Rajamundry

Rajamundry is the hometown (ancestral village) of our site director, Professor M.V. Krishnayya. It was our last excursion before the home stretch (now that I’m home I only have 43 days left). We were gone for 5 days and it was a pretty relaxing trip. 

We got to Rajamundry in the afternoon on Thursday and checked into our hotel we spent the rest of the day eating and walking around. Friday, we had the entire morning to ourselves after breakfast. We went on a brief walk, intended for the Godavari River, that ended up in a ship yard where workers were moving sand. We decided to go back after not finding the river. I then found an internet café and received an email from my mom telling me the wonderful news that Hannah (lifelong/ childhood friend) got into BYU! I’m so flipping happy it’s not even fetching funny ;) We then had lunch took a drive through Rajamundry and headed to a couple of places. We stopped at a renown nursery, then a kaja factory (Kaja = my favorite Indian sweet) where we were able to see how it’s all made, then we drove through a jungle and to the place where the Godavari River empties into the Bay of Bengal. I almost forgot to mention! We went to these cremation centers that were started by a very popular guy in Rajamundry (of course one of Krishnayya Garu's many infamous contacts). It was so colorful and interesting to learn about cremation rights in Hindu culture. We came back (about 6 hours in the car total) and ate … there is a definite pattern to what we do here: it’s eating.

We are fed like kings here. It’s ridiculous. I might as well say this now so everyone can getting their laughing over with by time I get back – I have gained weight in India. Yes, you heard right. I am over fed and under worked and, heck, I kinda like it! Except for when I look in the mirror (and think about what I’m doing to my body). When I get back to the states I’m going to need a major detox. Everything here is either fried or made with copious amounts of ghee (clarified butter) and oil. We try so hard to request other foods, but that means we’re eating fruits and veggies only. I’ve decided that when in India I will do as the Indians. There’s no way I’m going to look back on this adventure and say, “Gee, I wish I would have ate less kaja, or masala dosa, or coconut fried rice, or brinjole curry.” I’m probably going to say I wish I had eaten more! So start laughing because this “third world” country isn’t as starving as I thought it was going to be.

On Saturday we went to Krishnayya’s village. This weekend was a very huge festival that only happens once every two or three years. The village Goddess was being moved from her mother-in-law’s house (in the outskirts/ farm land) to her house in the village. There was lights, festivities, and of course religious ceremonies that we were privileged to be a part of. When it got dark and the main ceremony with the Goddess had been performed we left the village by auto rickshaw.

I love autos! Seriously, rickshaws are the most authentic and exciting way to see India. Haggling for decent prices is half the fun and the other half is riding in Indian traffic. We fit 6 Mormons and a Hindu into a smaller rickshaw that night. It was rad! I got to sit up in the front with the driver and my legs were hanging out for most of the drive. It was a blast, however, I could barely get a picture of it because we were all so close together.

On Sunday we took a boat up the Godavari River and back, through restricted tribal lands and polluted waters. In the morning we were up at 4am in order to be at the dock on time. We boarded the boat at about 5am. IT WAS FREEZING! None of us had sweaters of any kind there is normally no need. However, we learned that no sun + the river breeze = very cold foreigners. We cuddled together and used our pathetically thin chunnis for warmth. Once the sun came up life was good again.

The ride was beautiful and the food (again with food, I know) was very good. I felt so relaxed the whole trip. Mom and I concurred that it was probably the water that brought me peace. “You’re a water baby,” Mom said. The scenery was magnificent and the tribes looked like they remained untouched, hidden from an industrial world which so much invades everyday life. I envied them as we passed by, wishing that I would be able to have that peace and innocence too. Vizag is entirely the opposite and I’m jealous of their tranquil homes and land.

Once we arrived back in Rajamundry and got off the boat we went to eat, but I quickly lost my appetite after smelling the glass I was about to drink out of: wet cat. The glass smelled like wet cat! I almost lost my cookies and decided to eat some nan (bread) and walk back to the hotel. We left the next morning (today, Monday) and arrived back home in Vizag by lunch.

It was a very fun trip and I hope that now I’m ready for the home stretch. I told my roommate Kelly today at the train station, “43 days left!” Krishnayya Garu turned to me and said, “Someone is Provo hungry,” and I nearly fell over with shock! He must have heard me say that before. It’s true though, I am home sick, but I am determined to remember that I am on an adventure and if I don’t make the most of it I will kick myself in the butt later. It’s going to be great because in the words of Maren Thomas, a beloved roommate and friend, “I can do hard things!”

