seven years, a third of my life.  I came to India with a memory bank full of Indian knowledge, snippets of information about life, culture, history, art, and language.  But, as Roland Barthes writes in Mythologies, “to select only monuments suppresses at one stroke the reality of the land and that of its people, it accounts for nothing of the present.”[2]  Up until this point, I only possessed second-hand experience of India, veiled and diffusely manifested in my life and identity, at times “undecipherable [and] therefore senseless” without grounding in firsthand experience.[3]  I could understand, in an esoteric and intellectual way, aspects of India, but I did not know it, did not possess an exoteric connection to it.  Though I learned as much as I could about India before coming here, I could not truly understand the things I had studied until I positioned myself in their place of origin.

Describing the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi, Thomas R. Metcalf writes that its style was “created of abstract forms not directly related to India’s past,” and thus can be said to have been inspired by, but not derivative of, actual Indian styles.[4]  In this same way, if I had spent my studies solely on knowledge inspired by India, learned and viewed through the filter of secondary knowledge, it would have “led, inevitability, nowhere,” just as the British attempts at establishing a ruling identity through architecture did.  Metcalf writes that the style of the Viceroy’s House was “confined within the classic traditions of European imperialism,” and without coming to India to study and live, my perspective of it would have remained similarly confined to the selective knowledge about India gained though personal reading choices and handpicked college course selections.[5]  I would not have been exposed to some of the less-appealing aspects of India, but have had no choice but to be open and receptive to them since coming here.

The Indian theory of aesthetics, called rasa, provides viewers of works of art a framework through which to process and make sense their experience of the work.  Viewers bring with them to the stimuli to which they are exposed their own personal perspectives, perceptions, tastes, and judgments.  These a priori assumptions influence individual rasa experiences, but as rasa theory also teaches, rasas are much more than our own experience of them.  The rasas are meant to be universally felt, to evoke similar responses from all viewers so that “people [can] taste in their heart [manas] the durable emotional states [such as love, sorrow, etc.] when they are represented” by way of a rasa in a work.[6]  The rasas are enduring, universal, and persistent, and “the experience [of them] is genuine and definable,” because of the rasa’s inherent framework of aesthetic theory.[7]

Just as a work of art has intrinsic meaning that can be interpreted through the nine rasas, the work does not lose its value even though we fail to identify with it.  India is not here only for outsiders to study, to visit, or to conquer.  India’s history is rich with parallels and cyclicality, with longstanding traditions and a distinctive cultural legacy.  I am of the firm belief that nothing happens in a vacuum, without reason or a spark from events that have occurred previously: the kick to life to the sap of a tree from a yakshi;[8] the Buddha setting the Wheel of Dharma (dharmachakra) into motion at Sarnath;[9] Shiva Nataraja’s dance of destruction and creation.[10]  India exists in a legacy lasting thousands of years, which will continue to exist for thousands more.  It can be studied and written about, of course, but one must also be willing to go beyond cerebral perceptions and openly engage all of the senses to feel its millennia-old pulse.

Outside of the Nali Sari Emporium in Chennai, I saw a cement animal-shaped trash bin, and a long ago, not-quite-forgotten but yet not-perfectly-remembered quotation from Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things shot to the front of my mind.[11]  I could see in my mind’s eye the words on the page of my well-loved paperback copy, “in the Arrivals Lounge, there were four life-sized cement kangaroos with cement pouches that said USE ME. In their pouches, instead of cement joeys, they had cigarette stubs, used matchsticks, bottle caps, peanut shells, crumpled paper cups and cockroaches.”[12]

Seven years ago, these sentences stuck out to me.  Roy’s novel marked the beginning of my deep fascination with India, the yakshi’s kick to the tree’s sap of life.[13]  This moment, noticing a paan-spit stained cement trash receptacle covered in the same “red betel spitstains spattered [on]… kangaroo stomachs,” on a street corner in southern India linked me back to the deep connection I felt to Roy’s words as I read The God of Small Things over and over again in my bedroom in Baltimore.[14]  My own personal legacy of learning about India became tied to this cement animal, something which had previously existed only in the fuzzy realm of memory, my memory, which was tied to the legacy of someone else’s memory, filtered through personal recollection and recorded on the page.  In recalling this moment while writing down my own experiences of India, it is incredibly moving to feel connected, both physically and intellectually, to, admittedly, a seemingly small part of Indian life.  But this part is my part, something that I can claim as fitting into the legacy of my knowledge and memory, as well the memory of others.

Now, when I go home, I will have a different type of learning to pull to the forefront of my mind when I encounter some new information about India.  I will have memories in which I was physically present in the place, engaged and open, with new knowledge filling the gaps in my brain that I did not know I had.  Fulfilling the longing that I did not know I had, the longing not only for more information but also for experiences and sensations tied to them.  This is knowledge of “the alluring spices in the market you never knew existed,” the cement kangaroos previously only imagined, now realized.[15]  Goswamy described the rasa experience as “genuine and definable, but… it cannot be predicted or even worked toward.”[16]  No one viewer will have the same experience of a rasa that another viewer will have.  However, these viewers will always be linked through the experience of viewing because it will fit into the overarching framework of rasa theory, and they will always be able to connect with this specific emotion, though experienced in uniquely individual ways.  Such is the legacy of Indian culture and society: available to everyone, bound by certain criteria, customs, and traditions, and deeply felt and experienced differently by all who engage with it.

