Be forward, be steady, but most importantly be ready.

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Well, well, well. This has definitely been the craziest week I have ever experienced. I last left off on Saturday after my week of classes with GESI in Chicago. So I need to bring everyone up to speed on my first week in India, which may be hard in the allowed space of one blog post. But here we go!

First! Let’s get to Sunday! We had classes in Chicago till around 4. These were basically formalities and the whole time all the students were not paying attention, giddy, and just ready to leave. We all couldn’t wait to get out there and finally end these long courses. As a wonderful treat our final meal provided was Jimmy Johns! (I like Jimmy Johns J). So at 4 the first group of students left who would go to Uganda. We said our goodbyes and all headed home to the hostel. From there pretty much everyone from Chicago went home to say goodbye to their families. I stayed in and had one last girlfriend skype call before leaving the states.

Sunday morning came and our group of 9 (it’s supposed to be 10, but poor Daisy was stuck in New York trying to get her passport!) headed out to the train station and rode all the way to Ohare. We uneventfully got our tickets and went through security and boarded our plane. This was a 14 hour plane ride, which was actually better than I expected. Originally I thought this would be in the range of 22 to 25 hours, but apparently planes go fast! Along the flight there were movies offered. So I proceeded to watch Sherlock Holmes, 3:10 to Yuma, Dark Knight Rises, Grand Budapest Hotel, and Warrior all in a row. This brought me to about hour 12 and I just listened to music the rest of the way. I highly recommend not watching that many movies one after the other. By the end I thought I was in a type of trance and couldn’t remember why I was on the plane in the first place.

So finally we arrive in Udaipur. First thing announced is that it is 40 degrees Celcius. What does that mean? So I turn to Ahmed (another GESI student and my roommate at my host family home) and he says that’s over 100 degrees. Welcome to India!

We walk out of the airport in Dehli and are just blasted with a heat like no else. It was almost like my body kind of shriveled at the sense of it. We had a 27 hour layover, so a nice man with a sign that said “GESI” was standing outside and waiting with a bus for us. We get on board for a 45-minute ride into Dehli to stay at a hotel. This is where we all got our first India lesson. Basically: Anything Goes while driving. You could stay in your lane or not. You can drive on your side of the rode or not. You can stop at red lights or not. You can really do whatever you want as long as you are honking your horn. At no point is there any section of any road where at least 5 vehicles are not honking. Here in India the horn is used for things like “I’m about to come around a corner very fast and I am warning any cars around that corner” or “I am on a motorcycle and I am about to squeeze between two cars in a manner so dangerous it made Nick gasp” or “I am literally about to stop in the middle of the highway so I can get out and run across the street to pee”. I was very surprised to learn today that there actually is an Indian driver’s lisence. I think in order to pass you have to be able to reach the pedal, but even if not you can probably still go.

So we arrive at the hotel and it is quite nice. We are greeted with the “welcome drink” of mango juice. I must declare right now that mango juice in India is by far the greatest juice ever. People know how much I love Welch’s Grape Juice. But alas there is a new victor. I get mango juice everywhere I go it is always offered or given and it is amazing.

The hotel itself was very nice. We were very tired from the 16 hour plane ride and just wanted to sleep. BUT we were in India finally! So we jumped out of bed and headed out into Dehli at night. This is where lesson number 2 came. If you are not Indian in India, you are stared at. And when you have a group of nine that includes two white guys, three Asian girls, two black girls, a Saudi dude, and a indian girl in western clothes, you get a lot of stares. And it’s not the American stares where people steal glances when you aren’t looking and glance a little longer when you have passed. People in front of us stopped, looked at us, and continued to stare at us as we passed around them. Just today I saw a group of three older men literally walk towards us in such utter confusion. But after a few days I am getting used to it.

We arrived at a market in Dehli and just walked around to get a feel of what it was like. I found that apologizing to every person I bumped into was not necessary (I can’t quite say “I’m Sorry” in Hindi yet) and we also learned it’s very hard to break big bills. Rupees are about 60 to 1 dollar. But many things you can get for very cheap. I just bought an adapter for 30 rupees that I had seen in the states for about $25-30. I saw a bottle of Axe for 70 rupees, and we got a huge meal which was basically a buffet of however much we wanted for roughly 200 rupees. Rupees are nice. But if you try to buy something that is 50 rupees and pay with a 500, you are out of luck. No one “has” change. Even though I just saw someone hand you small bills! Being a foreigner doesn’t help either.

