India is .....

Ian and I have been developing simple ways to explain to people what India is like, a few that we have so far are...

India is ....
a place that takes a big spoon and stirs you all up
a completely different world
a developing nation with third world sectors
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep

ill try to post more as we think of them.

loves

Bag milk

Ian and have rented a two bedroom apartment in the French quarter of Pondicherry for three days. The decision was made while we were staying in mallapuram in a super budget under renovation roach infested place that had regular two hour power outages. While the hotel was one of the worst the 40 degree c temperature's as well as the outbreak of cholera and swine flue made going out a bit of a gamble. If those factors were not enough to get us into a nicer place when we both started developing sever rashes we packed our bags and changed towns. Town changing was not too complicated, tho if we had less stuff we might have been able to squeeze on the first five buses, but bus number six was fine. We passed through coastal farmland that was beautiful, mid west on the Atlantic coast, with palm branch huts. It was easy to imagine how much damage this area suffered during the tsunami. As we were travailing along the first rains of the season started. Three thoughts on that 1 rain creates such wonderfully fresh cool and clean feeling air 2 it's awesome when you bus fare guy gets out to repair the windshield wiper with twine 3 the lack of sufficient if any drain system creates widespread flooding mixing the sewage up even more. Just as the rain was dying down and the lighting was taking out power lines we walked into a French restaurant owned by a pleasant elderly French man and inquired about a room. That is how we ended up staying in this apartment. It's about 20 usd a day but it has wifi and a kitchen. The wifi is great, I am making this post using the I touch and we have no need for Internet cafes. The kitchen is also great giving us control of our food prep sanitation. Yesterday we went to the
market and bought lots of fresh food to eat while we are here and this morning I had my first encounter with bag milk. I was able to open and poor it just fine however I do not understand what to do with the milk remaing in the bag. My solution was to put the bag in a bowl so the opening was up and put the bag in the fridge till Ian wakes up and he can use the rest. On a side note is was so lovely having cold milk to poor over fresh cereal and into my hot coffee:) we belive the our rashes were most likely heat rashes since they have been getting progressivly better since we got ac. I hate to admit it but it's possible that south India really is too hot this time of year.

Port Blair

Hello Everyone,

Sorry that it has been so long since I last wrote. Its been busy, I will also say sorry in advance since I have very little sleep in my system right now so this might jump a bit. We left Dharamasla after a wonderful last day at the local swimming pool. A pool that is just slightly above freezing, since it is all fresh mountain spring fed =) I was extra sad to say good bye to all my friends and hope that I will get to meet them all again some time soon. We did however hit our first bump in a while when an ATM ate Ian's spare bank card just before we got on the bus =( We went to the Bank of American in Delhi only to be informed that while they have the same name and logo and web site they are in no way connected to the Bank Of America in the US, SERIOUS?!?!?!?!? Outside of the bank Delhi was nice, we stayed with some friends of mine who live in Delhi and they showed us some of the local flavor, much better than being on our own. We then got on a 1.5 day train ride to Calcutta. Its a fun city we both enjoyed it very much.

Most of our stay was spent trying to figure out the shipping corporation of India to get boat tickets to Port Blair. What we learned is that:

• office is near millennium park and taxi drivers know where that is. 
• The office is closed on Thursdays as it is a holiday.
• You need to bring a copy of your passport and visa as well as a passport sized photo when you go to buy tickets.
• Cash only for boat tickets.
• Arrive early and give yourself two days to stand in line because it will most likely take that long.

There is a restaurant/ Bar called limelight just down the road from the office that has cola floats, and they are what you expect cold cola with a scoop of ice cream on top... only 70rs

After all this education we went to super travels and bought plane tickets. Than visited Mother Teresa's nunnery, quite peaceful and refreshing before a 5 hour shopping experience 3 hrs packing 2 hrs sleeping and than the airport. Today we are going to visit an old jail and try to get boat tickets for tomorrow to Neel island and than on to Havelock. I most likely will not be back on the internet for about the next 3 weeks while I enjoy this tropical paradise and try to find a place to volunteer at, I wish you all the best!!

Laura

a bit more about Dharamsala

Hello!

Life is well and good here in Dharamsala. In some ways I think we could spend our whole time in India in this town. My various activities have kept me overwhelmingly busy and I have a handful of other activities I would love to be doing that I just cannot seem to find the time for. What the Tibetan people are going through is just mindboggling, in so many ways I cannot process it.

I have befriended a local woman about my age that fled Tibet less than a year ago. In order to get here she had to walk for 11 days across the Himalayas, and not hike during the day, they would hide during the day and hike at night. Most of her group was hiking in thin cotton flats instead of winter hiking boots, and all of them did not have food for more than 6 days. Once she arrived in Nepal she was put on a four day bus ride, the buses here are like school busses in the US, only twice as full and twice as old. Since her arrival in India she has been waking up around 5 every morning to study English, she attends 6 hours of English lessons a day and frequently will ask her teachers to go have tea with her so she can have more practice. Her day ends around 1130 pm when she prays and than goes to bed. A really wonderful person and I are so grateful that I have had the opportunity to become her friend. The really mindboggling part is that her story is one of relative ease she was not shot at or interrogated, she did not have to spend a night in jail and have all her items of any value taken, she did not get too severe frost bite all things that many of the Tibetans here had happen.