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[1] Phil Cousineau, “The Longing,” in The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, Berkeley: Conari Press, 1998, p. 22 from NIA Excursion Reader

[2] Roland Barthes, “The Blue Guide,” in Mythologies, Vintage Books: London, 1993, p. 74-77, from Class Two, “Foundation Theory,” of FSS Reader

[3] Barthes, Mythologies, p. 76

[4] Thomas R. Metcalf, “New Delhi: The Beginning of the End,” in An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 211-239, NIA Reader

[5] Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, p. 239

[6] B.N. Goswamy, “Rasa: Delight of the Reason,” in The Essence of Indian Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1986, p. 22

[7] Goswamy, The Essence of Indian Art, p. 23

[8] I.S.P. conversation with Dr. Mary Storm, March 15^th, 2012, South India

[9] Lecture, Dr. Mary Storm, February 28^th, 2012, Sarnath

[10] Lecture, “Who’s Who in Hinduism,” Dr. Mary Storm, February 7^th, 2012, Delhi

[11] Workshop trip visit to Nali Sari Emporium, Chennai, March 12^th, 2012

[12] Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, IndiaInk, 1997, p. 84

[13] I.S.P. conversation with Dr. Mary Storm, March 15^th, 2012, South India

[14] Roy, The God of Small Things, p. 84

[15] Metcalf, The Art of Pilgrimage, p. 23

[16] Goswamy, The Essence of Indian Art, p. 23

Temples, Temples, Temples

I leave for a month of research tomorrow night! I will be doing field research for two weeks in the state of Madhya Pradesh and then returning to Delhi for the remaining two weeks to do library research both at school and in libraries around Delhi. I’ve been really busy since returning from my trip to south India, hence why it has taken me so long to write this post. I’m almost finished! Took my Hindi final yesterday and turned in my final exam essay today. Couple all of this with trying to spend as much time with my Auntie-ji as possible and hanging out with friends since we’re all going to be in different places in April. Luckily for me a few people will be staying in Delhi for their research so I will have friends to hang out with when I get a break from paper writing. I just have to take a two hour placement test for my scholarship and then… the real work starts on my research. Thirty pages, one month. That’s one page a day, right? Doubt it will work out quite like that, though.

Tomorrow I head off to Khajuraho, my first stop in field research (you may remember that I went there during our ten day excursion trip), and I’ll be staying there for a week with my friend Sam.  From there, I’ll go to Sanchi for a week on my own. I’m excited about it! I’ll be staying in Bhopal and taking the train daily to Sanchi, a third century BCE Buddhist site and UNESCO World Heritage Site (Khajuraho is one, too.)  This is what my travel route will look like. I’m focusing my research on temple architecture and am studying the female form in Indian sculpture. Essentially my thesis is that there are archetypal portrayals of women in Indian sculpture, such as the loving mother goddess who also eats children, tree spirits, water spirits, and fertility spirits, and they all come from a powerful goddess figure, but their manifestations change over time based on their importance in society and shifts in religion and religious and cultural values.  So these female archetypes represent broader themes, symbols, and core values that are essential to Indian identity and art.  I hope that makes sense; that’s the do-teen (2-3) sentence recap for ya!

Two weeks ago we went on our workshop trip to the state of Tamil Nadu in South India to study southern temple architecture. I have always wanted to go to South India so I was thoroughly looking forward to the trip. Here is a map I made showing our route. I had never heard of some of the places we went but I’m not as familiar with southern Indian geography as I am with northern. And it was wonderful! And hot! It was about 90 degrees at 8 am when we woke up and then somewhere above 100 during the day. This means that you sweat all the time. But everyone else is sweating, too, so it’s not such a big deal. We flew from Delhi to Chennai, on the east coast of India, and visited a temple there and then went to this huge sari emporium, which had just about every type of sari imaginable. Everyone will be glad to know that I did not purchase a sixth sari there, though I did (unknowingly) make Sam lose a bet against our program coordinator that I would buy yet another one.

The next day, the real work began. We went to the Government Museum in Chennai  in the morning, had lunch (this trip could have alternatively been titled The Thali Taste Tour of South India. Thalis, found all over India, are big personal platters of food that include small dishes filled with different vegetables, pickles, curries, and yogurt, as well as some type of roti (the general word for “bread”) and, in South India, rice. And a little dish with a dessert of some sort. Every restaurant serves a different variation on the thali and we had them for lunch every day so we got to try a lot of different thalis!), and then drove to Mamallapuram. Unlike our previous trips, once we flew to South India we drove everywhere instead of taking a train from destination to destination. None of our car rides were ever over four hours long and it was nice to have a change of pace from train travel. Saw a lot of beautiful scenery and enjoyed coffee breaks every few hours along the road. South India is known for its coffee, and even for a non-coffee drinker like me, it was really good coffee! We then arrived in Mamallapuram, a town on the shore of the Bay of Bengal known for its early examples of the South Indian architectural style from around the 7th century CE. In the hour of downtime between arrival at our wonderful guesthouse located right on the beach and our visit to some of the temples, I swam in the Bay of Bengal. As many of you know, I love the beach and was so content to be swimming in the ocean on a beautiful beach in India. Like many of the other places we’ve visited, I had studied the Mamallapuram temples in my classes so, as always, it was amazing to see them in person.