We returned to the hotel, and tried to sleep. At this point I was awake for roughly 28 hours and ready to down. I was told by my roommates that as soon as I layed down that I was snoring. But sadly the jetlag was still in full effect and I only slept for about 5 hours till 4 am. Without wifi, phone, or anything I was left to lay there and think about how crazy it was that I was here. But luckily around 7 or 8 Ahmed requested we go for a run. So I agreed and we took off down the road. Luckily we were directed to a park where there was kids playing cricket and soccer and many older people walking around the track. We managed to do 3 laps which were probably equivalent to a mile in total. But the heat was just too much. I have never sweated through a shirt so hard and so fast before, and I barely did anything. But I plan to continue running here and work on that.

So after another few hours we were bussed back to the airport, hopped on, got to Udaipur in an hour, and got off to meet Dhila, a woman that works for FSD. Quick time out. I am in the program called GESI, which is based at Northwestern University. GESI sends kids to different programs based on what part of the world they go to. FSD is an umbrella company that helps NGOs all around the world, including India. So I was given as an intern to FSD. And FSD has multiple NGOs in Udaipur. I was paired with the NGO called JJVS. So I will be working for JJVS and do my project with them, but I am an intern of both JJVS and FSD, and I was given to them by GESI. Does that make sense? No? Well too bad!

So we are shuttled from the airport (still 9 of us, Daisy will join up with us later as she just got her passport at this point) and are told we will stop by the hotel to drop off our stuff then go to a dinner for Roma’s birthday! Roma is the woman in charge of FSD operations in Udaipur (I think) and she is basically our mother while here. She had helped all of us over the past few months. So we drive about 45 minutes to Udaipur, which was voted the most beautiful city in the world for good reason. Our first siting after going around some large hills is a vast lake with a colorful, vibrant, and beautifully constructed city around it. I can’t describe everything that makes it so amazing. But look at some of my pictures and you will get it.

We ride up to the top of a hill in the middle of a city and are placed within a hotel with an amazing view around us. But we don’t have time to dawdle as it’s time for the birthday dinner! Here we have our first rickshaw experience. Imagine a tricycle motor bike, but it has a small carriage on it. If you were to use one in America you could have the driver and 4 passengers. But in India you have the driver, two passengers up front, then roughly 8-9 passengers in the back. It’s not safe, but it’s sooooo much fun. Only men can sit up front (hooray for the hetero patriarchy) and I must say that I freaked out the first time up there. You can only fit half your butt on the seat because the wheel for the driver is in the center and not to one side or the other. There is no handle to hold, and it’s hard to squeeze your arm back as it is so crowded. So for the first few times until I got the hang of it I just used my feet, center of gravity, and a deal with god in order to stay on board.

We arrive at the dinner and suddenly a table full of roughly 20 Americans before us! It turns out the FSD has many interns for the summer, and we are just one group. Many of these students were from San Francisco as FSD is based in that city. We proceeded to spend the night getting to know our new friends, drinking Indian beer (soooo good!) and dancing club style in a tiny disco ball room. Think Dunkirk but way hotter and as big as a bedroom. It was a lot of fun for me but I feel my fellow Chicago travelers didn’t enjoy it as much. The San Francisco students seemed to really thrive with the beer and it was my kind of party J

As we were still running on two days of plane rides we checked out early and got heading back to the hotel. Once again I jumped into bed and fell asleep immediately. But I also once again woke up around 4 am. It was not too bad since I was sitting next to the window and watched as the morning sun arose over Udaipur and the great lake. Around 5 am I experienced my first Muslim prayer call, and that is one scary sound. Imagine a moaning of a bull in the middle of the night and louder than your television. I stayed up a bit longer then decided to take a walk down the hill by myself. It was about seven in the morning and I just breezed down some streets. I still received many stares as I strolled, but nothing too bad. I saw some people opening their stands to sell fruits, I saw a group of kids walking to schools, and I also saw a pack of dogs walk right past me. Dogs are everywhere in India. Most are wild and we just stay away from them.

The day followed with us having many hours of orientation classes given by Roma, Diyah, and Meagan, the three women in charge of FSD here in Udaipur. We talked about how to handle many situations such as if a man was touching one of the girls, or if we were being cheated. We talked about what it was like to live in host families. We discussed the process of being a part of our NGOs as interns. And we also talked about some things we can make sure to avoid and not say. It’s not good to smile at the opposite sex. Don’t approach the opposite sex if you are both alone. Never give money or food to street kids. And never go invite people into your bedroom.

