Mara and Kara Go To India

Mara and Kara and the Seriously Belated Photos

2009-04-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry it took so long to get some pictures up! We tried to include a little of everything we talked about in the blog, but found it hard to pick between them. Hope you enjoy!

At our favorite restaurant in Kovalam. This was the first time we gathered the courage to venture from the hotel.

We didn't actually like coconut water that much and tried to avoid drinking it at all costs.

Sunny woke us up early to go fetch coconuts.

The first of our many unwanted additional roommates. They liked to hang out in the bookcase but also in silly places like our shoes and clothes.

A close up of the spider. Sunny assured us that despite the fangs, these particular spiders didn't harm humans. We remain unconvinced.

Mara outside the entrance to the path leading up to the school.

The view of the MMM school from the play yard. The students have assembly right out in front every morning.

Kindergartners at MMM school.

The pigeon that nest on top of the bookshelves in the library of the school. Where else would a pigeon live?

Seventh standard boys at the MMM school.

Waiting room of the Pain and Palliative Care Center. At this point, the hole in the wall had been mostly repaired.

The meat shop. This is when it is closed though. Early every Saturday morning there would be a few sides of beef hanging on hooks in front of the tarp.

Some of the guys who played soccer and cricket outside our house every day.

Mara cutting beef with Sunny. Yes, he is holding the knife between his toes.

Theodical Junction as seen from Sunny's shop.

The house where we stayed with Sunny and Gracie.

After many unsuccessful attempts, Mara finally caught a chicken at the chicken park. In the background is the butcher cornering a few doomed birds.

Kara with the crazy German nun Sister Adarsha, our favorite person at Pushpagiri Hospital.

The nurses of the Pain and Palliative Care Center. They made us wait to take pictures until they changed from their white uniforms.

Kara was a little excited that Obama's inauguration made the front page of the Malayala Manorama.

Our first experience wearing saris. We went to a wedding and it was bizarrely hot and uncomfortable. The saris did not help the situation.

The only way to climb a coconut tree. This guy's entire job is to climb trees and collect the coconuts.

Take note of the placement of the mahouts hand.

Sunny was a little nervous of the elephants. Kara was not.

This elephant couldn't keep it's trunk out of Kara's face.

Kara with Sunny, Gracie and the driver Jose.

Kara with Sunny, Gracie and the birthday cake they bought her.

Mara was disturbed by the elephant's hairiness.

The porch where we slept on occasion. Also note the pigeon house in the top left corner and the buckets for collecting rain water on the right.

The tea plantations of Munnar.

Sunny didn't really know how to wear warm clothes.

Us with Gracie and the driver Kochimon.

Munnar was one of the best places we went, mostly because of the comfortable temperature.

In the middle of a tea plantation in Munnar. Mara later changed her shirt while crouching down in this very row.

Kara with a nice family who gave us handfuls of pepper when we stopped along the side of the road.

Only men are able to dance Kathekali because the elaborate costumes can weigh up to 85 pounds.

This is the part of the show where the girl character went crazy and started screaming and trying to kill the male character. He got to her first.

Posing with the dancers after the performance.

Our impersonation of the Kathekali banshee woman. Kochimon was laughing so hard he could barely hold the camera straight.

This is just a portion of a wall at a Joy Allukkas gold showroom. The rest of the walls are similarly gilded.

Mara tried on one of the antique gold necklaces. Her only complaint was that the sheer weight of the necklace made it cut into the back of her neck.

They didn't actually let us drive the boat...

Us on the houseboat with KC, his wife and his daughter in law Anna.

Mara was a sucker for animals about to be killed and eaten. Here she examines a jumbo shrimp outside a seafood restaurant.

In front of our houseboat after our tour.

Our lunch on the boat, a typical Kerala meal served on a banana leaf.

A houseboat on the backwaters of Alleppy.

Gracie and Sunny with his most holy popeness. Yes, this is the man we tried to greet properly but failed miserably in our attempts.