On our second day in Mamallapuram we saw some other temples. (You are noticing a theme here.  If you’re already getting tired of the temple talk I suggest skimming along to the end because it is all temples, all the time from here on out.)  All of the temples were carved out from natural boulders and rock walls, so they had the feeling of cave temples. The day before, we were lucky enough to go into a small temple, which is part of the Archeological Survey of India and is usually closed, to see some of the sculptures inside. Devaraj (literally “God king”) was widely practiced in southern kingdoms, and rulers would create large temples to assert their power and also gain religious merit.  In doing so they also associated themselves with the god for whom the temple was constructed, and effectively assumed in the eyes of their subjects some of the god’s powers and attributes.  Sometimes kings would even depict themselves and their wives in the temple carvings, as was the case with this little temple.  So, as I mentioned, it is usually closed, and walking in felt like stepping back in time.  It was dim, and it was extremely hot, no less than 115 degrees inside.  One would think that a cave temple would be nice and cool but this was like walking into a sauna, fully dressed in pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a cotton shawl.  Heat aside, the sculptures inside were amazing and well-preserved, and it was great to have the opportunity to see them.

The next day we templed (it seems to me that with such frequency of occurrence, the action necessitates a verb form) in the morning and then drove to Pondicherry, a former French colony that is now a union territory. We went to a Ganesha temple, a very famous ashram (the headquarters of the same one we stayed in during our first few days in Delhi), a cathedral, and watched the sunset on the promenade. We enjoyed some French food for dinner (think wine and cheese! Though nothing compared to being in France with Andrew).

On Thursday we set off further south, to Thanjavur (Tanjore) to see the Brihadeeswarar temple, a Shiva temple. It was built in 1010 by Chola Dynasty emperor RajaRaja Chola I. It took seven years to build, which is crazy because it is HUGE. As the Wikipedia entry will tell you, the temple complex is so large that more 200 Taj Mahels can fit inside of it, and the temple tower if 216 feet high. It is the largest temple in India, though there is some dispute about this. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site (I’ve been lucky enough to see a ton of these… and for those that don’t know, UVA is one too! Pretty cool.)  This temple is another one of those Devaraj examples. Southern temples have a few layers of walls around them and inside the temple walls there was a temple elephant! Temple elephants are more common in the south and we were all blessed by it. A blessing entails offering the elephant some money, either a coin or a rupee note, and he (or she) in turn *whaps* you on the head with his trunk.  In the pictures below this is the temple we visited at sunset, and there is a picture of me in front of it holding my silly sunhat.

The last temple we visited was the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai.  It’s a temple to Parvati (also called Meenakshi, or “fish-eyed”), Shiva’s wife.  The temple complex is absolutely enormous, and the temple, while awesome, is eclipsed in size by the fourteen gateway towers surrounding it.  This site where the present-day temple stands has been in use as a religious site since Vedic times, and Madurai is a 2,500 year old city.  We could walk to the temple from our hotel, and on our way there, I picked up some fresh jasmine to put in my hair.  Women usually dress up when making special trips or pilgrimages to temples, so I wore the sari I bought in Calcutta, braided my hair, and put jasmine in it.  I LOVED wearing fresh flowers in my hair every day in South India and wish it were more of a thing in Delhi.  I could buy strands of jasmine and other flowers on nearly every corner and the fabulous smell drifted around me throughout the day.  Just made me feel so feminine.  I got many compliments on my sari while visiting Meenakshi, and lots of women helped me by re-pinning my pallu (the long end of the sari worn over the shoulder) and adjusting the flowers in my hair.  The temple gets around 15,000 visitors every day, and 25,000 on Fridays, when we visited, and it’s crazy to think that we were 12 of 25,000 visitors to Meenakshi that day.  The annual festival to her celebrated in the late spring attracts a staggering one million visitors.  We had a wonderful farewell-to-South-India dinner on the rooftop of our hotel that night, and returned to Delhi early Saturday morning.

On Sunday, I got my nose pierced, and I love it!! It is healing well and I don’t even feel it at all.  Excited to begin my new adventure tomorrow; heading off for a month of temples and beautiful ladies, what more could a gal ask for?!  Spending a month focusing solely on one topic will be unlike anything I’ve ever done before.  Another update to follow when I return to Delhi in two weeks!

