Friday, January 28, 2011

Pushkar

Hey Everyone,

 I am catching up on my blog and wanted to tell you about my weekend trip to Pushkar.  I have been a little out of sorts this week because I have gotten a cold that has taken a while to go away but decided to write anyway!

 Pushkar is a small mountain town on the edge of the Great Thar Desert in Rajasthan.  It is an old holy Hindi town that is surrounded by a lake and has a famous Ganesh Temple in the middle.  Hindi people come from all over India to pray in the Temple and bathe in the famous water baths.  It is a beautiful place and significantly calmer then Jaipur.  Another great thing about Pushkar is that there is not nearly as much jeering and begging, perhaps because so many western people frequent the town.

Our weekend began on Friday night at around 1:30Am when we left the house to catch our train to Pushkar at 2:30 AM.  We took a Tuk Tuk to the train station and managed to get there within plenty of time!  We arrived at the station and were slightly confused about where to go.  There were people sleeping on every square inch of the floor and there was no main board telling us when the train was coming.  After wandering around for a little while, we found a managers office and asked about our train.  What we found out was that our train was 7.5 hours late and would not leave until 10:00 AM.  Now what you have to realize about trains in India, is that they are very easy to travel on and cheap, so because of this they are not particularly nice.  There are four different classes one can take on a train: 1) General Admission-no set seats just as many people as can fit on the train, 2) Sleeper Seating-where there are bunks on top of each other, 3) Second class-where you have cushioned benches to sit on, 4) AC Sleeper, which has bunks but actual windows and they give you blankets!  We had been booked on a sleeper train which cost $4.00 one way.  However, instead of waiting at the station we opted to get on an earlier train with General Admission tickets.  This of course was a bad idea, as my friend Sarah would tell me when I told her about my weekend!  We got on the track to wait for our train and as it pulled in, people started to crowd around and jump on the train.  It had not even stopped before the pushing and shoving began.  Not only that but there was not one woman, Indian or Foreign, in the crowd except for us.  Now I am not claustrophobic, but I refused to get on that train for fear of being squished.  Even an Indian man told us to just hop on the sleeper part and see what happens.  Thus, we ran to the front of the trains and after being moved from car to car for a while, we manged to get on the sleeper part train.  It was still kind of dirty but we each had our own bunk!

Finally around 6:30 AM we arrived in Ajmer, the town adjacent to Pushkar and took a bus through the mountains to arrive at Pushkar by 8:00AM.  Once we arrived in the town we had some breakfast and did a little shopping,  The town was beautiful and other then a couple Poojas, Hindi holy men, trying to get us to give them money, it was pretty calm.  The food was good and everything was soo cheap.  At around 3:00PM, we headed to a guest house to meet the camel people and start our trek into the desert.  The trek took about 2 hours each way and was rather uncomfortable.  Now, a Camel moves very similar to a horse but because of the size, it is a lot clunkier and more uncomfortable.  After being on the Camel for two hours I was so excited to get to the camp, which had cots set up for us!  The view was beautiful and I think I had the best nights sleep so far in that desert cot.  The food they cooked for us was great and then they played some music and we danced into the night.  It was funny to imagine our camp with a table and cots set up in the middle of the desert, it was extremely touristy, but for a city girl it was perfect!  The next day we started the 2 hour trek back, extremely sore, and headed home.  All in all it was a fabulous weekend that I would not have wanted to miss, except maybe the train part haha!

This weekend I am staying in town and doing some tourist things in Jaipur.  My cold has finally started to go away and I am extremely excited about this.  Apparently, everyone gets it when they come to India because of all the pollution!  Any who, I hope all of you are well and staying warm.  Heard New York got slammed with yet another snow storm, apparently I picked the right winter to be in India!

Love and Miss you all,
Alyssa

PS: The connector for my camera should be coming in a package my parents sent soon so hopefully I will be able to post some pictures of my crazy adventures!

Monday, January 24, 2011

And So It starts...

Hi Everyone,

Sorry that I have been out of touch for the past week.  I have been super busy with my first week of school and was away for the weekend so have not had a lot of time to blog.  I also must mention that for some unknown reason the Internet fails to work well at night, which of course is really when I have time to get online and blog, so it proves a little hard. Any who, I am trying to catch up today and will post two posts! First I wanted to write about my first week of school as I have been getting many questions about it! 