Until next time.

With love from India,

Jaci

Moral of the story: God answers prayers

Last night I was talking with my Dad on  the phone. My parents took the weekend to see my sister Jen and her family while my sister is having some medical issues (here's the plug to please keep her in your prayers). Anywho, it happened to be drizzling and back home I had been seeing facebook reports of rain. All things considered I was getting rain hungry. I said a little prayer in my heart for rain in India. I knew it wasn't rainy season yet, but I could always make God laugh right?

3:34 AM Water?? Do I hear water? Oh no! Did we forget to turn off the water pump?! I run to the front room and the water pump is off. My heart jumps and I look outside... RAIN! Wake up, Wake up!!! My roomies and I danced in the rain for about 10 minutes. I spent the rest of the night listening to the rain as it slowly winds down and I drifted off to sleep.

9:41 AM Happy, but I smell like Indian rain... not very pleasant, but happy and grateful.

This is the expression of pure joy!

With love from India,

Jaci

More Henna Pictures

practicing with blue pen

Mugu done by Kelly

Flower with leaves done by me, on me :)

Henna Artist in the Making?

Lately to pass the time the girls have been letting me experiment with henna on them. It's been interesting, but I think I'm getting better. The first time my sweet roommate Kelly like me practice on her. Let's just say the translators said I should practice more. It doesn't get anymore pathetic than that.

So I have been practicing with pen first. Now am practicing without pen (under the coercion of my wonderful roommate Amy Drake).

Amy Hansen and I

more pics to come soon!

With love from India,

Jaci

Kolkatta Weekend

Sam, Amy, Hilary, and I decided to go to Kolkatta (Calcutta) for about 4 days this last weekend- February 3 to February 7. It was insane! Now, I would never dream of taking back a trip to the former capital of India and seeing Mother Teresa's Tomb or Victoria's Palace, but the whole feel of being a tourist is so foreign to the life I've grown accustomed to here in Vizag. In many ways it all felt a little unnatural.

Kolkatta= pollution at a new extreme + 16 million people + American Food + dirty street children/ beggars + 17 hour train rides there and back

This is the definition of comfort food :)

This is my "I freakin' hate trains" face.

Note the brown skin... yeah, that's not a tan: it's Kolkatta pollution. GROSS!

That basically sums up the ironic and/or low points of Kolkatta. Now let's consider all the amazing and life changing points, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Number 1: Kolkatta International Bookfair (the main reason for our adventure)

This book fair was huge! I'm from a place called Indio, CA (go figure) and it is called the City of Festivals - naturally I consider myself conusierr of fine festivals. Needless to say, I was really excited to see how the Indians would do an international fair of this size. For those of you from the Dirty D the fair was like the International Date Festival except take away the rides and carnies, replace them with more shops and stands (like the ones in the Taj Mahal -old fart- section of the fair) and fill them all with really cheap classic books!
This is a definite shout out to my sister Jesi - I felt like such an addict! You would have died! Amazing books for less than 500 rupees ($10). I got "100 Years of Solitude" Marquez, "My Experiments With Truth" Ghandi, "The Ramayana" Indian Epic, "The Bhagavad Gita" Hindu scripture,  "The Man in the Iron Mask" Dumas, "A Romance With Chaos" some obscure Indian wanna be novelist (it was one of those crappy literature reads for long and boring trips), "Speeches that Changed the World" legit folk. It was glorious!!! I've already finished "Romance with Chaos" and I'm currently on "Man in the Iron Mask". I love DUMAS!

Number 2: The remnants of Colonial England at its height (Victoria's Palace)

Victoria's Palace is the gem of Kolkata! It  is breath taking and I wish I could have stayed there forever! I felt like I was in a Jane Austen novel while I was sitting on the grounds. The inside has been turned into a museum of the progression of Kolkatta with the influence of the British. It was very interesting to see the progression and the different artifacts that have been saved from so many years ago. The art and artifacts however were second rate to the amazing architecture and statues inside the palace. The statues were phenomenal! When you first walk into the palace you enter the entry atrium which then leads to a large circular rooms with high vaulted ceilings and exquisite frescoes on the walls and ceilings. The cherry on top of the ice cream for this room is the huge marble statue of Queen Victoria located at the very center to the room. The combination of all of these factors creates such an elegant and refined ambiance that I almost felt a little unqualified to be allowed in the room. Victoria's Palace was by far my favorite stop of the trip.