Pyaar se (love from),

Caro

Excursion and Saris

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So, as promised, the Excursion post. On Sunday I returned from a ten day trip around northern India, starting in Khajuraho, known for its medieval temples, then on to Varanasi and Sarnath, Bodhgaya, and finally ending in Kolkata. We did … Continue reading →

Heavenly Holi

होली मुबारक! (Happy Holi!) Today is Holi, one of India’s major festivals, so we don’t have school today and I am spending my day off at home with my Auntie-ji. We had a wonderful नाश्ता (nashta, breakfast) of homemade dosas, sambar, coconut chutney, and mango lassi. As many of you know, dosas are my absolute favorite type of Indian food so it was extremely special and wonderful to be able to make and enjoy them with my Auntie-ji. I am so spoiled. Auntie-ji knows that I love yogurt, so we have been having lassi, a yogurt drink, every day now, and I usually have raita or dahi (like Greek yogurt) with dinner. Last night we had homemade pineapple raita with our bindi (stir-fried okra) and it was delicious. Mango season has started, which means that on top of all of this amazing food, I get to have fresh mangoes for dessert/snack. Before breakfast, one of our neighbors from downstairs came to wish us a happy Holi and smeared some colored powder on our faces. Holi can have a reputation of getting a little rowdy in crowded areas, but where I live it seems to be very relaxed and just fun. After breakfast, the family downstairs came to our door and invited me to play Holi with them, which was wonderful! We went down into the street and they handed me a twisted cotton dupatta (shawl) and we started playing. From what I have observed, you can play Holi wet or dry– dry being with just the powdered colors (like smearing color on someone’s skin), and wet being with the colors mixed into water. They filled a barrel full of powder and water, and the guys filled small buckets with water and began chasing all of the girls around, throwing and splashing water on them. We would hit them back with our twisted fabric in retaliation and everyone got soaked. It is about 80 degrees and sunny here today, perfect weather for being outside in the sun, though the breeze did make me feel a little cold when I was sopping wet in jeans and a tee shirt. The pictures above are me after playing dry Holi (just powder) before breakfast and then wet Holi after. Tonight, everyone in our building will bring sweets around to each other’s homes and we’ll all wish one another happy Holi.

However, the rest of my day can’t be all about treats and playing, unfortunately. I am just starting to really get into my preliminary research for my month-long research ISP (Independent Study Project), crafting a thesis, planning trips to the sites– libraries, museums, temples– I need to visit, and finding an advisor and resources to use to write my 30+ page paper. I’m on my own come April 1st, so I have three and a half weeks to get myself ready! We are leaving for our last trip of the semester on Monday, heading south to study southern temple architecture for a week. Which reminds me… I know that some of you are probably waiting to hear all about my ten day excursion, and I will definitely write a post about it. After I finish my research proposal, that is. I should have some time this weekend before leaving for my trip on Monday. My Auntie-ji also reminded me this morning that today is International Women’s Day, so there’s lots to celebrate! Happy Holi, everyone!

प्यार (love),

केरलाइन (Caroline!)

Ice Cream Everywhere We Go

This is going to be another long entry! We’ve been doing a lot of traveling this past week. As I write this I’m sitting on a train from Jaipur back to Delhi, we had a travel weekend this weekend and didn’t have class on Friday. But before I get to telling you about this trip I’ll tell you about our mini trip to Orchha and Agra last weekend. We also didn’t have class last Friday so that we could have enough time to go to both places. The Orchha-Agra trip was a school trip so we had some of our teachers/faculty with us for it, which was nice because it helped to prepare us for traveling on our own this weekend (we survived; more on that later!). As I mentioned in my last post, we took a 6 am train from Delhi to Orchha. Orchha was beautiful, a small town that was totally walkable. There are over 20 temples in the town and a large palace and fort complex. We visited a good number of temples and the fort, which was beautiful. You could climb the stairs of the palace and see views of the town, the temples, the jungle and the river. There were lots of monkeys hanging around, which was very frightening. I don’t trust monkeys and they were a little close for comfort in some spots, especially when we were on top of temples or the fort. Orchha was great because you could climb on everything and explore on your own. It wasn’t crowded or busy and you could take your time and look around. We all really loved it and bonded a lot. We watched the sun set from the top of a temple in the center of town after climbing up through a maze of tiny passages and steep stairways to the top. We were told that 15 minutes after sunset the monkeys return to the top of the temple to spend the night so I made sure to get out of there immediately after sunset. The guest house where we stayed in Orchha was really pretty, located right on the river across from a nature preserve, and we stayed up late Friday night, chatting around a fire pit. On Saturday morning some of us went for a walk in the nature preserve and then we took a train to Agra. This train was a different style than the one we took to Orchha and only had beds, not seats. I took a nice nap all the way to Agra. Once there, we drove to nearby Fatehpur Sikri and checked into our guesthouse there. We stayed up late playing cards and talking with one of our teachers. In the morning we went to Fatehpur Sikri, which I was excited about seeing because I had studied it before. It’s an interesting place because Akbar built it as his capital and then it was abandoned 10 years later and no one really knows why. There’s also the tomb of a famous saint there, which was a very overwhelming place because of all of the people there trying to sell various souvenirs. We ate lunch at a great South Indian place that had THE BEST ice cream. I never expected to miss ice cream as much as I have here. Everyone on the trip feels this way and we get ice cream at every chance we can. Chocolate ice cream is just not the same here in most places so it’s rare and awesome when you can find rich, chocolaty chocolate ice cream. They had homemade hot fudge sauce and the whole meal was great. After lunch we visited the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal‘s (for whom the Taj Mahal was built) parents, which she built for them during her husband Shah Jahan‘s reign. It was a fairly small tomb (especially compared to the Taj Mahal) but it had exquisite inlay work everywhere, inside and out. There were also beautiful wall paintings inside the tomb. It wasn’t very crowded and located right on the river; it was wonderful to walk along the river and sit in the sun in one of the niches along the wall of the tomb. Then, we went to the Taj Mahal. It was very surreal turning the corner through the main gates and seeing it front of me. It was very busy! Our academic director, who has seen it many, many times, said it was the most crowded she had ever seen it. We went inside to see the tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, and it reminded me a lot of the Vatican, very echoey and lots of people in a small space. The inlay work was beautiful however, and it was cool to see it in person. We sat on one of the sides and watched the sun go down, hitting the marble and making it turn different colors. We took the train back to Delhi Sunday night.