Us with an Armenian/Australian bishop in the tomb room of Eastern Orthodox headquarters.

Remarkably enough, this is what we looked like towards the beginning of the Holi celebration.

Kara all covered in Holi with a few of the kids at Santa Maria.

Gracie, Sunny and Shema right before a wave soaked all of their clothes.

Our names written in Malayalam.

Gracie, Shema and Kara commandeered a fishing boat on the beach at Kochi.

The elephants were enormous and completely decked out for the occasion. We are still unsure as to what the elephant riders were doing with the props.

We had to pass through a creepy alley behind an abandoned building before we could get on the roof. Sunny was not worried.

Kara was the only person allowed through the police barrier to get closeups of the elephants. It may or may not have had something to do with her being white.

Kara in front of the crowd after making it safely onto a rooftop.

Crowd of thousands of partially drunk people? 22 huge and relatively unharnessed elephants? Large rings of fire being lit in the middle of the crowd? Why not?

On our way through a rice paddy to find the goat farm.

For some reason, Jose knew how to effectively wrangle goats.

Hanging out in Sunny and Gracie's kitchen before dinner.

Mara with Sunny and Gracie at Bishop Makarios' burial place.

With the family. Gracie, Sunny, Sherin, Shema.

Kara making her speech at the jubilee for Bishop Makarios' first death anniversary. We were seated on stage with that large assortment of very important people.

Proud papa Sunny with Sherin and Shema.

Mara in front of the huge statue built off the coast of Cape Comerin at the very tip of India.

At the steps of a giant temple built in the middle of the ocean.

This is what usually happened when we tried to take pictures in a public place. We have no idea who these people are. Sunny suggests we charge people for pictures to make a profit.

Some of the Punjabi people Mara followed around for a while.

Watching the sunrise at Cape Comerin.

And then, in a wacky turn of very stressful events, our flights were all messed up and we were forced to spend the night in London.

We took a train from the airport into the city and walked around for a few hours.

The only problem was that coming from the heat India, even the spring weather in London was freezing to us, and we had very few warm items of clothing packed.

Regardless of the weather, the detour through London was an amazing accident. We just wish we had had more time to look around before we had to catch our return train.

Our tiny room in the Yotel Hotel in Heathrow airport. Mara found that when reaching her arms and legs she could almost touch all four walls of the room at once. Kara had to take this picture while standing on the toilet.

In front of the Royal Albert Hall.

Mara and Kara and the Goat Shopping Excursion

2009-04-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

After the hospital on Wednesday, Sunny informed us that it was impossible to get a goat because we had a previous engagement at our driver Jose’s house. We have wanted to visit Jose’s house for a while, but unfortunately our schedules have been a little hectic up until this point. Only Shema came with us, so there was at least someone to act as a Malayalam intermediate. Jose picked us up and we parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up the driveway where we were greeted by several of his nieces and nephews. Here, Jose’s awesomeness increased tenfold as we discovered that he is adorable with kids. We went to his parents’ house first and met his mom and dad, who occasionally brings us the paper in the morning. Jose surprised us by making a full dinner for us and expecting us to eat all of it. This meal included: perottas, beef curry, grapes, plantains, oranges, jackfruit chips, donuts, an assortment of sweet and peppery Kerala snacks, 7-Up, and of course he bought us ice cream for dessert. This was probably the exact moment that Shema decided we were completely mad. We ate as best we could with Jose’s entire family standing over us and took a few pictures after dinner to commemorate the event.

