Hellooooo there!

WE ARE IN THAILAND!! Samadi! (means hello, good morning, thank you, sorry, nice to meet you, etc). We finished up our trip to India with a bang (literally) in New Delhi, where the Diwali celebration was happening everywhere around us with tea candles lining the streets in traditional "diyyas," fireworks being set off by store owners (and almost singeing a few of us), fireworks everywhere throughout the city, and a great cloud of smog looming above us and obscuring the buildings. It sounded like there was a war going on from all the booming around us. We had our own little Diwali fireworks celebration in the parking lot of the YMCA where we stayed, and the staff sent us away with some fun gifts, typical Indian hospitality. The last part of our stay in Bangalore had been great--we had fireworks with the kids, ate lots of Tex-Mex food at the local mall, took our final, and had our last cup of tea before our sad farewell to the staff and their families. We were all very sad to leave that place, but I must admit that I was really excited to go to Delhi because that meant I was that much closer to Thailand and seeing my mom! In Delhi we also got to see the Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world! It was BEAUTIFUL, the largest love monument in the world. Made completely of marble with precious stones inlaid, it's a huge mausoleum for the wife of Shah Jahan who died in childbirth. It was so surreal to actually be in front of this building that I'd only seen in movies. Later we saw Agra Fort, which had great views of the Taj Mahal and was enormous.
So now, we're in Thailand. When we got here the first night I saw my mom and started bawling. I had no idea how much I truly missed her until she was physically there in front of me! We both were embarrassingly emotional; so much so that other Global students who were watching teared up a bit too. That night we stayed up until two am talking and packing. Yesterday, we went with the Global group on a bus tour of Bangkok! We first visited the Grand Palace, a major tourist site that looks like a mix of Candyland, Disneyworld, and all of my sequined dance costumes rolled into majestic buildings. They had mirrors on them and fancy designs, and in one there was the famous emerald Buddha statue, enshrined in a mountain of golden... things. I'm not sure what they were. The tourists there were mostly Chinese and East Asian and were VERY pushy. I thought I would be stampeded for sure. We also visited Wat Pho, the famous site of the 151 foot reclining Buddha, covered in gold leaf with mother of pearl inlaid in its gigantic feet. After that we climbed the Wat Arun temple, which was very scary considering that at one point the stairs were so steep that they were practically a ladder going straight up and down, and that I had a very overweight backpack on that threatened to pull me backwards and off the side of the temple. My  mom and I checked into the Shangri-La hotel later, and our room has gorgeous views of the river. Walked downtown last night and got Thai massages--they were very painful and at one point I thought my kidneys might fail from the pressure put on them :) Also, they walked on our backs and cracked our whole bodies, pretty much. Quite an experience and we feel bruised but it also felt good! Today we went to the Jim Thompson museum for a tour and saw how silk was made. We had high tea at the Oriental Hotel (the nicest hotel in the world according to Thai tour guides) with my Global friend who is staying there with her mom, and I think it is probably the nicest hotel I've ever seen in my life. Afterward we headed to the Asiatique Market to find a puppet show that unfortunately evaded us, but we got good pad thai anyway. Now we're exhausted and off to bed!