This past week we all were assigned different religious sites in Delhi to visit and report on. I was assigned to visit Akshardham Temple, which is located in a suburb on Delhi, conveniently right on the Metro (love the Delhi Metro!). It was definitely an interesting place. It’s a temple to a Hindu holy man and was built within the past few years. It’s a gigantic complex with a movie theatre, an “It’s a Small World After All” style animatronic ride, a giant food court, and lots of other exhibitions. I walked around the temple, which told the history of the saint and where puja (worship) actually isn’t allowed, so I didn’t feel like I was intruding on religious services. I went by myself and I really like exploring the city on my own and being by myself for a few hours. I like everyone in my class a lot and I love my homestay but I haven’t lost my love of being able to do things for myself and be independent. I don’t have that much independence here yet, which is totally fine and I really appreciate having lots of structured time and security, but I also love being on my own sometimes. I am both looking forward to and a bit nervous about being by myself for the entire month of April when I’m doing my research. I know I will definitely be ready for it but I anticipate that it could get lonely after spending so much time with my friends and host Auntie-ji. We went to the National Museum on Wednesday, which I loved because they have a fabulous collection from all different time periods of Indian Art history. I will definitely be returning a few times before I leave Delhi. I need to go back to the Museum of Modern Art too. So much to do in Delhi and we’ve been traveling a lot lately and leave this Friday for our ten day excursion! I am so excited for it.

As mentioned before, we had our free travel weekend this weekend and so we all decided to go to Jaipur, which is about a four hour train ride from Delhi. Train travel is definitely the way to get around in India, especially for places within an eight hour radius or so. There was a lot riding on this Jaipur trip because I got some great news on Friday right before I left… I was chosen as a recipient of the State Department’s Critical Languages Scholarship to study Hindi in India this summer! The program is located in Jaipur so the news was very timely. There were over 5,200 applicants to the CLS program this year for all of the languages and a third of the applicants made it through the first round. Our applications then went on to a national selection panel in D.C., and then candidates were recommended to the State Department, who made the final approvals. In 2010, 575 people were awarded scholarships, and I think about 40 people participated in the Hindi program last summer. (Here is more info about the selection process if anyone is interested!) So that’s about a 10% acceptance rate, and I am very proud of myself for getting it!! We took an early train to Jaipur and checked into our guesthouse. We spent the afternoon shopping and walking around Old City in Jaipur (Jaipur is divided into the old part of the city and the new part by big pink fort walls). One of my friends turned 21 on Friday and his mother and grandmother were visiting him so we walked around together and then some of us celebrated his birthday with him at his hotel. Had some really good Indian red wine and a delicious meal. On Saturday most of us went to Pushkar, a small town in the Rajasthani desert about three hours from Jaipur. Pushkar is famous for having the only Brahma temple in India and is located around a lake. We visited the temple and the lake and had a great, relaxing lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake. We shopped some– Pushkar is known for its lacquer work– and explored the town before heading back to Jaipur. We had dinner at a mall near our guesthouse– my first Indian mall experience!– and had ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Mississippi Mud and Coffee Almond Fudge have never tasted better. It’s funny what you miss. My host Auntie-ji figured out that I love yogurt so now we have Mother Dairy dahi with dinner every night. It’s a thick yogurt that tastes like Greek yogurt, great with spicy daal (lentils) and veggies. Today (Sunday) we checked out of our guesthouse and had brunch at the same restaurant we went to in Agra. I got a dosa, a crunchy lentil crepe filled with spiced potatoes and served with various sauces, and of course I got an ice cream sundae. We then went to our friend’s hotel to hang out with him before our train back to Delhi. There have been weddings going on every day at the hotel so we were able to see a bit of one today and sat in the sun around the pool, reading and talking and enjoying the beautiful day. I think I got my first sunburn today! Just a little bit on my face since my arms and legs were all covered. It was probably 75 or 80 today. If I had had my swimsuit I would have considered going in the pool! We should have a few more weeks before it begins to get really hot but I have already stopped wearing sweaters during the day. Needless to say, I am loving the weather!! I’ve had a great week with lots of traveling and the inevitable highs (visiting so many wonderful places) and lows (getting sick for the third time) of travel. I’ve been making sure to stay hydrated and get lots of rest though! Really happy here. On Friday we leave for our long trip but I can hardly think about that yet because I have a four page paper and an oral presentation due this week! Back to reality (school and schoolwork) tomorrow. I am bringing my computer with me for excursion so if I have some time during our trip I’ll do a blog update so I won’t have a massive one at the end of it. It’s easy to write these updates on the train because I really don’t have time to do them during the week! I am always super busy with school, when I get home I do my work, eat dinner and spend time with my Auntie-ji, go to bed and do it over again. Love it though and feel like I’m finally getting over the hump I feel like I’ve been stuck behind for the past month with my Hindi skills. A good feeling! Getting awarded the Critical Languages Scholarship helps, too; feels like the two and a half years I have spent learning Hindi are paying off. I have selected a few photos my friends and I have taken during our trips; be sure to check my Facebook for more photos!