Our last day at Pushpagiri hospital turned out to be much like our first day there. We were again kidnapped by a nun and taken to the hostel to eat lunch. Afterwards, the nun let us in to the medical college and we were granted access to a number of student exhibits. One of our favorite stops was the forensic science museum where we got to see many different and gruesome ways to die. Although some of the pictures were quite interesting, we aren’t sure you need a degree in forensic science to figure out whether or not someone died by getting run over by a train. Also on display in the forensics room was a life size paper-mâché dummy as a hanging victim, though we are not sure what the purpose of this was, besides being a really cool craft project. Upon returning to the waiting room, we asked the nurses if we could take pictures of them, which ended up turning into a huge photo shoot. Jobi, at the end of the day, told us “thank you for your cooperation.” We aren’t really sure what that meant, but agree that we seriously underestimated Jobi’s affection for us.

After lessons on Saturday we attended a fundraiser of the MMM school which was a magic show. Sunny made us sit in the front row and threatened to volunteer us when the magician asked for assistants. We think Sunny should have volunteered himself, as he is absolutely entranced by all magic. We hope he knows it isn’t real. The magician and all of his assistants had makeup caked on their faces to make them look white. The show was entertaining, though we were practically deaf after the first half from sitting right in front of the speakers. The last act confused us as it wasn’t a magic trick per say, but rather an enormous tribute to India, complete with outfits crafted from the Indian flag and a the magician and his assistants prancing around the stage waving flags and singing “I love my India.” The crowd seemed to like it at least.

Sunday we rushed home from lessons eager to buy a goat and discovered Sherin was home on an unexpected leave from the seminary. He was adamantly protesting the purchase of the goat. His exact words were “Why not an elephant?” However, we were not to be deterred and piled into Jose’s car with Sunny and Gracie for a relaxing afternoon of goat shopping. The first house we stopped at had two cute white goats but unfortunately the owner was not home. The second house was not quite so strait forward. We parked about a kilometer down the road and headed down a trail into a rice paddy, into a bean garden, where (of course) we met some people Sunny and Gracie knew, through a cricket match and down the same road we parked on. We then proceeded to trick the goat breeders into thinking our visit was a social call then acting surprised to see they had goats. In the meantime we were entertainment for their neighbors, who piled on to the property line to get a good look at us. Sunny immediately found the goat of his dreams, a nice brown and white one that was innocently chomping on some grass. While we were more interested in the baby white goat wobbling around, we agreed Sunny’s choice was a good one. After Jose confirmed that Sunny’s favorite goat was acceptable (Jose owns a cow. Apparently this means he is also a goat expert) we bought the goat for 2000 rupees and led it away to the car, being followed of course by the residents of every nearby house. Getting the goat into the car turned out to be a little tricky. We had to pick her up and place her on the floor of the back seat. Thankfully Jose remembered a tarp to lay down first just in case the goat got a little nervous. On the way home, Sunny informed us that he had already selected a name for the goat: Makku, as a combination of both of our names. We are very honored to have a goat in India named after us. Sunny was very enthusiastic about his new pet and took pride in milking her that very night. Kara discovered she likes the milk; however to Mara there is no justifiable reason to drink warm fresh goat’s milk. At least she tried it though.

Monday we met with our professors for the last time. We only met with Dr. Thomas to return a book as he is very busy retiring and has a bunch of parties to attend. We turned in our final Gandhian Thought papers to Dr. Manni and rode around in the backseat as he commandeered the car to run a few dozen personal errands. Because of this we got home a little late and when we did, we found a very sweaty Sherin walking around with Makku. We commented on how nice it was to see him making friends with the goat, to which he replied “I hate this thing.” Apparently, after being spooked by a dog Makku had made a dash for freedom and Sherin had run after her. Makku had made it all the way to the school where she decided life was no longer worth living and jumped from the second story roof on to the ground. Sherin caught her rope mid-leap and hung on, afraid that if he let go, Makku would get away again. Unfortunately, this meant that the goat was suspended by the neck a few inches off the ground where she waited for about 10 minutes until our neighbor Thomas came to the rescue. We knew Sherin was against the idea of a goat, but we never suspected he would go to such lengths and try to hang it. Since this incident, the relationship between Sherin and Makku has been greatly repaired. Sometimes he even would strap leaves into her collar so she could eat continuously as desired.

