I thought I would have more time to write in this blog. I thought, "Hey! Once funding comes through, I'll get a wi-fi drive." To be honest, I was just being lazy -- not lazy; lazy implies that I was being idle and procrastinating. This has not been the case. Between the unexpected police visit to my home, the subsequent follow-up at the police commissioner's office, visiting the palace of the old Travancore kings on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, trying to find the exact place where the three oceans meet at the tip of India in Kanyakumari, twisting my tongue around just to pronounce the word for rain,  memorizing an endless amount of vocab and grammar rules before the mid-term, feeling unaccomplished as I still don't know how to ask where the bathroom is without using the word "bathroom" though I can now say, "it is raining now" with a pretty decent accent, going to Fort Cochin and realizing the elevated status of being a tourist in monsoon season, speaking in Malayalam and realizing the celebrity status that comes with being able to say "it is raining now", beginning to find a bit of sanity traveling to the nearby beach of Kovalam and realizing, yes, I can do this for a year. I am finally excited, heart-fluttering, plan-making, day-dreaming excited to be here.

Therefore I was not being lazy. Just learning to adjust. I have started many a blog entry only not to be able to concentrate for lack of a feeling of privacy or an overabundance of car honking blaring through a window. I've written many a letter to friends back home, only not to send them because certain experiences just don't translate on paper. They have to be spoken. I've called my family wanting to explain the stress of constantly feeling out of place and over scrutinized, only to give up because just hearing my parents' or my sister's voice puts my heart and mind at ease.

I have to remind myself that I have not been lazy. I have been on overdrive since I've been here. There's also something unsettling about not being in charge of one's own life. I miss being able to cook for myself. I started getting up later because breakfast isn't served till close to eight. I am an early morning person. My mom is a night owl. I've been taught to eat little or nothing after six in the evening. Dinner is served at 7:30. An evening nap to reboot my brain after an exhausting day at school isn't possible. I'm not allowed to lay down or have my hair loose between 6:00 and 7:00 pm. 

I've been pushing myself to take in as much as I can. Some days it's easy. I'm either too tired or everyone else is to busy to notice me. Other times, entire restaurants stop talking and stare as a couple of non-Indian girls walk into the room. At times I want to not stand out. Even positive attention can be overwhelming. The other students and I, westerns that aren't leaving Trivandrum asap to the next tourist destination, are an oddity, but when we try to use the small amount of Malayalam we know, we are suddenly given Bollywood stardom status. On a day when everything seems to go wrong: there was rice-flour-coconut log for breakfast, skype wouldn't let me call my family, suddenly there's fifty vocab words to memorize by tomorrow, etc., it's not so pleasant to have a group of girls turning around to stare at me and the giggle, even knowing no harm is meant. 

All of this is to say, life here isn't easy or simple. It's beautiful though. It's beautiful in it's contrasts. Body odor mixed with jasmine flowers. Helping fishermen pull in the Chinese-fishing-nets and giving them some money for sharing the experience. People pushing their way onto and off of buses without thought to others but then touching the forehead and heart in sign of apology if a foot touches you. It's beautiful in the differences it let's me see in myself. I'm learning was sorts of things I can put up with. Lack of personal space, cold showers in hot climates, bathing in the ocean with my clothes on. Things I don't want to put up with. Being talked down to like a child and living with a host family. I think I'm passed that phase of my life now. But it's all good. This is what I wanted from this journey, and I'm ready to continue with it.

At least, I was, but the funding for the year program didn't come through. Just as I was finding my groove, I find out that India has one last surprise for me on this trip. Apparently I will have gotten from her all that I can by the end of the summer because I will be coming home. At first I was disappointed to the point of denial. There must be something I can do to change this strange twist of fate, but really I can't. That's what I've been learning all along. I have no control over so many things here. Of course, I have the same lack of control back home, it's just more obvious here. I can't even drink water when I'm thirsty. I have to make sure it's filtered, boiled, bottled, whatever. At least back home, I can drink straight from the tap. 

And that's where the positivism that keeps following me in all my travels comes in. There's got to be a happy ending. Or at least a happy new beginning. And in this case, I'm coming home! As my mom has reminded me, I did get a free trip to India. I've also realized better than before what's important to me. The most difficult part of living here has been how difficult it is to talk with people back home whether due to the time difference or because of the lack of internet access. This difficulty now makes coming home that much sweeter because I'm ecstatic to see my family, my immediate and extended family and my Austin family. I can't wait to see you guys! I have so much more to share with you when I get back, and I want to hear all about what you've been doing these past couple of months. For those of you who are continuing are your travels in other parts of the country or the world, know that I will be (and am) thinking about you. 

Until next time: I love you guys!

Welcome to Kerala! 