Love,

Caro

Pottery Class

I had my second of eight pottery classes today. Another student and I travel to a potter’s studio south of school every Thursday and have class with him for two hours. This is for our practica class, part of our curriculum, and we got to choose between devotional singing (bhajans), pottery, and cooking class. The potter who is teaching us is really awesome at what he does and creates beautiful things which he sells throughout India, notably at Fab India. Last week we made coil pots and this week we started with the wheel. I have never thrown pottery before so it was quite a learning experience for me! By the end of our two hour lesson I was starting to get the hang out it and made a nice little pot/bowl. Hopefully I will improve in the weeks to come. Clay is difficult! I don’t know what I was expecting but initially you have to use a lot of force with the clay on the wheel and centering is really important. And once you’ve shaped your piece you have to work with it very carefully so as to maintain the balance. I could watch the clay ripple on the wheel for hours (and found myself mesmerized a few times) but you can’t do that or else it dries out! I’m looking forward to seeing what we learn to make during our coming classes and am excited about painting and glazing our work– the special glazes our teacher’s workshop does are beautiful!

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for a three day trip to Orchha and Agra (I posted links for these places in my last blog post). We will also go to Fatehpur Sikri which I’m pumped about because I’ve studied it in class and it has some amazing buildings and an interesting history. And Agra means the Taj Mahal! One of the girls in our group is a great photographer so she is going to take lots of pictures for us as a group and once I get copies I will be sure to post some here. We’re working with the group mentality here. We had a class discussion about photography yesterday which was really interesting and thought-provoking. I haven’t been taking many pictures here (read: barely any… you have seen the extent of them on the blog) but I feel like since I’m living here for a few months I would rather let the images sink in and when I want to share with you what I saw/did I can send you a link to a picture or to the place’s Wikipedia page. Maybe that sounds really impersonal but my thinking on it is that a professional photographer is much more well-equipped to capture a grand shot (or even a not-so-grand one) of the Jama Masjid, etc. If I do take pictures when traveling it will probably be of/with my friends on the program. I’ve been enjoying letting everything soak in and letting myself appreciate things without the feeling of wanting/needing to take a picture. (I’m sure that all of my UVA friends are shocked at this because usually I am the mupload (mobile upload) queen!)

I was sick this past weekend but am fully recovered now and looking forward to my first train trip here. It will hopefully prepare us for traveling without our teachers next weekend– a bit scary at this point but very exciting. I have moved into a new homestay in Delhi and really like it here. It is close to school– a little bit outside of the city– and very peaceful. We have a very early wake up call in the morning (hello, 6:15 am train!) and we have to be at the station a half-hour beforehand. I thought that my daily 7 am alarm for school was early but I think waking up at 4:30 tomorrow will mark the earliest I’ve woken up in a long time. Totally worth it though!

xx,

Caro

“America, We’re Breaking Up with You”

As stated in my previous post, I have been trying not to spend too much time on Facebook or on my computer while I’m here. A friend of mine here summed up this feeling by saying, “America, we’re breaking up with you!” (It’s only temporary though, don’t worry.) I’ve been here about two weeks now, but it feels like I’ve been here for so much longer. I’m getting settled in Delhi, can get myself anywhere via the wonderful Delhi Metro (located a convenient five minute walk from my house) or by auto or cycle rickshaw. I use my Hindi every day and it has slowly been getting better. I’ve really been trying to work on my speaking so I haven’t been reading Hindi too much, though my host sister (my age and a student at Delhi University) had me read something from the paper this morning and I understood most of it! I’ve bought some beautiful clothes here, thanks to generous Christmas and birthday gifts from family. We started classes this past week and I already have a lot of work. I speak mostly Hindi at home with my family and also for two hours each day at school with a private Hindi teacher since I’m the only advanced student. Since my reading and writing skills are pretty good we’re working on getting my speaking up to par. There are only 10 students including me on the program. Instead of trying to write about everything I’ve done, I am instead going to give you some snapshots from my life in Delhi so far. I’ve written many of these little sections while riding the Metro to and from school, or in emails/conversations I’ve had with friends.