On Tuesday we decided to take a walk down to the corner store for some Pepsi. Our planned twenty minute walk turned into a twelve kilometer romp through the surrounding countryside. We hoped to only walk as far as Thadyoor, just down the road, but after reaching there our curiosity got the best of us and we just had to find out what was beyond that. Our faith in our sense of direction has been severely shaken as we thought we were just making a large loop, but instead we ended up in Kuriyanoor. This turns out to be near Kozhencherry, which normally takes a rickshaw and a twenty minute drive to reach. However, this three hour walk did have its bright spots. We found a large waterfall that we hadn’t been aware of till then, and we also found a bat fried on the power line that was casting the Batman symbol shadow down onto the pavement.

The next day we went into Thiruvalla to get some shopping done. We went to Joy Allukas, the largest sellers of gold and diamonds in Asia. The store was actually a ‘wedding center,’ which means it has ten times more gold than any place should ever have. It also has a collection of saris, shirts, shoes, and anything else you would need for a wedding. Sharon assured us that they would never let us try any of the large wedding necklaces on but when Kara went over to take pictures of the display, they asked her which necklace she like best. To our shock after pointing to a large flower one, they took it down and proceeded to help her try it on. Mara also got to try on a necklace but also the matching earrings, each one of which were made of 59 grams of solid gold. The necklace itself would normally go for 1.2 lakhs, which for India is a huge amount of money. After the successful shopping spree, we went to a large hindu temple in Aranmula. We attempted to walk around, but as you are required to remove your shoes we were unable to take the intense heat of the side walk and had to retreat back into the shade. Sharon found this very entertaining, as he was able to walk around with no trouble and informed us that we were very weak. However, as our feet hurt for days afterwards and they were rather pink and tender, we decided that it wasn’t just weakness but actual burns from how bloody hot it was.

We had a long talk with Sunny back in his shop about sexual exploitation of women in Kerala. We enjoyed getting close enough to Sunny that we can discuss these types of things with him openly. It gives us a true picture of Kerala, though we really enjoy watching Sunny try to dodge around saying actual terminology, and considering the amount of English he knows it is actually pretty impressive.

Thursday and Friday consisted of packing and cleaning the house. It’s hard to fit three months of India into our two tiny suitcases, and we were glad some of our clothes were trashed enough to leave behind. Saturday morning we said goodbye to Theodical and traveled down to the very tip of India to see the sun rise. The cape is actually not in Kerala, it is in Tamil Nadu, and we were slightly disappointed to see that we could no longer read the signs as they were in Tamil. We watched the sun rise on the beach, and after a quick breakfast headed to The Rock. The Rock is just a big rock off the coast where a Hindu temple and a large statue of some man who died while meditating on the island have been built. Here we remembered that white people are a rarity in Tamil Nadu, and once again found ourselves surrounded by Tamil boys who just wanted a picture with us. This time at least, most of them respected the sanctity of the temple and kept their hands to themselves. Sunny, who was laughing the entire time we were being mobbed, suggested afterwards that we charge 10 rupees a picture to sustain ourselves throughout the summer so we don’t have to go home.

We went back to Kovalam and walked around on the beach for a few hours but then it was time to say goodbye to Sunny, Gracie and Shema. We were absolutely miserable for a few hours after their departure, enough so that we found the need to console ourselves with Pepsi and ice cream from a restaurant on the beach. The surrounding intrusive shopkeepers who saw us asked us if everything was alright instead of their usual line “Miss, come look in my shop. I give you good price.” However, as we have already begun planning our return trip to Kerala, we view this separation as only temporary. We spent our last day in India swimming in the ocean and finishing some last minute shopping. We tried for about 30 minutes to find a restaurant that would serve us our last traditional Kerala meal. It frustrated and confused us immensely that tourists come to India and are able to or don’t make the effort to sample local cuisine. Despite our sadness and reluctance to leave Kerala, the last days as Kovalam were a fitting end to our journey, as that is how we began our adventure in January.

