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Published: December 22nd 2008
The scene as I walked out of the airport in Thiruvananthapuram (tee-roo-vahn-ahn-thah-POO rahm) will FOREVER be etched into my memory. India hit me like a brick wall, so different from anything I had ever seen or smelled or expected, the inside of the airport and the outside of the airport were two totally different worlds.
We arrived in India on Tuesday night around 9:30pm after two sleepless days of travel which included an impromptu tour of London during our 11 hr layover. In London, 4 of the 9 of us (6 girls, 3 boys) decided to take the subway into the city with our lone goal being to get fish, chips and a good cold English beer. Our first stop was Covent Park where we successfully completed the English pub experience (even getting every tourists' dream, a picture behind the bar). After this, we still had three more hours to explore so we walked around for a bit then took the subway to Green Park. Here we accidentally sat in chairs we were supposed to pay for and inadvertantly stumbled onto Buckingham Palace! The discovery of this madatory tourist destination was just what I needed to cross London off the
list of places I need to visit at some point in my life. Though short, this London excursion was a vivid reminder of how western Europe always seems to make a person feel more glamorous.
After finding our program director outside the Thiruvananthapuram airport, we chaotically loaded into two white cabs. We then made the wide-eyed and white-knuckled journey through the Kerala streets where street signs, traffic lights and driving laws in general seemed to be nonexistant. Our cab driver along with every other vehicle were all over the road making their way from point A to point B in whatever way necessary. I think every one of us had at least one flash of a possible death by taxi cab.
The program house is really nice and the food is incredible. Our cook lives in our house with us 6 days a week and prepares three meals a day along with tea, fresh pineapple and fried bananas between meals. She only speaks Malayalam and will likely be my strongest motivation to get a grasp on the language.
In the past two days we have seen live sample performances by gurus of the various performance arts we
can choose to study. AMAZING. The artists here are so talented, I have been awestruck in every performance. The woman that sang the Karnatak music caused me to (surprise) get a bit misty-eyed. I can't wait to begin classes, I have chosen to study Mohiniattam, a form of dance famous to Kerala and vocal performance.
One of our program directors really wants to help us get individual satisfaction from our experience here by setting up excursions that cater to our interests. This will definitely allow me to visit a feminist organization here in Trivandrum. I am also hoping to explore birthing practices in Kerala.
The next week will be filled with city exploration, the beginning of instruction, and hopefully some kind of mastery of the buses. I hope all of you are sweating as much as I am. More to come and lots of love.
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