So currently I’m sitting on the Delhi Metro on my way home from school. It takes about an hour each way, walking from my homestay to the station, transferring lines halfway along, walking about 10 minutes from the station to school. I have a limited sense of time because I don’t wear a watch and haven’t started using my Indian phone so I never really know what time it is, which I like. Not having a phone (especially a smart phone) has been freeing. The day’s transportation costs around 30 rupees a day, about 75 cents. The exchange rate is about 50 rupees to the dollar. On Friday, when I didn’t want to do another day of commuting underground for two hours, I took an auto-rickshaw from my house to school. There are also security checks everywhere here, you have to put your bag through the scanner and get wanded and patted down every time you enter the Metro, a mall, religious site, or movie station. In spite of the security checks, tons of people use the Metro here and it all works very smoothly—the lines are separated by gender, just as the Metro cars are. The front car of every train is for Women Only, but women can ride in any car of the train if they choose.

As planned, I’ve bought a few Indian outfits and plan to acquire more, enough to wear every day of the week. Yesterday we visited Old Delhi (more on this in a bit), which is very conservative, so all the girls dressed in salwar kameez and dupattas, hair covered. Whenever I visit a mosque or holy place I will have to cover my hair.

We took our first class trip last week, to the Tomb of Humayun (click the hyperlinks in blue throughout this post for more info on these places, I’ve linked their Wikipedia pages so that you can read more and see pictures if you’d like!), a Mughal emperor, and to Lodi Gardens, both located near central Delhi. Some of us went to the India Art Fair last weekend, which is a pretty big deal here and was really cool, lots of galleries from India and all over the world set up small gallery spaces in this big convention center in Delhi. This week I explored some of the neighborhoods of Delhi, and have been trying to go to as many neighborhoods here as I can. We also saw the biggest Bollywood film in India right now, Agneepath (Path of Fire), which was very long (even for a Bollywood movie) but enjoyable. I understood most of it; there were no subtitles and though I sometimes couldn’t understand certain parts of the dialog I was always able to get the gist of what was going on. As I said above, some of us went to Old Delhi yesterday. The Red Fort was magnificent and huge; I had studied it in my art history classes before so it was awesome to see it in person. I talked to the ticket counter men in Hindi and got my group in on the student rate, explaining that we were American students studying in Delhi. Pretty proud of myself for using my Hindi. After the Red Fort and lunch at a very famous Mughlai restaurant tucked away in Old Delhi The Jama Masjid has been my favorite sight in Delhi so far. For a small fee, you can climb up the (very narrow) 100+ spiral steps up to the top of one of the minarets and look out over all of Delhi from a height of 130 ft. It was breathtaking (really though, because as you all might remember from my Paris post, I am terrified of heights). I felt pretty safe inside of the solid stone tower, which has been standing since the time of Shahjahan in 1650 CE. The complex itself can hold 25,000 people for worship. The market in Old Delhi near the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid was really interesting as well; it was almost like stepping back in time and seeing how the market there must have been 400 years ago. Next weekend we are going to Orchha and Agra, where the Taj Mahel is located. The weekend after that we have a travel weekend so many of us has booked train tickets to Jaipur for the long weekend. I’m looking forward to experiencing travel in India in the coming weeks! I’ve put some photos in the bottom of this post from our trip to Lodi Gardens and I am going to put some Paris pictures in my previous Paris post– check ’em out! All in all, I am loving living in Delhi and am excited for what’s to come.

xx,

Caroline

A Long Update

Namaste!

This is going to be a long post so get ready!! I’ve been in India for two days now, and we’re getting all settled in. We had our first day of orientation yesterday and it will continue until next week. We start class on February 1st and have very busy schedules everyday. Yesterday we went to our program center, where we will have classes, met our wonderful academic director, had a delicious lunch, and then went to a market. We had a list of things to find and buy. The market reminded me a lot of Kenyan markets so it didn’t really overwhelm me too much. I think previously traveling in Kenya is a good thing for me because a lot of things I’ve seen so far here– crazy traffic, lots of people, etc– aren’t too much of a surprise. We’ve been staying at an ashram near school (we are going to be living in south Delhi mostly; I’ll put up a map showing you where in the city I’m living when I get some time). The ashram has been really cool– it’s all vegetarian (yes!) and we get breakfast and dinner here. A typical meal is lentils and rice (dal-chaawl), a vegetable dish, and chapatti. And really good milky chai. Reminds me of the Quaker concept of “simple meal.” Before dinner last night one of my program mates, Sam, who is a yoga teacher with over 300 hours certification, taught us a yoga class on the roof terrace of the ashram, looking over the city at sunset and into dusk until the stars came out. Pretty cool. Overall I’ve been sleeping pretty well– we go to bed super early here at around 9 so that we can get up at 7 for breakfast– and overall have been adjusting to the 10 1/2 hour time difference as well as I could have hoped. I really like all of my program mates, and everyone has a unique and interesting reason for being on this program. There are only 10 of us which makes travel and dining out easy. I’m the only one on the program who has taken Hindi before so I will be getting private instruction with one of the teachers, Savita-ji. I am really excited to work on my speaking skills!! Ideally I want to only speak Hindi at my homestay and with Savita-ji at school so I have high hopes for improving my speaking. I spoke a little at the market yesterday and I think (hope!) that it will become more natural as I spend more time out in the city. In a related vein, because I’m really trying to immerse myself in India and Hindi and my group and the whole experience, I’m going to try not to have too much contact with home. I’m only here for four months and I want to make the most of it!!! I will try to update the blog on a regular basis but might not check Facebook too much or Skype a lot. I have the rest of my life to be in America and I want to really live in the moment in India!!