Little adventures:

Mara-“You just concentrate on driving that junk bucket, okay?” to a man who was staring so much at us that he almost crashed his creaking bicycle.

Kara- “Etra vayasunda?” to the cab driver. (she thought she was asking him how much the fare was, but really that phrase means ‘how old are you?’)

Mara-(holding newspaper) “What happened to this elephant?!”
Kara- “It’s dead.”
Shema- “No, it is not dead!” (grabs the newspaper)
“Oh, sorry. It’s dead”

We were feeling rather self conscious about our hygiene, or lack of hygiene, and were debating on if other people thought we smelled or it was just us. Kara asked Sunny “do we smell bad?” to which he replied “sometimes.” We panicked and quickly ran to change our clothes. Only when we returned did sunny try to explain that he was confused by the question and thought we were asking him if he smells. Mara at least remains fairly certain that he only told us this to make us feel better.

Mara- “I like to think the goat is just practicing talking” about Makku, who maas loudly if no one is paying attention to her.

We bought a package of Tang for Sunny so he can drink it in his shop and Gracie won’t know. However, we are more than a little worried about him storing the Tang powder (which he may or not be allergic to) near the fertilizer powder (which he definitely is allergic to). Sunny hid the Tang in his shirt in order to sneak it to his shop.

We are currently in the Dubai airport enjoying our ridiculous 20 hour layover. Our next plan of action is a nap, and then we are going to see how our stomach handles some McDonald's for the first time in months. We plan to post one more entry focusing on the things that are hard to adjust back to in America.
See you all back in the States!

Mara and Kara and the Escalator of Death

2009-04-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

We know we said we’d be updating this more regularly, but unfortunately our phone wasn’t working for a week and then we were without power for a few days, but we’re serious now. We are starting from the 13 of March:

Friday we went into Kottayam for lessons with our professors in the morning. In the afternoon, we went to Sharon’s seminary where we got to participate in the noon prayers. We then were pulled aside by some fifth year students who wanted to take pictures of us to put in the annual newsletter. However, in order to obtain the correct action shots, we were taken on a fake tour of the grounds, which involved a lot of thoughtful staring and pointing into the distance. We then went to the mess hall, where we were served lunch by our tour guides. We also were served a drink of which the ingredients are a closely guarded secret. We took Sharon home with us, as he was able to get leave for a day to attend the Bishop’s Jubilee. He was very excited to get out of his ‘cave.’

The next morning, Shema helped us get into our saris which took a little long, so we were a bit rushed getting out of the house. Mara was in such a hurry that she somehow managed to shove two earrings in the same ear, and failed to notice her mistake until walking down to the road. While we were worried that we would be late for the memorial service, we forgot that this was India, and everybody wanders in whenever they can. We both received comments on our saris by the Bishop presiding as he blessed us with his giant golden cross, which made us fumble the appropriate responsive gesture of crossing ourselves.

After the service we went to the hall where the public meeting was taking place. Sunny put both of us on stage; though we were at least thankful we were in the second row and so were partly out of sight. The ceremony went fairly smoothly by Indian standards. Mara did a very good Vana White impersonation by receiving and holding up the first publication of the Bishop’s biography but as she was returning to her seat, her shoe got stuck underneath the chair of the emcee bishop and she had to temporarily leave it behind. Kara’s speech went without a hitch, unless you consider the fact that less than fifty people there actually understood it because apparently, she talks to fast. Sunny was very happy with how everything turned out, but because he missed his afternoon nap, that night he fell asleep on the floor while we were watching TV. Not wanting to wake him up we snuck downstairs and went to bed. The next morning, Sunny informed us that he ‘was not speaking to us’ because when we did not wake him up, he didn’t get the chance to tell us that we were going to be on TV. He said we looked good though.