Hey everyone!
We are at a hotel with free wi-fi so I have more time to write this blog post. Wow, have we been busy this past week! We've had classes every day, as well as two holidays to celebrate at the ECC: Halloween and Diwali. For Halloween we went all out and decided to make a haunted house for the kids of the ECC staff. Global groups have done things like this in the past, but we like to think that we went a step further this year. We converted the Dialogue House (the hostel where we're staying) into a full-blown haunted house in which we were all characters. We bought face paint, wrapped ourselves in toilet paper and sheets, hung sheets from the rafters, hid behind screen doors, made chair tunnels, etc. We even painted Kelsey's face green and had her stir a "cauldron" and cackle a little bit. It was funny and the kids absolutely LOVED it! We tried to make it a little less scary for the younger kids by telling them that once they said Happy Halloween to the monsters that we would turn nice and give them candy. My post was at the end of the chair tunnel and I got a couple of good screams. Then after all THIS, we brought the kids and their parents into the classroom where we'd organized a cake walk, coloring, face painting, and music. It was a PARTY! Then at the end we took them outside and set off some poppers--I have no idea what they were actually because I stayed behind to start cleanup, which was quite a daunting task since the kids threw their wrappers every which way and their crayons as well. It was such a fun night, and we were so exhausted after doing all of this for the kids that we kind of forgot to do anything for ourselves! We played a round of the game Mafia and some people watched a scary movie, but lots of us ended up falling into bed.
The very next day, we celebrated Diwali (a Hindu light festival) with the staff at ECC. The ECC celebrates all religious holidays because they are ecumenical and they have Hindu staff. Actual Diwali isn't until November 14th or so, but the ECC always celebrates it early with the Global students. Usually it's quite an event and they set off fireworks and play games, but it was raining that whole day so we put on our brand new saris and went to eat food and listen to a speech about Diwali in the cafeteria. We hung out with the staff for a bit and then took pictures for a half an hour in our saris. It felt like prom--there were so many different colors!
The rest of this week has been full of classes, and today we went on an excursion to Mysore. On the way we stopped at two temples, one involving walking up the side of a mountain (literally) on 500 or so steep steps to a Jainist temple. It had the largest statue in India (if I heard correctly) and we saw a worship ceremony going on when we got there. It was a little strange for us because there were some naked people and they were worshipping the statue of a man who was not even a god, just a leader of the people back in the 900s when it was built. So many of us decided to go sit outside and look at the jaw-dropping view of the Indian countryside way below us. It was beautiful. The second temple took more than 80 years to build and is still unfinished (called the Halebid Temple) and it was extremely intricate--small elephants, mythological scenes, and other elephants were hand carved all over the temple and they were the most painstakingly detailed stone carvings I've ever seen.
Tomorrow we're visiting the Mysore Palace and might be riding some elephants... can't wait! Our stay in India is almost over and I'm getting sad to leave because the people are so nice here. However, I can't wait to see my mom in Thailand!

We are in the town of Tiruvalnamalai! Try pronouncing THAT. We’re staying at a hotel near the interfaith dialogue center called Quo Vadis that we’re visiting, and there’s a huge mountain dominating the town that is apparently the center of the universe for many Hindus and religious seekers. There are many European and American people in this little village who come to seek spiritual answers (kind of like the woman in Eat Pray Love I guess). Anyway, we’ve been staying here and visiting ashrams in the area. The first night it rained hardcore and we walked barefoot to an ashram because you can’t have shoes on in them. In the ashram we watched a “pooja” take place—a Hindu ceremony in which people walk around a shrine to the divine god and offer flowers to him and chant. It was interesting to see but I didn’t understand anything that was going on really. We also visited an ashram yesterday in which they pretty much worship their guru and compare him to Jesus. They believe that he does miracles to this day (even though he’s deceased) and that his statue has so much power that it shocks them when they touch it. It was pretty strange for me, who has never been around much idol worship, to see the statue of a man be praised and revered to such an extent. Our tour guide was in awe of him and pretty much thought he could do anything; some of the stories she told made a lot of people in our group pretty skeptical and some people even thought it was comical. Not quite sure what my reaction is yet, I’m still processing the experience and how strange it was. Yesterday we also had a chance to experience what goes on in the Quo Vadis center and we had a dialogue about faith, in which we had to think about our personal relationship with God or whoever we believed in and then talk about it, being respectful of all opinions and not trying to force our ideas on others. That’s what the center—which is Christian-based—is all about. It’s not about trying to spread the word of God as much as it is about having people of all faiths come together and tolerate each other and love each other. Last night we had a cultural night! We had dancers with drums come and we were sung to, as well as taught how to dance the traditional Tamil dances they were doing. Then we made coloms (spelling?) which is the powder art that people put outside of their homes here to welcome people inside. It’s like sand art, you make designs with different colors, usually of flowers. An artistic girl at my table made a whole face that looked pretty realistic. Then we added homemade candles to a huge colom we all chipped in on. These candles were made out of halves of limes that were turned inside out and filled with oil and a piece of rope. It was all such a cool experience of the culture and we all LOVED it. Today we’re leaving and we are going to see two temples, one of which is a transgender temple. I’ll give feedback on that one, because I’m not quite sure what to expect there.