So after the morning of learning we proceeded to head out to lunch in Old City. This is basically the downtown of Udaipur. We took rickshaws once more and headed through the busiest streets in the city. My best example of the traffic in India occurred on this trip. We came to a large intersection and many motorcycles and cars were crossing. There was no light and no director for the traffic. What happened was our rickshaws waited at the intersection until more and more vehicles came up next to us and piled up. Eventually we had enough vehicles to slowly begin crossing. Keep in mind there are still many, many vehicles crossing in front of us. But slowly our group of vehicles made their way out to the center of the intersection, thus stopping the other direction of traffic. I am most surprised I haven’t seen any kind of accidents in my few days of being here.

We arrived at the restaurant and it was amazing. Basically everyone got their own platter with various bowls in it. They filled each bowl with a different kind of sauce or garnish. I don’t know any names yet. I just refer to them as “red stuff”, “yellow stuff”, “green stuff”, etc. We received nan bread, little balls of fried green stuff, yogurt stuff, mango juice stuff, and a thin hard bread like a hard taco stuff. It was all delicious and they just continued to give us more and more. We couldn’t go two minutes without a server coming and refilling everything that you had eaten. It was literally an endless supply that you could never finish.

We left the store then proceeded on to some shops. We all got some shirts and pants at a local merchant shop. I received a really nice shirt for 400 rupees ($8). We then walked around and came to a temple that was located up some very high stairs in the middle of downtown. Basically imagine a typical temple, but with elephants carved all over it, and pigeons flying and squatting all over it. Lots of pigeons here. It was a wonderful sight to see, but I couldn’t help but feel out of place as there was a ceremony going on and we stepped out of it not feeling like we should be there. We jumped back into some rickshaws and headed back to the hotel.

From the hotel we all grabbed as long of a nap as we could then we were off again. We proceeded down to the edge of the lake (where I took that nice panorama pic you can see on my facebook) and we went to a museum close by. There we watched an amazing theater show performed by some musicians and dancers. It was a very cool experience because there were about 4 or 5 different dances they did. My favorite involved wrapping bells around the girls’ fingers, then twirling them and hitting them against metal ties around their arms, legs, and toes. They even put a small sword in their teeth in order to add the danger of twirling their arms around sharp metal. At the end of the show a woman proceeded to place bowls on her head, then she put more bowls on, then more, then more. By the end she had probably 9-10 bowls on her head. I was impressed.

After the show it was off to another restaurant. It was here I bought my first soda. And it was glorious. Plus the bottles in India are kind of strange. They are very long glass containers and very skinny. I will need to be careful getting to many pops here as nothing sounds better than a cool sugary drink in 100 degree heat.

This brings me to Friday morning when we got some more orientation in the morning at the hotel. But then it was time to say goodbye to the wonderful hilltop villa and head off to the FSD office. We got some more lectures and discussed more about NGOs and family homestays. We got some more hindi lessons (I can count to 10!) and ate some more lunch. Daisy finally arrived and we were overjoyed to finally be our full group of 10 once more! After a few hours we made our way to the main road and had our first lesson in getting rickshaws on our own. The key to this process is to pay attention to what the number of the car is, and being willing to squeeze up next to strangers in a way that some would consider unnatural. While the initial jitters and fears were there, I feel after doing it for a couple of days it’s not that hard.

After all of this it was time to go meet our host families. In my host family I am living there with another guy in my group named Ahmed. The reason they put us together is because Ahmed is working with an NGO that requires him to go off to the villages for most of the week. So it worked out better that we both live there and share. My host family consists a mother, father, and one son who is in college. Ahmed and I walked up to the living room and proceeded to have a long, kind of awkward, but eventually enjoyable conversation with the father and son. We found we had many things in common (Ahmed and the host brother both study economics) and my host father also studied biological sciences in university. We had our first home made dinner and it was very good. The one thing I am most worried about this summer is portions. I cannot eat a lot of Indian food because it is so hardy. I don’t want my family to give me food that I won’t eat. So I explained to them to give me smaller portions and I will just get more if I want more.

One thing about Indian culture is the nature of guests is much different from what I am used to. Anytime you go into someone’s home you must eat or drink something .They will offer it to you until the cows come home (literally. Cows are all over the streets here) and I always feel so bad to deny it. People here love their tea, specifically hot chai tea. But I just cannot get used to it. It’s kind of like drinking bad hot chocolate that is very powdery and makes your tongue burn. I am still working on getting the family to understand that I just want water and no tea. After some more conversation and getting to know one another Ahmed and I departed to go find an internet café we had heard of. We wanted to connect with some loved ones because we hadn’t had internet in the past 2 days.

