Birthday Adventures

Today I started my first two classes, or "papers" according to the Indian vernacular.  The first paper I had was Community Health with Priscilla Mam. In Indian culture instead of addressing your teachers as Dr. or Professor  you address them with their first or last name followed by mam or sir. Although my classes are taught in English, the student's accents were so thick that I swear they were mixing Tamil words within their sentences. Needless to say, classes will be more of a challenge than I thought. The second paper I went to is called International Social Work. This class was very small and my professor, Salomon Sir, used power point! It really helped seeing the words spelled out in front of me so I believe that this class will be much more manageable than the first.

A fruit stand in West Tambaram

The cow unphased by being run into

Pure love

After my classes were done for the day it was time to celebrate! Mercy, our friend from the hall, decided to take us out to West Tambaram to check out some of the shops and explore a bit. West Tambaram was a jumbled mess of colors, smells, dust, people, stray animals, and tons of bugs.  (Soooo, India in a nutshell?) We went into a store, ironically named New Jersey, where I bought a cool wrap around skirt. We weaved in and out of stalls and bartered with a man for a framed picture of Vishnu for awhile before walking away because we couldn't talk him down to a low enough price. As we were leaving the stall Mercy turned around and fell face first into a cow. YES A COW! It was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever witnessed and was something that would come straight out of a movie. She was so nonchalant about it, and shrugged her shoulders to move on with our walk. Of course, I was in hysterics because it is not every day that you trip and fall onto a cow in the middle of an extremely crowded market. I mean not every day thing in America, but here.... who even knows?! Soon after, we grew tired of the bugs (and the heat) and took a share auto out to Camp Road to partake in my first American meal since being here. It has felt like an eternity! So we went to get some good ole American comfort food, PIZZZA! Yeah pizza is Italian technically, but come on, I'm still considering it American. Anyways, It tasted like glorified microwave pizza, but it was the closest to home that we were going to get. Afterwards we crossed the street to a coffee shop in which chocolate cake was consumed along with strange coffee concoctions. The service was beyond terrible but well worth it to have something sweet. It was a fantastic way to spend my birthday & a lot more innocent of a way than if I was in the United States right now.

mmmmm, cake

Me & Mercy!

T h i n k i n g  o f  y o u  a l l  a l w a y s

xoxo,
Becca

Shopping, EEEEE!!

 Today we ventured to Chennai's oldest mall to do some shopping. The ride took us about an hour because traffic was insane. I mean, there was literally 4 cars packed together in a 2 lane space. I found myself holding my breath half the time because I was so afraid we were going to crash. Just to give you an idea of how packed the street is: If I wanted to, I could easily reach out and touch the face of the man in the vehicle next to me. So crazy.

I feel like I am learning so much in such a short period of time that there is no way that I could possibly even try to describe everything. So far politics have been really interesting to learn about along with caste / issues of gender. I'm sure that I will be learning tons more so I will post about that once I am a little bit more informed.

I need to keep a pen and paper with me next time because there were so many things that stood out that now have slipped my mind.

Anyways, I will try to list off some things that struck me / were highlights of today.

- I saw a little boy squatting and pooping in broad daylight. That was a shocker.

- All of the build boards are of Indian's who are very very white.

- We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant, so much different than American Chinese food. It was a lot fresher and I actually had to add salt because it was lacking. Oh, also I ordered sweet and sour chicken and they warned me that it was really really sweet. It wasn't at all, but I guess for them that is something considered sweet.

- I was served chai while bartering for my two rings below. I wasn't sure if it was safe to drink but did so anyways hoping for the best. Later, Anu told me that it was perfectly fine but I have to be careful because sometimes they add extra things into them. She said that sometimes they sprinkle tobacco or hash into the tea to make there customers feel more relaxed.

- When a restaurant has items on there menu they will most likely not have that item.

- For a "dessert" after a meal they will give you sugar coated cumin or other sugar coated spices. So weird.

Here are some of the goods that I bought at the mall. I tried not to go overboard on our first shopping excursion but it was so hard not too. Next time I am going crazy on the skirts, those were priced around 150 rupees (a little less than $3). OH, also new dvds were a little less than $1 (I resisted the temptation).

Here are two rings that I bought. Jewellery is difficult here and is way over priced. I stayed in this store for over 45 minutes talking down the price. I just wanted the sun ring but I liked the flower one as well, those sale people are tricky. Originally the rings together were priced at 3,800 rupee (about $65). I got them for 1,700 which I thought was a reasonable price. The flower ring is made out of amber while the sun ring was a very nice silver. So I spent about $30, this was quite a splurge. The green and gold bag is what the man gave me to put the rings in. The art of bartering is so interesting. I really played up the fact that I was a college student and that the rings were not that great of quality (even though there are). Anyways, the man who was selling me the rings was named Con (sp?) I found this ironic because I was afraid he was going to con me (hah). The chai that he gave me was delicious. It was a basic chai (black tea?) with masala and milk. Apparently it is common for a chai tea of South India to be without the spices of what our American chai tea tastes like, adding the spices is very common in North India. Also, fun fact, people in  India do not really drink anything but chai. People who drink green tea are considered to have a lot more money than the common folk.

One of the first orders of business was to get a larger sized purse that will fit the many items that I will need to carry around.

THE BASICS YOUR MUST CARRY IN YOUR PURSE: Water bottle (the water bottles here come only in 2 liters, so they are HUGE), hand sanitizer, toilet paper, shall, money, and passport.

KURTAS!

However, the main point of the trip was to get Kurtas. A kurta is the main form of clothing that is worn by woman in India (besides the sari). Kurtas are long shirts that are worn above leggings and usually with a shall or scarf. MCC (Madras Christian College, aka the school here) requires that all students must wear traditional clothing while at field placements. Our field placement should start in about a week so we need to start stocking up in order to get ready. Each Kurta I bought cost 250 rupees and you can find them for around 150-400 rupees. There were some gorgeous and fancy ones for 600 rupees but I thought that it was best to start simple.

Fancy pic of the flower ring, I could not resist.

Well, it is late & we have to be up early tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be registering for classes and hopefully figuring out our schedules. No signs of sickness yet, I am so unbelievably grateful.

Sending my love,
-Becca