Love you all and I miss you!

Hey all!

We're in Bangalore! We've been here for almost a week actually... sorry for the delay in blogging but the internet is not free and it's tough to find time in our very structured days to log on. Bangalore is BEAUTIFUL and we're here at the end of the rainy season so we've had a few thunderstorms, which after Egypt's weather has been wonderful! It's nice and cool and the Ecumenical Christian Center we're staying at is like an oasis--lots of beautiful greenery and paths and the staff is all great. We've met the staff's kids and play cricket with them ( I just learned what cricket IS) almost every day. Indian kids are about the most adorable kids I've ever met. They bounce around so full of energy and always have a smile on their face. You're their best friend in a matter of seconds. I spent about an hour catching crickets with a few of them the other day. Each day we have class and then some free time to hang out and play. We also get fed five times a day--breakfast, tea (with cookies), lunch, tea (with cake, donuts, or cookies), and dinner. It's CRAZY.

Today was probably my favorite day out of our whole Global trip. We didn't even do anything that crazy, like visit the pyramids or some giant monument. I simply met the librarian (his name is Shivappa--he's named after Shiva and is Hindu) and he invited me and three other Globalites to his house for tea. We had plans to go to Bangalore because we had free time but we figured stopping for tea wouldn't hurt. It turns out, however, that his house is about an hour of walking, walking, bussing, and walking away from the ECC and after about 45 minutes we knew we wouldn't be making it to Bangalore. By the way, he usually walks to work... anyway we arrived at his village and right away I knew this would be quite the experience. We went to his 2-room house and met his wife and two kids, who are 2 1/2 and 5 (their names are Shubash and Pritam). At first it was a little awkward and we took up their whole living/bedroom/TV room area, but then we started playing a board game called Carrom with the kids and. They also served us the BEST coffee I've ever had...it had lots of milk and sugar in it. Before we knew it, the whole village of kids was standing outside their door and wanting to come in to see the strange foreigners. They were so cute, they would sneak around to the side window and peek in or just stare at us and smile! They were shy at first but then when they got to know us better they pulled on our hands and brought us to see the Hindu temple in their village, and then to see their houses. We saw three other houses, and in each they served us either pepsi, coffee, or AMAZING milk-sugar-tea. At one point we stopped back at Shivappa's house where his wife had made us payum, their version of milky rice, and it was DELICIOUS. Indians are the most hospitable people I've ever met. Their houses had orange, blue, or yellow walls and were small but beautiful. It amazed me how they made the most out of the little they had. The little kids kept following us everywhere and wanted us to take pictures of them so they could see how they looked. They would take my camera and go around taking pictures of each other, then running back to show me themselves. When we left they were so sad and everyone waved goodbye.
The walking and bussing back didn't seem half as long because we were in such good moods. Shivappa thanked us for meeting his entire village and said we had made his whole village happy. We were so thankful to have seen a community instead of being just tourists and it was the BEST DAY EVER! Our trip to Bangalore was completely forgotten and our whole visit took five hours. We got back just in time for dinner!
I'm going to try to add a video of the kids singing for us that shows the inside of a house and the kids that crowded at the doors wherever we went, but I have to load it later. Otherwise I have pictures too coming up soon! This is a day I will never forget. Every person in that village had so much joy despite their poor living conditions, and I absolutely loved it. I hope to visit them again!

Hey everyone!