This past Monday was my first day of school and I was both excited and scared for it! I am currently working with another volunteer named Luiz from Brazil who has been here for two months.  I was happy to hear that I would be working with him at first to learn about the class and see how he runs things.  What I first realized about the school was that there was not a set group of kids, it is more informal in the sense that they come whenever they can.  We do have about 5 regulars who come every day but we also often get new children who come, which proves hard in terms of levels and lessons.  I leave for work around 9 and get in a Tuk Tuk, which is an auto rickshaw that drives me to the slum.  We arrive there around 9:15 AM and walk to our classroom, which is actually just another shack in the slum.  We ring the bell thing once we get there and slowly the children trickle in.  At about 9:30 AM we start the class.  Luiz is really good with them and yet also has them under control, which I am extremely happy about!  He has them come in and put there shoes all in a row and go into formation.  He uses the military terms, Attention and At Rest with them, which they seem to love.  Then we do a Hindi prayer and the Indian National Anthem.  We then spend about an hour stretching and doing some yoga with the kids.  This part of the class is just as important as the actual learning because most of these kids do no get any form of exercise and it is good to get their blood moving.  We also do a short hygiene lesson with them by bringing them out to the tap and washing their hands and then cutting their nails.  The hygiene lesson is the most important thing we do because most of these kids are extremely dirty.  Their hair is usually matted and greasy and they wear the same clothes everyday.  Living in the slum, they are extremely susceptible to water born diseases and illness.  Of course, as they are generally not clean, they are even more susceptible.  Thus, I take this part of the class very seriously!  After this we have been splitting the children up into two groups, ones under 6 and ones over.  I have been taking the bigger kids as Luiz is leaving and I will have to be head teacher.  I do about a half an hour of English and a half an hour of Math.  This is the hardest part of the day for me because, while we have already split up the kids, even though they are over the age of six, this does not mean they are at the same level at all.  Children in India are required to go to school starting at age seven, however, of my 10 older kids, only 2 actual go to "real" school.  Thus, I have kids who can barley say the alphabet and kids you can read English decently.  Same goes with math in that, I have two kids who can do multiplication and some that don't know what a plus sign is.  My mother has been giving me some good pointers on how to deal with the situation of different levels, but not having kids come everyday proves so hard.  After the lesson we do some games until the class is over, around 12:00 noon, and then prepare for family visits.

 I would say that the family visits are my favorite part of the day.  After each class we go to one family a day, one of our kids families, and see the lifestyle they live.  We ask questions like how old the kids are, whether they go to the government school, how many siblings there are, and how they feel about education.  For me as a Sociologist, the family visit is so intriguing to see what home the kids come from and why they act the way they do.  It seems to have proved that the kids who are disciplined have younger mothers and are generally the oldest, while the well disciplined ones have older siblings.  Almost all of the mothers of the children I have visited had their first child at 15, so it seems completely understandable that they would lack the knowledge they need to raise a child.  Most of the homes are one room shacks where the entire family lives.  They usually have a court yard where they do most if the cooking and washing.  It really makes you think about how lucky we are to have the lives we do.

I feel that perhaps the most important thing I could do is try to give them a good basis for discipline and education; and attempt to give them time to be children, exspecially the girls who often can not come to class because they have to work in the rag field or watch their little siblings.  One of my favorite students is a little girl about the age of eight named Pooja.  She is so sweet and has a passion for learning but can barely come to class because she is always with her little brother who is about 6 months and is not toilet trained.  In the slum they can't afford diapers so instead the infants just run around pants less.  Thus, we can't let them into our classroom because there are just to many messes.  However, we let Pooja in on Wednesday because we felt so bad and of course, guess who got peed on lol! Of course I feel like I don't want to turn her away but how can I make an exception for her and not the others, as most have some little brother or sister who they are supposed to be watching.  I just wish I could give them each a better life but I just have to hope that what I am doing with them is making a small dent in their lives, allowing them to see they can achieve what ever they want!

That is it for now folks!  Going to have dinner and then try to post about my weekend trip to Pushkar, so stay tuned! 

Hope all of you in the States are doing well and surviving the frigid winter that I hear you are being attacked by!