Forgive me for not writing earlier; jet lag is a beach, beckoning the weary traveler to be lulled to sleep by the waving sounds of bus, car, and auto-ricksaw horns, men calling Muslims to prayer from nearby mosques, at 4:30 in the morning, and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" first in Malayalam, followed by Hindi. I'm sure next will be one Tamil, but I've fallen fast asleep dreaming of the differences between   N and n, R, r, and zh, which sound the same to me. Waking up too many times in the night, I look forward to daylight and asking passengers in passing buses, "Statue? Statue?", awaiting the head bobble that I still have to remind myself means yes, but by the time we're half-way through the first class I'm trudging through pronunciation drills, barely able to keep my eyes awake until tea time. I tell myself, no going home after class, no napping. It will only confirm my body's insistence that it's the middle of the night, so I go shopping for clothes I desperately need. Seriously, I need to go shopping, because wearing anything besides a churidar or sari says look at me, I don't belong here. So I make friends with shopkeepers who giggle when I say the few words I know in Malayalam. Then, too exhausted to continue, I start asking passengers in other buses "Kaudiar?", reminding myself, head wobble means yes not maybe. I walk half a kilometer from Kaudiar junction to my house and lie down for an hour before my host mother asks me to not lie down and put my hair up for an hour while she performs puja and finishes making dinner. At 7 pm I eat, wash my plate, fall into bed, and think to myself. Jet lag is mono on steroids. I hope these two weeks pass quickly because I'm ready to experience India outside of this dream-like haze that rivals the pollution floating down the street. 

Luckily, the two weeks body adjustment period has ended. Now I'm starting to explore the city, find out that calling home is not as easy as in other parts of the world, and keeping an eye open for that sanctuary I need to write and study. For the time being, it's European-style coffee shop, Cherries & Berries, with free wi-fi that has allowed me to Skype with my parents for nearly an hour. The first full conversation I've had with anyone from home in almost a month. I've also been able to upload photos, which will help fill in some details until I can write more. For now, paying for overpriced ($3) coffee, is worth the internet access, AC, and moment of relaxation that I haven't yet found elsewhere. Bindu Teacher is helping me find a library or somewhere quiet I can study, so I hope soon to be able to fill all of you in on more of my India experience. It's not at all what I expected, which is of course, what I had been told and had hoped for, so in short I'm happy and excited to be here. 

Now for some photo:

Down the street from my school SRK welcomes me and tells me to say hello to  his biggest fan, my mom!

Karen, Malar, and I have run out of clothes and had to go shopping at Pothy's for ready-made outfits.

The living room of the apartment where I'm staying.

My room.

The view from my room.

Malar, Karen, and I at the zoo entrance.

Damon, Malar, and Karen at the zoo.

Women who make hand embroidered saris and other wonderful items.
I bought a smocked nightie from them that I absolutely love!

June 10, 2012

08:45

Delhi Airport

Costa Coffee Lounge

(DFW = June 9, 2012 22:15)

Mudras decorate the entrance to immigration.

And so the adventure begins. I’ve missed my flight to Trivandrum and continue to be stuck in the Delhi airport. Literally. I cannot go downstairs to the international terminal where Michaela and I rented two hours to sit in a lounge with comfy chairs followed by three hours to a nap in a small room. Refreshments and wi-fi included in the price. I barely used either at the time, wanting only to sleep. Apparently ten plus hours on the two flights here wasn’t enough. Granted I realized when I put my head down that resting my neck was what I had actually been craving. That and curling up in the fetal position under some blankets.

First non-airplane food in sixteen hours.
Ah, the simple things in life! 

This of course is why I travel. It reveals the true joy of the simple things in life. Like sleeping in a bed. At least that’s one thing I’m pretty sure I can always count on: beds are beds. Toilets change form across oceans. What people eat and the way they eat can change even across state lines, but beds are always in the reclining in the position. I almost said flat, but then I had a flashback to the body-sized dip in my bed in the first house I stayed in in Costa Rica.

Back to the issue at hand. I’m stuck here, unable to go downstairs. Nor am I able apparently to go outside. A nice man with a machine gun instructed me in broken English to go a different exit, but I’d rather not risk not being able to enter the airport again since the reason behind all my trouble stems from confusion about a boarding pass that I still don’t have. My fault of course for not reading carefully all three boarding passes I received in DFW. But that was nearly thirty-six hours ago. That’s already a very different girl from the one I am now. One who was nervous about Indian toilets and understanding Indian English. Both things are not so daunting now as the Delhi airport has made the transition for Westerners pretty seamless.

Sit down toilets have both toilet paper and hoses to wash oneself. Neither the immigration nor the customs officer spoke to me at all, just took my paperwork and ushered me along. So I’m in India, but I could be in any pleasant airport in any part of the world really. In fact, I’m sitting in a Costa Coffee café, trying to remember if it wasn’t in the Costa Rica airport that I first encountered this chain.

Indira Gandhi International Airport
as seen from one of it's huge windows.

