Back in business and hitting the road once again!

Well, vacation time is officially over and I am back in Trivandrum for my last day in India. My vacation was great. I stayed in Kochi for the majority of my trip but the visit to the ashram was definitely the most adventurous part of my entire vacation.

We travelled to this tiny, rural fishing in a town called Amritapuri. I don't think we quite knew what to expect other than doing a lot of yoga and meditation. It turns out that even our limited expectations proved to be fairly wrong. When we got there, we were quickly informed that Amma was not there (and continued to be informed of this fact by every person that we encountered thence forth). Not really knowing who this "Amma" person was other than the fact that the word Amma in Malayalam means "mother" we attempted to just go on with our lives and enjoy meeting the people that were there. People at the ashram, however, seemed distraught, even lost, on account of Amma's absence. Every conversation began and ended with some mention of Amma and how it was such a shame that we have never met her and how we were such good people for visiting the ashram despite this fact. Amma, it turns out, is a jolly Indian woman who hugs thousands of people a day and once sat in place for 20 hours straight, hugging people. People at this ashram worship her and claimed she was God in human form. In fact the ashram was covered with stickers and posters of her feet resting on a silver plate. Needless to say we were slightly concerned for our wellbeing and the wellbeing of her followers at the ashram. The ashram itself was essentially a small city surrounded by a rural village (actually it was the village that Amma grew up in). It has three huge high rise apartment buildings, each with 15 floors and at its peak, the ashram can accommodate up to 10,000 visitors. The sheer size of the ashram, especially considering it's humble surroundings, was impressive. Even more impressive were the views from our room on the 15th floor of our apartment complex. The complex is sandwiched between the backwaters and the Indian Ocean. It looks like a tropical paradise with palm trees stretching into the horizon and colorful fishing boats lining the waters below. With surroundings like this, it was difficult to be too disturbed by the ashram itself.

Each morning for the few days we were there, we would wake up at 4am and go to the main temple for the morning chanting session. The chanting session, which lasted about an hour and a half, consisted of a woman continually chanting the one thousand names of Shiva, a Hindu god. Being up that early and attending these chanting sessions was an amazing experience. I had never been up that early yet felt so refreshed. Aft the session, they served us chai and then we would head to the beach for morning meditation. This was definitely my favorite part of the day. We would sit there for about an hour in peaceful contemplation as the sun rose over the Indian Ocean. It was spectacular. For the rest of the day we would do a number of different chores around the ashram (including transporting large chunks of termite infested wood across the complex, yum) and meditate. I also tried to sneak in some photography, even though photography was illegal because they said it would ruin the sanctity of the ashram. My bad. But I took some pretty awesome pictures. Sanctity restoring even.

I leave for Beijing in a few hours. I may or may not have access to my blog account once I get there because apparently Blogspot is blocked by the Chinese government. As is Facebook. So if I don't update for a while you'll know what happened. Uh oh....

Location:Pattom Kumarapuram Rd,Trivandrum,India

Last night in Ulloor?!?!

Well, as the title suggests, tonight will be my final night at my home stay here in India. It's been a crazy few weeks for me in Ulloor (the neighborhood my family lives in) but ultimately I think living with this family has been such a wonderful and formative experience. They have shared their home, their food and their wacky Indian soap operas with me and for that I will be eternally grateful. These past 4 weeks have gone by so quickly! I cannot believe that in less than two weeks I will be on a plane flying to Beijing. This is crazy.

This week's highlight has to be when the program set up an awesome scavenger hunt for the group on Wednesday. They gave us a list of challenges we needed to complete and we dispersed around the city in groups of five attempting to finish the tasks. Let's just say that by the end of the day I had driven a rickshaw, asked a man to show me how to wrap a sari (they are traditionally worn by women FYI), and sent a haphazardly written letter to South Africa (don't ask.) All in all I would say it was a pretty successful day.