Across the street from Victoria's Palace is a large field where may people play soccer and horse roam freely. There's a bunch of street peddlers that have a colony of under fed and poorly trained horses to attract tourists. I was able to ride a horse while I was there and I was so frustrated! The trainers try to vocally train the horses as well as bridle train them. While I was riding the owner of my horse kind of freaked out when he realized I knew how to ride and then started yelling commands. The poor horse (probably poorly trained in the first place) had no idea what commands to listen to - mine or the master. It was fun regardless and the video is way funny of the peddler chasing me down as I trotted away. So funny!

Number 3: The remnants of Colonial England at its height  (colonial buildings/churches)

The old buildings and churches of Kolkatta still exist and are in use today. Churches like St. James Church on MV Bose Road. We took a little diversion there and actually received a private tour from the caretaker. It was rad. The church itself is under extensive renovations and is one of the oldest buildings in Kolkatta. The whole place looked like it might collapse at any moment, but, of course, we didn't care and we explored the buildings with excitement. We went up spiral staircases and stood on the roof right outside the main rose window. Way cool! We ended the tour sitting in the front pews. I began to think how cool it would be to sing with these type of acoustics and then I realized... duh! I can sing right now. So I sang "Nearer My God To Thee" and I've never heard my voice make that type of full and resonant sound (obviously, completely due to the building and vaulted ceilings). We ended up donating a little bit of money to help rebuilding the dilapidated church.

 

Number 4: The remnants of Colonial England at its height (Park street cemetery)

All over Kolkatta you see the ruins of the British occupancy of the area. Kolkatta was the original capitol of India, before being replaced by New Delhi, so there are many official government buildings and the like. It was definitely a little history lesson to experience the city. While we were walking from Mother Teresa's Tomb to Victoria's Palace we found the Park Street Colonial cemetery. Oh my fantastic! I felt like I was in a jungle discovering the ruins of history. The oldest grave we were able to read was 1836(a large number of the tombstones had fallen apart and were crumbled preventing us from reading them). Everything just made history more real to me and I even wished that we would have had more of an emphasis in the curriculum on British Colonized India.

Number 5: Mother Teresa's tomb and life story

Being able to learn more about Mother Teresa, her life and story was inspiring and a very spiritual experience for me. She was such a self-less and Christ-like person. We could all learn more by studied what exactly she did in her life. “God speaks in silence” is written in flowers on her tomb and she said the Christ “thirsts” after us and when we understand that we can come to understand his life and ministry. I cried a couple of times reading the stories of her service. I still can’t believe that this little woman from Albania came to India and changed the world through love. I was able to see her Nobel peace prize up close and in person and many other artifacts. Outside the mission it has her placard that was used to indicate whether or not Mother Teresa was at the mission or not:  it is now always switched to in.

The Catholic doctrine may, in my opinion, be incorrect in some points, but I would be flabbergasted if Mother Teresa doesn’t receive exaltation. This idea sparked a conversation amongst our group about whether or not Heavenly Father intends for everyone to be LDS while they are here on this Earth. We came to the conclusion that He doesn’t intend for that to happen. If Mother Teresa hadn’t been a Catholic nun she wouldn’t have changed the world in the way she did. I believe the Lord uses many good people as instruments in his hands even if they are not members of the LDS church.

The whole experience was one I would never take away, but also one I would never repeat again. I’ve come to learn that I do not like big cities and lots of people. Being in those places, however, does open my eyes to the way that so many people do live and the awareness I believe will allow me to empathize and be more understanding to others who do and their plights.

With love from India,

Jaci

Week One continued again

FRIDAY

    In India there is a large Hindu Festival called Pongal. Friday begins the festival with a bonfire called Bhogi. The festival is to celebrate a plentiful harvest. So lots of food and drink! We had our own little Pongal festival. Our house was decked out! Karuna, one of our translators drew decorative mugu outside our house and put garlands of flowers everywhere and sugar cane. WOW! It was beautiful! We all dressed up in colorful sarees and had a grand ole time. The local t.v. station even came and filmed us for the morning news! It was a little bit crazy.

