Friday, 18 January - 11:00 PM

What an amazing birthday it's been! When I went downstairs after my bucket, my Belgaum family was all waiting down there with a birthday cake! They gave me the ceremonial forehead dot, oils and sang "Happy Birthday." Then they all took turns feeding me pieces of cake!



Before meeting up with the team, Veerdhaval took me and Elizabeth to visit his iron casting factory. I have been to more factories in the past week than I probably ever would see in several lifetimes. And I am learning how things are made that I don't even usually think about. I mean, who thinks how iron car parts are made? I'm sure they have factories like these all over the US - probably even in my own town. But I guess I'd never given much thought to stuff like this. Maybe I should. Maybe my overall awareness is waking up.

We met up with the rest of the team and our first stop was to a Jain temple from several thousand years ago. It was pretty cool and relevant because the family I am staying with now are actually Jains.


Jain temple deity.

And after the Jain temple, we visited an ashram.This was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. One of the monks sat with us and explained the real Indian culture: the belief that God (Divine) is within each and every being. That when one suffers, all suffer.


Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Belgaum.

He talked about death as merely shedding a shell. He talked of the balance of good and bad, happy and sad. That if one is suffering, he should take comfort in knowing that someone else is thriving. If we are experiencing bad times, knowing that someone else is enjoying good times and find peace in that. And remember that bad times will pass so not to dwell on them.

We were allowed to ask anything on our minds and his answers were so simple and so beautiful and made so much sense. I was filled with a sort of a-ha! feeling - very emotional. I guess what one might call a true religious experience.

After that amazing stop we went on a tour of the Tata power plant. It was interesting, but my mind was still buzzing from the ashram. In the evening we made our presentation at the Belgaum Rotary club. Rajiv had stuck an extra slide into the PowerPoint presentation and it turned out to be a birthday surprise! The club brought out another birthday cake (my second for the day!) and we all shared it.


Having my cake...


... and eating it, too!

After all that, our hosts took Elizabeth, Misty and I out for dinner and then we went to a movie theatre (owned by a Rotarian, of course) and I saw my first Hindi movie called Welcome!

I am so tired right now. These days are wonderful but man are they LONG! Tomorrow we leave for Kolhapur. I'm so sad to be leaving such an amazing family. And it truly was a birthday I will never forget.



Namaste.

Friday, 18 January - 7:00 AM

Sorry I missed writing yesterday, I was so busy I didn't even get a chance. And the worst part was that I didn't sleep a wink last night. I was up tossing and turning, a bit freaked-out by the two cockroaches I encountered in the bathroom during the night. I got up around 6:30 and went for a walk with my hosts. They live near an army base and it was so cool! They have a zoo on the base and a temple (of course). Had great conversations with Veerdhaval, his sister and her son.


Reindeers at the zoo.


Walking with my hosts.

After my bucket bath and breakfast, I met up with the team and we began our very long day. We started at the KLES hospital which is this massive teaching hospital - the biggest in the state. We toured all around and met the people in charge (Rotarians) Everyone kept snapping photos as if we were celebrities, then we had tea with the head of the hospital.



From there we visited Hindalco where we learned how beauxite is mined to produce alumina, a chemical used in many household products. It was cool because we got to wear hardhats.



We has a terrific lunch buffet there at Hindalco and then we were off to VTU, the largest technical engineering university in Belgaum. A very impressive campus. During our tour, one of the host Rotarians shared his own views with us of why India is experiencing "brain drain" - which is when students leave India after finishing their degrees to live and work in other countries. He said Indians don't have the same sense of loyalty and patriotism that Americans do. I found that to be interesting.

By around 5:00 PM, exhaustion hit me. After not sleeping the entire night, walking around hospitals and dirt factories for seven hours and just missing home a little, I had a mini-meltdown. Just started to cry during another tea that we were having at the college. I think I scared the Rotarian hosts a little so they mercifully took us back to our hosts to relax.

But not for long. Soon it was time to get up and get ready for the dinner. The Belgaum Rotary club held a huge dinner party at an outdoor restaurant for the GSE team, hosts and their families. It was a lovely time. I wore a salwar kameez that I had gotten as a gift from my Dharwad host family, and we all hung out and had a great time.


Paying homage to Rajiv.

I came back home, took a Benadryl and slept like a log for the next 7 hours. No cockroaches - no worries. Today I feel like a new Jen! This morning we're going to visit a fort, the Tata Company power plant, and then are making a presentation to the Rotary club at 6:30... which will probably end up taking place around 8:30, IST (Indian Standard Time) hehe.