Quick blog post, I have limited internet time...
We're in MUMBAI, INDIA! We arrived safely two days ago, and it's so different from Egypt. Just stepping out of the plane, I knew this was a different place from the air. It's HUMID. Here's a quick recap of what we've done so far. We got here and immediately were taken on a tour of Dharavi slum, a 1.25 square kilometer slum with 1 million people living in it. It was really sad to see how dirty it was, but something I noticed was that most people there seemed pretty happy, at least when they saw us. We were followed around constantly by little kids in their school uniforms practicing their English and shouting HI! then running away shyly. It was so cute. The parents were also very friendly, and we got to see how they made leather and pottery there. I believe it's more of a well-off slum in Mumbai, but it was still hard to see some things there. We went to a museum and then to our hotel. Yesterday we toured Rizvi Law school and met the students there. They were extremely friendly (we've all noticed that Indians are MUCH friendlier than Egyptians) and they invited us to go out with them at night. We hung out with them yesterday night and got to know them better, and I've made some new facebook friends! The college also planted two trees in honor of St. Olaf college and we had a little ceremony. They were very hospitable and we felt really welcomed.
Today we went to visit a Hindu cave temple on the island of Elephanta. It was pretty cool to see the carvings of the gods in the temple but it was strange for me to think that they are still worshiped today. There are over 13 million Hindu gods, how do people decide which to worship when they can't even learn all their names in a lifetime? After we got back we visited an orphanage which was mostly for people with disabilities, both mental and physical. It was very sad but we were able to sing a few songs for them and it made me cry to see their faces light up when we sang.
Okay, last thing. Tonight we went to the beach by the Arabian sea and... I went night parasailing!!! Woohoo! It was so fun, my first time parasailing! It was quite the experience to be up there by myself and to see the whole city of Mumbai right next to me, all lit up. I also got some fresh(er) air up there, which was nice.
Having a great time and I'll try to write when I can!

Goodbye Egypt!

It's a sad goodbye to Egypt today. I thought I would be completely ready to go but as I walked to the grocery store today and bought bananas from vendors on the side of the street I realized how much I've gotten accustomed to this city. I finally feel comfortable here and almost if I belong (although to others I look very out place as an American) and now we're leaving. I stocked up on some snacks that I know I'll be missing in India--these yummy digestive crackers and some candy, and took in the scene of Zamalek one last time. I will miss the rundown buildings that haven't been taken care of because of the rent laws in Cairo, I'll miss the hustle and bustle of the street and people that will actually stop for you to cross the road (I'm not sure if that will happen in India), the easy walk to all of our favorite restaurants, the nice people who have come to recognize us and have wished us farewell, and a lot of other things. I will NOT miss all of the stray cats, however. If I had counted from the beginning I would most likely be in the 500s of how many cats I've seen so far. There will probably be some in India as well though. There was a momma cat who had her kittens while we were here and stays in the courtyard of our dorm building, and she's the exception: she's very friendly and her kittens are adorable, so I'll miss them, a little.
Yesterday we had our essay final! It went pretty well, even considering the fact that the essay question I'd studied for the most wasn't even on the test... but we celebrated being stress-free with milk bubble tea and milky rice! We also had a surprise birthday party for two people on the trip and had a ton of cake. A small group of us took a taxi to Tahrir Square and it was definitely not what I expected. It's not a square in that it's distinguishable from the rest of the city, but it's just a section where there ceases to be skyscrapers and there's lots of traffic and it's kind of circular. But it was cool to picture all of the traffic stopped up because hundreds of thousands of people filled the area in the revolution of January 2011. We got Egyptian pizza--it was delicious! Then later that night we went on a felucca boat on the Nile to celebrate our last night in Egypt. What a great way to end the month we have here.
In half an hour we leave for Mumbai, and we'll be getting in at 7 or 8 am tomorrow morning, their time! We get right to touring and the next few days will be a hectic amount of touring before we leave the city for Bangalore. Internet will be spotty there (I think we might only get 15 minutes a day) but I'll try to keep up with the blog as best I can!