Love Always,
Alyssa

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Arrival in Jaipur and start of work

Hello Everyone,

I hear that New York has been hit hard with a snowstorm and hope that everyone is enjoying their snow day, if you got lucky!  I can tell you from over here that America is followed rather a lot as there was an article in the India Times about the snowstorm! In terms of the weather here in Jaipur it has been warming up rather nicely.  I have only had to wear two layers for the past two days and was even hot walking around today!  In the two days I have been here, I can tell that Jaipur is much more of a relaxed city then Delhi.  That being said, it is still India and still chaotic to the average westerner.  However, it has less people and the traffic is only mildly crazy, as suppossed to full blown insane.  While in Delhi I was able to go to a TB clinic with my friend Sarah in one of the slums and let me tell you they are not similar to Nigerien slums at all.  Obviously they are bigger, but they are set up in abandoned buildings and not just shags made of tin. Today in Jaipur I was able to make a site visit to the the school that I will be working at.  It was overwhelming and invigorating all in one.  It is a one room school house in one of the slums on the outskirts of town and we have an age range of 5 to 12.  I also have an Indian translator to help me understand the children better.  I have found that I will be teaching math as well as English, which as most of you know, is not my forte. (Jackie come and help me haha)  I imagine this is going to be a very hard and exciting experience.  I start work on Monday and will write about my first day then!

In terms of my accommodations, they are extremely nice by Indian standards.  There was even a tiny space heater in the room when I got here (it is actually broken but anywho).  There are a total of 5 roms with 4 people in each room with two set of bunk beds.  Each room has a bathroom attached to it and of course I got the only one with a Turkish squat toilet, "Yes!", can you here my sarcasm there lol!  We also have a common room with a television that has an American station that plays Friends and The Bachelor all the time. Currently there are about 10 other people here, 8 girls and 2 boys and I am one of only 2 Americans.  People are from all over Europe and Australia/New Zealand.  It has been very exciting to meet all of these people.  As I spend more time in India I am getting excited for the experiences I will have and the traveling I will do. India is a vast country with many different peoples and heriiges that I hope I will get to experience.  Tomorrow is a holiday because of the Kite Festival.  We are going to watch from our roof and see the games.  Apparently the object is to knock other kites down and be te first to find your kite (exactly like the book The Kite Runner).  I look forward to doing some sightseeing in Jaipur over the weekend and bonding more with my housemates!

I hope you all stay warm and I will write again soon!

Love you all,
Alyssa

Monday, January 10, 2011

Arrival in India

Hello All,

So I have arrived in India, and let me just tell you that it is cold!  Now I realize that in New York/Boston, or where ever you are, it is probably colder then New Delhi.  However, it is about 30 degrees at night here and none of the houses are equipped with heat.  Thus, are you sleeping in 30 degree weather at night without heat?....I didn't think so!  However, in about two months I will probably be complaining about the intense heat so it's all relative haha!  Any who, one of the funniest things that I found when I got to Delhi was Dominos! That's right, I had just flown half way around the world and was greeted by my friend saying "You must be hungry, we will order Dominos when we get back to my place."  To this my mouth went open and I said "They have Dominos Pizza here?" "Yes, we can even order online for delivery!" This is when  I realized that I was miles away from anywhere I had been, Africa or the USA.  A place where people are still huddled on the street and begging but you have movie theaters, world class shopping, and yes, even Dominos online ordering!

I have not seen much of India yet, but I can imagine that it will be a new experience that will teach me many things and will frustrate me often.  I am excited to see what happens  and look forward to sharing it with all of you.  I am off to Jaipur tomorrow and an excited and nervous about the new place and people.  I am so happy to have had my first experience in India with Sarah and it is a huge comfort to know that she will be only a train ride away!

I love you all and will blog about getting to Jaipur and starting the program later in the week!

Stay Warm, I know I will try to,
Alyssa

Friday, January 7, 2011

Staring the Adventure!

Hello All,

I just wanted to inform everyone about my blog that I will be keeping while I am teaching abroad in India! Much like my blog while in Niger, I will try to update it from time to time to keep everyone informed about my experiences.  Please follow the blog and comment as you wish!  I will blog once I arrive in New Delhi on Sunday around mid-day! I will be getting a cellphone out there but my main contact with the states will be skype, my name is alyrusso.  I will also send you all an email with my address once I figure it out...packages and visits are encouraged! I hope you all have a fabulous winter and I will see you in no longer then a year!  I love you all and will certainly miss the states, but I am excited for this new adventure in my life and I hope you will join me there through this blog!

Love Always,
Alyssa