So we took off in the night around 10pm and asked some locals the way to the name of a café we had heard of. But soon we were off on a wild goose chase that lasted an hour. Each person we talked to was very nice, tried their best to help, and gave very clear directions, but we still had a lot of trouble finding this place. We arrived at one café that it turned out to not have any wifi. Then we were sent in a circle and wounded up back at our home. Then we were directed to a completely new direction and walked about a mile to reach a closed café that didn’t have wifi anyway. It was not until the next morning we learned that the café with free wifi was right next to our home, but in the opposite direction we had gone. Ah well.

We had a good night’s sleep and woke to breakfast with the family. Breakfast consisted of spicy rice, covered in little hard breading crumbs, and with a lot of onions, tea, and some bananas. It was hard to put down, and once again I had to explain to the family to give me smaller portions as I couldn’t finish what they gave me. Then we were off to the main road and rickshawed our way to FSD. We got a nice lecture from a man who was the director of a very large NGO in India (and in the world) and it was very nice. We talked a lot about modern ideas of development and what we can do to challenge ourselves to do better work. Now we are sitting here eating lunch and I am finishing up this blog update.

Obviously I have left some things out for the past week. It’s kind of hard to remember everything. I could write 3 pages on every day I am here, but I like to keep it short so you all can get the highlights. But there is something else I want to share. There is both bad and good in India, and it’s hard to talk about the bad at times. Especially with my fellow American travelers or FSD supervisors, since they seem to have better ways of dealing with it than I.

On the first day we arrived in India as we bussed through Dehli to get to our hotel we passed a worse off neighborhood. There I saw some men and women going from car to car trying to sell these cheap toy airplanes. Likely for less than 4 or 5 rupees. It was interesting at first and I thought that was such an odd way to make money. But when I saw where they were returning to sit I saw a very young little boy sitting on the cardboard box on the street. He couldn’t have been older than three and was wearing a simple loin cloth. His belly was busting out due to lack of food. He looked tired and dirty and as if he wasn’t sure where he was. I remember looking at him out the window of my bus and scared to death that he would look in my direction. I was frightened more than I have ever in my life that he would see me high above him sitting in an air conditioned bus as I headed off to wonderful hotel that would give us free food. I sat there with $300 cash in my backpack, along with an $800 laptop, $500 phone, and various other items that he had never heard or seen of before. This was my first time seeing a truly impoverished child and I can barely write about it. We grow up seeing the pictures, hearing the stories, and saying we want to do something about it. But for my first time seeing a child much worse off than I could ever imagine, all I could do was sit there in fear of his gaze. I knew how much shame I felt just looking at him, and I didn’t want to know what it would be like if he looked up at me.

Poverty in India is on a new level to our own. No matter how many homeless people you may see in Bloomington, Indianapolis, or Chicago you never see a child. A young baby who is just left there. Here in Udaipur we have to deal with many child beggars. They walk up to us speaking “Sir” “Please Sir” and holding out their hands. We were trained and warned to never give to them. Many times GESI students have given to these kids and they just end up being horribly haggled and hoarded the rest of their summer. Giving to the kids also encourages them to stay out and continue to ask and beg. Just a few hours before I am writing this I was standing on the street waiting for the rickshaw. A young girl of about 8 walked up to our group. Her hair was very light due to living on the street and spending so much time in the sun. She walked up to all five members of our group and asked the normal questions and held out her hand. Then she stopped and me and asked. I tried not to look and focus on the street so that I could give the message that I wasn’t giving out anything. Then she stopped speaking. She kept standing by me, looking up at me, but without saying a word. Not a single word. We stood there as strangers for what felt like hours. My eyes on the road, and her eyes looking up at me. She then started to grab at my hand and my clothes. I kept trying to jerk my hand away, but eventually couldn’t do much more and was left with her holding onto two of my fingers. At this point I couldn’t look down at her face less I give in. Finally a rickshaw came and I managed to get in and escape her hands and her stare. Once again a child filled me with fear and paralysis.



It’s very hard to deal with this sort of thing. And it hurts me much more that seeing these young street kids is so commonplace. There is nothing I can truly do to help and nothing in my work this summer will change the situation of any of these kids. In addition to all of this it is much more difficult because without internet and being on different time schedules, I cannot find time to contact my loved ones back home. Even with the friendships I have made with the people on this trip with me, isolation is the most common emotion I find here. All I can do, or any of us here can do, is try to move on, stay positive and just keep working. I don’t know what to expect over the next few weeks. I hope I am able to find a way to deal with the things I see. To take in all the beauty and the tragedy and still enjoy my time and work hard for people worse off than I. I don’t want people to think I am not loving my trip. I am so excited to be here and so amped up to work hard and leave behind something sustainable, helpful, and great for the people in this community. But I cannot help it that whenever I close my eyes I see the stares of the kids that hold me in dread.

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