I guess you all probably want to hear about Paris! I will try my best to remember everything; Andrew and I did SO much in the short amount of time that I was there, which was awesome. In my last Paris post I had just arrived and was waiting for Andrew to return from dinner. That night (Thursday) we went out to a bar with some of his friends from the program and had a great time dancing. The Metro and tram system in Paris is excellent so it was so easy and inexpensive to get around– we rode the Metro numerous times a day. In the first 24 hours I was there I used all of my 10 tickets and then bought day passes for the rest of the time, so we rode a lot!! The next day we woke up and went to breakfast at a restaurant frequented by Hemingway when he lived in Paris– it was a pretty posh place! I had some delicious scrambled eggs with fresh herbs and baguette. We then took the Metro to Versailles, which was beautiful. We did the audio tour and explored the gardens. Andrew took some pictures and put them on Facebook; when I have more time at an actual computer I’ll post some of them here. We took the train back to Paris and walked around a lot on the Champs Ellyses- I saw the Arc d’ Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower from a distance, and the park and shops on the Champs Ellyses. We stopped in at Laduree, a very famous (rightfully so!) macaroon shop and got an assortment of macaroons, which were absolutely delicious. After walking around some more, we got an outdoor table at a cafe in the Latin Quarter for drinks and frites. We picked a fresh baguette, apples, wine, nuts, and cheese and enjoyed a light, very French dinner when we got back to his dorm. (As you can probably tell, food (and red wine!) were a theme during my stay in Paris.) That night we went to a few bars with his friends and then walked to the area around Notre Dame for some street food– crepes, falafel sandwiches, Grec pitas… Lots of great offerings. We slept in late the next day (Saturday) and went to the Louve in the afternoon. This might have been my favorite place that we visited! It was amazing– I saw many of the “must see” works there, which were cool, and then we went a little off the beaten track to the Dutch and Flemish paintings wing because I love the flower still lifes. We spent a good few hours at the Louve and only saw a relatively little bit– it’s huge and you could spend days there!! After the Louve we walked around the Champs Ellyses some more and stopped in at another macaroon shop, which had some less traditional flavor offerings. I think I liked Laduree’s macaroons better but these were really good as well! We took a pretty long walk over to a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower and got an early dinner (by French standards!) at 7 pm at a restaurant that specialized in foods cooked en croquette– in little Le Cruset-type cast iron crocks. I had fresh veggies in a light herb butter sauce and Andrew had lamb– both really good! Thanks Mom and Dad for treating us to a nice meal out in Paris :)!!! Then, it was Eiffel Tower time. We opted for the stairs, and walking up was… Terrifying. I guess I had forgotten how afraid of heights I am but walking up the Tower via the metal stairway, with all of the exposed space and metal around us was very scary. I held on very tightly and made Andrew hold my hand the whole way up. We got to the first level and looked out, and then walked up to the second level– it was absolutely beautiful!! Paris at night from that high above was stunning. We have pictures from this, too, which I’ll post eventually. We didn’t take the elevator all the way up to the top but the view from the second level was more than enough! I was really glad that I climbed the tower and got to see Paris from that perspective. We rode the Metro back to Andrew’s dorm and went to a club on a boat that night– it didn’t move around and was just docked on the river. Andrew made a few French friends with his excellent French (numerous French people complimented him on how good his French is during the time I was there!) and we all had a great time dancing. We got brunch at a cafe on Sunday morning and I left for the airport around 5 pm. The Metro goes right from Andrew’s dorm to the airport which was perfect for me. My plane for Delhi left at 9:30 Sunday night and I was able to squeeze in a quick video chat with my parents before taking off, which was great.

And here I am now! In India! I am really excited about moving into my homestay tomorrow and finally settling into a schedule and feeling a part of the city– we are a bit secluded here in the ashram. I have a lot of new experiences coming my way– navigating my way around a new city, learning how to ride the Metro here (they have women only cars for the ladies), bargaining in the market (I did a little of this yesterday and was quite proud of myself! I’m sure we were still overcharged but we’ll figure it out eventually). I am excited to buy some saris and shalwar-kameezes in bright colors and begin wearing them! We’ve been told that people appreciate it when foreign young women make an effort to wear the Indian styles so I’m happy about that because that’s all I plan on doing here! We’re heading off to school in 45 minutes and everyone has the Hindi scrip test today– I’m not sure if I have to take this but I’ve been making an effort to review my grammar and vocab everyday so I’m going to do a little of that now. Please leave comments if you’d like and send me emails and messages– even if I don’t reply immediately I do enjoy getting them!

Lots of pyaar (love),

Caroline