That’s another example of why I like to travel. Some people might call it globalization, and to an extend I guess it is when you’re talking about chain restaurants, but there’s also a certain universality of human beings that a person can only begin to understand through experience. A simple thank you at the end of what might be a stressful encounter—trying to get my boarding pass on time, trying to find my way back downstairs—signals my fellow beings that I have no hard feelings and elicits a smile from stoic Jet Airway ticketers and uniformed airport guards that speak minimal English.

To be honest, though I miss my partner in crime Michaela, who didn’t have the same trouble with her boarding pass and hopefully made our original flight, and though I don’t wish to worry Dr. Unnithan who  offered to pick us up from the airport, I’m actually enjoying my unexpected turn of events. Once I realized I would most likely be missing my flight, the nervousness of trying to rush left me, and I let a smile escape my lips as I thought, “Well, I came for an adventure, and so it begins.” It reminded me of the most important experience of traveling, one that I enjoy immensely when I remember to breathe.

I can’t quite put it in words. Something about the journey not the destination doesn’t encompass the true heart of it because if it were so, I wouldn’t need to travel to experience it. Learning how to be self-sufficient doesn’t work either. That’s something I’m still trying to master at home.

Traveling in one way makes a person realize how much we rely on each other whether it’s to book a new flight, find a restroom, or order food. The desire for self-sufficiency becomes absurd as I realize what an illusion that idea is. Maybe those simple but not always easy to swallow ideas are the reason I travel. Of course they can be experienced at home, but like most people, I find myself drawn to the comfort of autopilot when I’m at home, leaving said ideas well enough alone as I comfort myself with the idea that I have control over my experience. Here, stuck in the Delhi airport, following another culture’s unspoken rules that I have to have spelled out to me and so realizing how little effect my actions have on the outcome of events, I am able to experience with more clarity the power I do have over the perception of the events around me and to some extent other’s perception of the events in which I am a part.

Statues showing the beauty of yogic sun salutations, reminding me to breathe with each movement in life.

Case in point, Asha, the woman at the ticket counter who first had to tell me I wouldn’t make my flight, and I could have found ourselves exasperated and worn out at the beginning of a long day if I had decided that missing my original flight was unbearable, inexcusable, or oddly enough her fault in some way. Rather, I know from traveling the constraints by which all of us are confined, including official rules, unstated customs, and most importantly in this situation, time. Neither of us had the ability to get me to my flight, so I gratefully accepted the alternative, which was to take the next flight at six o’clock this evening. I had to come back later to get my boarding pass, which gave me time to walk around, find that I was stuck in the airport, and eventually decide to camp out in a very comfy chair in the café and start my blog, something I’ve been looking forward to. 

After coffee, breakfast, and a bathroom break, I found that the line at the ticket counter was gone, and Asha, who knew me as Ms. Lawrence by now, was very happy to give me a boarding pass and check my bag. There are so many more complicated and expensive ways this day could’ve turned out, so I’m glad I got to see Asha again and express my gratitude. From her smile, I understood the gratitude was reciprocated for my flow-with-the-go attitude. Acknowledging and accepting the lack of control human beings encounter in a great majority of situations has allowed me a better understanding of those things over which we can control, namely ourselves.

Me breathing easy as I wait for my last flight to Trivandrum.

I have now past the security check point and am finishing this blog entry in the domestic terminal of the Delhi Airport waiting for the next flight to Trivandrum. I was bound to get here one way or another. I’m so grateful I made it, and this short detour has given me time to look around the beautiful airport and a moment to reflect on the joyous adventure called traveling.

Hello one and all!

Soon I will be traipsing about India, ingesting sights and smells I cannot even begin to imagine, digesting food that my stomach will not be able to handle, and feeling more or less like a toddler in my ability to communicate my needs to those around me. It's going to be great fun as I think about it now and as I look back on it from the future, but I'm sure many moments in between will be full of what-was-I-thinkings and how-did-think-this-would-be-funs. Therefore, I will attempt with as much effort as internet access will allow me to post my thoughts, emotions, and sensory overload confusions in the hopes that sharing my experiences with you, wonderful friends and family, will make missing home more bearable and the craziness of adventuring more meaningful.

Over the summer I will be staying with a host family, and hopefully, also living with Michaela, another Austinite traveling to Kerala to study Malayalam. I will also get to meet up with my fellow scarf brigading brigadiers Emily and Corinne who are each going on her own journey through India. What a wonderful way to begin a year abroad! I would love to see more of you in India if you can find a way to make the journey, but for those who can't, travel with me in spirit by reading and commenting on my blog. I'll try to check my facebook also, but the best way to keep in touch will be through email. Send me a message now and then to let me know how you're doing and what you're up to. I'll let you know when the blogs updated.

Until then, wrap yourself in a scarf, or if it's too hot for a scarf, a sari, and frolic through life with the merriment of a scarf brigader!