Right now, most of us are feverishly working on our country papers that are due today. The topic of my paper is on waste disposal in Trivandrum and its implications on health and the community at large. The pollution here struck me as being one of this city's most potent health indicators and I knew I needed to pursue this topic further. Wish me luck!

Tonight is our final farewell dinner here in Trivandrum. Our home stay families will join us as we say goodbye to them and all of the country coordinators. We are then free for our 10 day vacation. I leave for the ashram on Sunday and I am a little nervous because I have never meditated for more than 10 minutes, let alone the multiple hour long sessions I am expected to do everyday starting Sunday. Maybe I should start practicing...ohmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

A Social Misfit?

I have given a pretty good description of the physical landscape of Trivandrum and where I have been living thus far, but I would also like to take the opportunity to talk about the social landscape as well. From day one I have been on the receiving end of some pretty intense staring. Initially, since I was with the group everywhere I went, I thought it was natural because we must have looked pretty weird and out of place as a group of 35 westerners. I soon realized, however, that I was getting the majority of these stares, even though I thought I was well hidden within the larger group. As I have begun to travel on my own around the city, it is clear that I attract a lot of attention.I don't know if it is on account of my race, my braids, my height, or the combination of all of these factors, but I constantly feel myself being watched whenever I leave my house. The first time the realization that I was being stared at constantly dawned on me, I'm not going to lie, I was very upset. I think it upset me so much because I felt completely singled out. Here I was, in a group of other foreign looking people, and I  was the one people were staring at. I honestly felt like a freak. I wanted to hide - disappear. I want to yell at these people. Tell them how rude and ignorant they were being by staring and pointing. Rationally, I understood why I was garnering this sort of attention and knew that I could not do any of those things, but emotionally, no matter how much you rationalize it, it is still humiliating. I think I am finally in a position where I can brave the stares every time I walk outside but there is still a little part of me that wants to educate the people who are staring. I want them to know the sort of person I am, despite their notion of me when I walk down the street.

I think the incident that humiliated me the most is the doctors visit that I has last week. Right before I arrived in India, I started on a regimen of Doxycyclin as a malarial prophylaxis. Doxy, as some of you may know, is an antibiotic that kills the natural flora in your body as well as on your skin. I unfortunately began having a bad skin reaction to the Doxy and went to the doctor to hopefully receive some steroid cream to treat the severe rash that developed on my face. When I went in to see the doctor, the doctor began to question me about my braids. She asked me if I wash them and I told her that I wash them regularly. She then goes on to tell me that she believed that I was having a skin reaction because my braids were dirty. This is after I already explained to her that I had been on Doxy, which is known to cause such a reaction, and also after I told her that my braids are not dirty and that I had had them for more than a month with no problems. She continues to insist that it's my braids causing the reaction, at which point I almost turned and walked out of the room because I was so offended and frustrated. Finally she just wrote me a prescription for more antibiotics (just what I did not need) and sent me on my way. Needless to say, I did not take the antibiotics she prescribed me and instead stopped taking the Doxy. Lo and behold my rash went away. I think this experience was so disheartening because I expected a doctor, of all people, to be educated and not prejudiced. It was clear that she was treating me this way because I looked different. If my hair were straight, or if I looked more "normal," I do not believe I would have been treated in this manner.

This taught me a very valuable lesson about the pervasiveness of culture and upbringing. Even the most "educated" in an academic sense, can still be ignorant to the world around them. I think that these experiences are ironically making me more confident than I ever was before. I can no longer care what people here think of me and I need to maintain a sense of self-worth despite the adversity surrounding me currently. It will be interesting to see how I am treated in China because I have already been warned that the racism and ignorance there is even more widespread. To be continued....

On another note, I was unable to attend the wedding last week and was therefore unable to wear my sari. BUT I have decided to rock the sari at our final program dinner this Friday so I will definitely upload a ton of pics!

Our vacation in India begins this Friday and we have until October 17th, which is very exciting. Right now, I plan on traveling to central-northern Kerela and spending 2 nights at an ashram there and then 5 days at a beautiful resort on the backwaters of Kochi. I am so pumped!