Oh yeah and I almost forgot - today is my birthday! I have a feeling it's one I'll never forget :)

Namaste,

Wednesday, 16 January - 10:30 PM

Oh thank you God!!

Today I arrived in Belgaum and am staying in a BEAUTIFUL house!!

Dharwad was non-stop. Especially yesterday. I woke up at like 4:00 AM and just laid there until 7:00. When I went in to shower, I found that there was no shower - just a faucet sticking out of the wall and another one of those big buckets and small pitchers. Umm...?

While I was standing there wondering what to do, my host brought in two metal buckets full of hot water (really hot water -- heated by the solar-powered hot water heater on the roof.) I must have looked terribly confused, because he explained that cold water came out of the faucet and that I should mix the hot and cold in the bucket for my bath. Thus, my first "Indian bath."

I rushed around trying to get ready, as we were supposed to meet the team at 9:15. But we ended up sitting around the living room until after 10:00. People kept dropping in -- what's going on?? I have a feeling "time" is open to interpretation here.

We had an orientation meeting at the Dharwad Rotary hall. A past-president filled us in on what our GSE experience might be like, and answered a lot of our questions. He also gave us a very brief crash-course on Indian culture.



From there we visited an Ayurvedic hospital -- they use leeches!



We were supposed to return to our host's homes after that, but instead they brought us to this tiny village called Garag - the only place in India where national flags are produced. It was very interesting, as all the flags are made by hand.




At first we didn't notice that this woman had some extra help.



Evening was fun. Neeta and Rachana dressed me in a sari and we went into town to do some shopping. Then we went to some of their relatives because it happened to be Sankranti - a festival when you offer people sweets and say, "Take sweet, talk sweet, be sweet." A lovely tradition, really!





By 10:00 all I wanted to do was sleep. But my hosts took Elizabeth and I out to a restaurant for dinner. As you can tell from last night's post -- I was spent! This morning I took a walk down by a lake with Nagraj and the two girls.



In the afternoon, the team did our first presentation for the Dharwad Rotary club and then we left for Belgaum.

My host family seems super-cool. The husband and wife (Veerdhaval and Swati) have two young sons, and they live as part of an extended family: a grandmother, two aunts, an uncle, and four other kids. It's quite a full house! I got to stop at an internet cafe for ten minutes and had a little time to relax in the afternoon.

This evening, Veerdhaval and Swati took me to a garden where Gandhi once visited and then we stopped for some amazing sugar cane juice. Later I watched the women cook dinner and after we ate, I played cards upstairs with all six kids.


Veerdhaval and Swati, my Belgaum hosts.


The Gandhi memorial garden in Belgaum.

I gotta say, right now I am feeling about 200% better than I was at this time last night!

Namaste.

Tuesday, 15 January - 11:30 PM

I am exhausted. We went non-stop today...

1) Rotary GSE orientation meeting
2) Ayurvedic hospital
3) Cotton factory
4) Shopping
5) Visiting relatives
6) Dinner.. at 10:00 PM

Neeta and Rachana dressed me in a sari. Must sleep.

Monday, 14 January (still!) - 11:00 PM

I can't believe this is still the same day! We woke up around 8:00 AM and showered. This was an experience. In the bathroom, there is a giant bucket with a small pitcher and there is also a pipe sticking out of the wall... this is the shower. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do with the bucket, so I just kind of moved it aside. I hope it wasn't used for anything gross!

When we went out into the kitchen, Radhika was there and so was some short, older guy who made us omelets. They were actually pretty kick-ass... normal eggs with a bunch of vegetables. And normal toast.

We were supposed to fly out of Mumbai to Hubli at 11:00 AM, but our flight was delayed until 1:00 so we wandered around Mumbai with Ajay and Radhika. Mumbai is like Times Square on crack!! The driving is insane - there don't seem to be any logical rules. Everyone is honking their horns all the time, passing on the right and left... there are no lanes or traffic lights. And pedestrians just kind of walk everywhere! Like, in the middle of the road. I won't describe it as "bad" though. More like... "alive!"



We walked to a temple. There were people selling floral garlands and offerings all along the street leading up to the temple. The people looked to be in pretty bad shape. Half-dressed, dirty kids started following us and asking us for money. And there are wild "street dogs" everywhere. They don't seem to bother anyone, but they are covered in mange and all look pretty skinny.



The weird thing is, even though these poor people look like they're in hell, they smile! They look like they are happy just to be.