We are still living at the pink house, although we are getting quite tired of the stairs. I think we packed quite well because at this point all I wish I had brought was more old cooking magazines. I gave my one away to some friends who had me over for dinner thought it would be great to give one to each person who cooks for me…. Something ill note for next time =) I think it is about time for me to go eat some breakfast, best to everyone!

Laura & Ian

what we are doing with our time!

I realize that my postings have been anything but helpful about the question of what are we doing, really?? So I will attempt to answer this. In the morning I take a Buddhist philosophy class, spend my day time teaching English in a variety of settings, large classrooms (40+), small conversation classes (2-3) and one on one lessons. Most of my students are Tibetan refugees, although I do have a few from Thailand and Korea. My evenings are split between working at a shop that is involved in micro financing the refuge community, attending awareness events held at LIT (the main organization I am working with) and writing articles for the LIT newsletter. Ian is doing many of the same things. We have been taking turns being ill, getting everything from food poising to colds but we hope our immune system will be stronger because of it. We are staying at a cute place called the pink house in upper Dharamsala. It’s a wonderful town and would be happy to recommend it to anyone, as well as share our travel arrangement experiences with anyone who is thinking of traveling in India! We typically have 1.5 days of free time on the weekend creating our main adventuring and getting whatever daily tasks solved that we did not have time for during the week. We both really love the Tibetan culture and are going to look into getting visas for Tibet when we leave India.

I hope everyone is well

Laura& Ian

A weekend adventure

Hey everyone!

India is going quite well. We have both had a cold however we are feeling better today and went on a nice adventure. We started our morning eating breakfast at peace café. It’s a cute place not far from where we are staying. While at breakfast we had the pleasure of sharing our table with a lovely Canadian girl. She runs her own wedding floral business in Vancouver and tries to do everything organic and/or local. After breakfast she joined us as we walked about 1km to the local church. This church was the only building in upper Dharamsala that survived the earthquake 1905 and is quite stunning. However it is also in great need of repair. We all donated a small amount; however it seems that the church really is in need of a sister church to help them raise money. While visiting the church we walked around the cemetery where we saw a horse, several monkeys and the burial place of the second viceroy of India who died in 1863. The three of us walked back to town and said good bye to our new friend. Ian and I than headed on a wandering. This led us to the next neighborhood over, even closer to the Himalayas. We got to see the areas swimming pool, did some shopping, and then walked another 2km up into the foot hills to look at a waterfall and go to a café that is tucked in the awesome foothills. The waterfall was not much to speak of however it was interesting to see the hundreds of monks washing and drying their clothes along the river at the bottom of the fall. We were able to walk past on of the largest shale piles I have ever seen, for those of you who were ever at EWA it makes the shale pits there seem like a baby kitten. The café we visited was perhaps 1/3 of the way up this mountain that gives climbers their first access to the snowline if heading into the Himalayas from this direction. We had lunch at a restaurant that had gray rock for a floor, this makes loads of sense here because most places with western floors end up being slanted, and saw the cutest puppy ever. I really wanted to bring him home however Ian said no =( Our last stop for the day was at a little shop on the edge of town. It was sketchy as could be, we got out as fast as we could and decided that we had enough adventure for the day.

I hope all of you are doing wonderful!

Laura & Ian

A few more thoughts while I wait for the bus at an internet cafe

The other morning we woke up and saw a large ox outside our window, noted how interesting it was to have a large ox on a city street in Delhi, and than chose to go back to sleep, still suffering from jet leg. Several hours latter woke back up and looked out the same window and where the ox had been earlier was now replaced by a man getting a shave... wondered about this and than went out shopping. Sometime that afternoon we got back to the hotel and one more time looked out our window, now the ox was back and a new man was next to it getting a shave.

CNN in India is way more interesting than in the USA. They seem to have WAY more things to cover, so they do not loop the stories every 15min like they do in the US.

Stray Dogs: After working with ACS in San Antonio my interest in animal populations and how it relates to overall development has increased greatly. I can not tell you much about the stray dogs yet, except that they exist. This photo journal captures what we have been seeing http://www.straydogsofindia.com/

Cheep plastic straws, think about how soft straws are in the USA, now think about how soft plastic wrap is... the straws here are more like plastic wrap

India coke tastes different than coke other places. Also a common practice to reuse coke bottles so many times that you can have a bottle that is easily 15 years old. Best recycling ever!

Arriving

Our adventure thus far…
Our adventure started at 5am where we drank some juice and got ready to depart. Chirs and Eli accompanied us to the air port and wished us all the best. Checking in with United was horrid, the woman at the counter was as un helpful as could be and told us that our tickets were not in the computer and that we would need to contact the web site that we caught out tickets through. 20 min later while I was working my way through the computer phone system trying to get in contact with a person the United check in woman told me never mind they are right here…. Seriously???? I am happy to report that from there on we had smooth sailing! Air India was fantastic, large seats, personal TV options and meals!!! Our brief layover in Germany was spent mostly on a bus that drove us out to the plane, but I can say I have been to Europe now =) Our hotel pick up was waiting at the airport and ready to take us on the most extreme driving experience that we have yet to be on, the whole airport area is under massive construction due to the fact that they are building a whole new rail metro in the airport area. Our 20 min ride to the hotel was more like a theme park thrill ride than a car ride, however we arrived safely and have enjoyed our air conditioned room =) Today we adventured out to a near by market and got ourselves a bit of local wear and are now back at the hotel looking for afternoon ideas!!