        

One of our neighbor's woke us at 5am in the morning with their chanting and bonfire raucous! It was good though because we joined in and it was super fun! Another one of our neighbor’s had us over as well and gave us gifts (fruits and beans). They live between India and Texas, so it was very easy to converse with them. They are a sweet older couple whose granddaughter lives with them and is completing her master’s degree (she’s 22 years old! – amazing)!

The whole night was a lot of fun and by the end of it I was so tired!

Saturday

            On Saturday the festities for Pongal continued with the festival of Sankranti. That morning the musicians from Simhatchilum Temple came and performed for us at the Krishna Temple which is right next to our houses. I really enjoyed it, of course, because I’m totally into that type of world music style and genre. Other’s in our group weren’t as excited, but oh well! The played for about an hour and then abruptly stopped, packed up their things and left. It was all quite sudden and confusing, but we thanked them all outside of the temple and they were gracious.

             After the musicians our “warden” from the US consulate came to pay us a visit. He actually was a student during the Wisconsin Program! Same program and mentor (Chuckolls) just a different university. His name is Peter and he’s hilarious, especially in his reactions to Dr. Nuckolls comments (I hope one day Chuckolls and I will be that tight). Peter is a really good resource for daily conduct, hot spots to go hang out at (like the discothèques and Rushikonda beach), OH! and if the US ever needs to evacuate Americans he’s in charge of getting us the heck outta here! HAHA! Like that would ever happen!

            After Peter’s visit Sam, Amy, Amber, and I went to the Vizag Zoo! It was fun, but my camera was dead so I don’t have any pictures. It made me really sad for the animals though. I’m not trying to advocate animal rights activism or anything, but I was really depressed by the living conditions of the animals. I don’t think I get that way in the United States when I go to zoos. It’s probably because of the animal rights activists in the US that make it that way; maybe they’ve had a good impact after all J

            Saturday evening we were invited to Dr. Malyanavasani’s house for dinner. She is our Telugu teacher and does an amazing job of it (Our other teacher Siva Prasad is uh… let's just say he is so hard to understand and leave it at that). She and her husband treated us to a tasty meal with soda pop, sweets, and these sour little apple things which were amazing! She sang us songs and then had me sing a song as well. She agreed to give me lessons in the Indian/ Eastern vocal tradition. I’m stoaked!

Sunday

            Sunday was another wonderful meeting. I really do enjoy the branch and everyone’s smiling faces. They are so kind and welcoming. On Sunday nights the program pays for us to eat out so that our cooks have the night off of cooking. We are given money and we choose where we want to go and we usually choose People’s Kitchen. I have a new addiction to their coconut rice and mushroom masala! The food is so good and so cheap that it feels like highway robbery! We always give a HUGE tip!

Monday

            On Monday night we were invited to have dinner at our tailor’s house. Understanding a lot of things now that I didn’t understand then, it was a bad idea. I thought she was really kind and not very imposing, just interested in the white people. We had a nice dinner at her home and after dinner is when it started getting weird. She starting passing around a sheet of paper asking for everyone’s names, signatures, and contact info. I feel SO stupid because at the time it seemed like nothing, but once she started asking about passports and getting to America it all felt wrong. We got back home and told Krishnayya Garu and he was furious. She had EXTREMELY over charged us for saree blouses and she was told in the previous program that she should not come around the students again. All in all a crazy experience that taught me a lesson about my information needing to be kept secret and not all people being able to be trusted. It was a hard way to learn it.           

Other than all of my India adventures there's definitely everything that's going on back in the States. I recently started getting voice files from my best friend on his mission. I don't know if it's an appropriate usage of the word, but I'm getting so trunky listening to them! I miss him so much that it kills me and knowing that he gets home 2 weeks before me just makes me even more anxious! I also I'm missing my incredible roommates back in Provo and my amazing family everywhere in the US. I really get stagnated by those days and it's really frustrating and halting to my research. I'm trying to keep a positive outlook. I'm in India and I should be super excited about it, but sometimes all I want to do is go home to be with all those people that I love. So if you're one of those people I miss (if you're reading this you probably are): I love you and I miss you so much!!

With love from India.
Jaci