We made our way to the temple and Radhika gave us each a flower to give as an offering to the deity. We took our shoes off outside and had to walk through security stalls - one for men, one for women. When we got inside, we literally had to push our way through this massive crowd to get to leave our offering. I don't remember ever being in such a tight crowd!

After the temple, we walked back to the flat to leave for the airport. On the way, our driver was pulled over for making an illegal turn -- to avoid a cow!! (I am so not making this up!!) He ended up bribing the cop 250 Rs. to get out of the ticket. Radhika told us that Mumbai is known for having one of the most corrupt police departments in India, but also one of the most efficient.

Our plane didn't end up leaving until 3:00. We had lunch at a buffet in the airport and my journey as a vegetarian began. The plane turned out to be a little puddle-jumper, and I slept the entire hour-long flight to Hubli,

When we landed, we were greeted by about 30 people who gave us flowers, waved oil around us, and gave us each a little dot on our forehead with this red powder. We took about a million photographs and were united with our respective hosts, who loaded our luggage in their cars and took us "home."



My family lives in the next town over from Hubli called Dharwad and they are super-nice. The Rotarian's name is Nagraj Tigidi, and he's a civil engineer (architect). He lives with his wife, Neeta, and their two daughters: Rachana (15) and Krutika (7). We shared photo albums and went up to their rooftop to look at stars and talk. We had potato pakoras and some Kingfisher beer on the roof, and Rachana tried teaching me to speak some Kannada.

I learned that there are 27 states in India and each state has its own language. Dharwad is in the state of Karnataka, so they speak Kannada. They also speak the mother tongue: Hindi, and most people speak English. So kids leave grade 10 speaking at least three languages fluently. Amazing.

We went downstairs around 10 PM and Neeta had made dinner. Stupid me! I thought the potato pakoras were dinner so I was pretty full. But I tried a little of what she'd made: some sort of tomato curry, rice and chappati (kind of like a delicious, homemade, whole wheat wrap.) Everything was great and is sitting very well. I'm glad my nausea went away!


Neeta and Krutika

I can't believe that was all in just one day! India is amazing... I can't believe I am here!! More tomorrow -- must sleep.

Namaste.

START HERE!!

[Here we go - straight from the archives. So what if it's a month late?]

DAY 1: Monday, 14 January - 4:00 AM

We're here in Mumbai. It's just about 4 AM (5:15 PM on Sunday in NJ) The flights were fine, we left JFK around 9:15 PM.

On the way to the airport from Rajiv's house, Bernie realized he'd left his portfolio in Misty's car. So there was this sitcom-esque phone tag going on between Misty, her brother and her friend Scott - all trying to get in touch with Debbie, the woman driving the car with Bernie's portfolio in it. We finally caught up to her, although we ended up losing about 45 minutes. No worries - we were to JFK in plenty of time.


Saying "Goodbye" to New Jersey, USA.

Checking in was a blur. I still felt so sick from the anti-malaria medication, and was just like a zombie checking in my bags. The flight from New York to London was fine. We flew British Airways and I had an aisle seat with two empty seats between me and an Indian dude. I slept most of the time. They fed us dinner and breakfast - both within about 6 hours. I had zero appetite, but figured I should stay well hydrated.

Our layover at Heathrow was only like 90 minutes. The flight from London to Mumbai was longer. I debated not taking anymore Malarone, but decided I would be better off not getting malaria. I ate a container of rice pudding on the plane and it really helped a lot.

I watched a couple movies on the plane (Fever Pitch and Death at a Funeral) slept a lot and before I knew it, we were landing. As soon as we got out of the airport, I noticed the smell. Kind of a cross between sulphur, exhaust fumes, b.o., curry and cows. It smelled like LIFE! The weather is kind of muggy.



We met up with our hosts, Radhika and Ajay, and they took us to a nearby flat to stay the night. We three girls (myself, Misty and Elizabeth) are in one room and Bernie and Rajiv are in another. I think the hosts are staying in the living room.


Our Mumbai escorts, Ajay and Radhika

I can't believe I'm here. It's 4:00 AM and I don't know how I am going to sleep since it's really only 6:30 PM back home. One thing for sure, the next four weeks will certainly be different from what I am used to!

Namaste.

BACK IN THE U.S.A.!!

What an absolutely amazing journey - physically, emotionally, spiritually... As I mentioned, I kept a written journal the entire time and now that I'm home, will transfer it all to this blog. The photos are abundant and seem to keep piling in! So bear with me as I readjust to "normal" life and I'll be in touch soon!

Namaste.