We went to lessons on Sunday and returned to our Islam/Sex Ed teacher, who had way too many buttons of his shirt undone. His wife prepared chicken biriyani for us which is a traditional Muslim dish, and we enjoyed it immensely.
Monday we went down to the MMM school but discovered that they have exams from here on out, so we just popped our heads in to say hello. Instead, we spent the day working on homework and making a trip into Ranni. There, we were able to get some Pepsi (they were out of Tang unfortunately). We also made a stop by CitiTV, the local television station that had the news story about the Bishop’s Jubilee celebration. When we asked if it was possible to get a copy of the news that night, the man behind the counter gave us a very weird look and said they’d look for it. He also asked for our phone number so he could call us later when they did manage to locate it. We have yet to here back from them, but at least we can say that we were on TV. Back in The Junk, canceled our train tickets to Bangalore as we decided that we’d go to Kochi for a day instead.

Tuesday was spent doing more homework, and in the evening we went into Kozhencherry with Sunny and Gracie for some groceries. In the store, we managed to locate some Tang, and also made a small child cry. Sunny also told us that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing when he goes to get groceries; he relies solely on Gracie to assess the kitchen’s needs. On the ride home, we told Sunny that as Mara is currently single and as half-mad Sibi is looking for a wife, he should suggest Mara as a possible bride.

Wednesday turned out to be an eventful day at the hospital. It took half the nursing staff and the entire day to assemble a wheelchair out of a plastic lawn chair and bike tires. We also witnessed a very interesting procedure, in which a lady had fluid drained from her abdominal cavity. This may have been nothing more than really cool to watch, until her sister flushed the biological waste in the one-liter bottle down the toilet. At this point, it became rather questionable, although Mara is just jealous that they have toilets that actually flush. We also correctly diagnosed a patient’s malady because of our combined knowledge of similar cases on several House episodes.

Thursday, while visiting Sunny in his shop, we stole his planner and made a list of life goals for him. They are as follows: learn to swim, visit Mara and Kara in America, save up ten lakh rupees for Shema’s dowry, and to learn to iron his own dhotis. We convinced him to let us teach him and Shema how to swim in Kochi. When we asked what he’d be wearing to swim in, he reluctantly muttered that he had ‘half-pants’ to swim in.

Friday we had a rather frustrating day at lessons, though it was almost made up for by the fact that Jose’s car was finally back in action, so he was able to drive us in for the first time in weeks. On the way home, we had Gracie ask him if he wanted to learn how to swim in Kochi the next day. The answer was an emphatic no. Then, Kara had Gracie translate the sentence “Do you have half pants?” into Malayalam for Jose, that too was a resounding no. However, we wouldn’t have been able to teach Jose anyways because he called us later on that night and informed us his car was too hot and was unable to make long trips right away.

We left at 4:30 Saturday morning with Jose’s cousin Podimon, whose car interior is covered in camouflage velvet and lit up by the colorful flashing of a plastic Jesus figurine on the dashboard. We stopped in Allopy at Shema’s friend’s parent’s house for a quick break and breakfast. We greatly entertained/frightened a small child, even though we brought a rather large piece offering of cocunuts and jackfruit. The family repaid us however by climbing onto the roof and retrieving several mangoes for us. We went to the beach where Sunny amused us by trying to write Malayalam words in the sand before the waves cleared them away. We also learned here that Sunny’s ‘half-pants’ that he said he was going to swim in were what we in American like to call speedos. We are glad that we did not end up teaching Sunny how to swim, and have decided to postpone lessons until Kerala hears about swim trunks.
We arrived in Kochi a few hours later. We met a friendly stray dog down on the beach who made friends with a crab that a fisherman dragged in. Mara also made friends with a Malayalee with a British accent, who gave her a gift of several hermit crabs, and instructed her to boil them. We got some shopping done and found some more of the ridiculous pants that we both love. We also spent some time in downtown Kochi, and discovered that it is a very large and crazy town. Normal India is crazy enough, but in a big city every thing is a million times crazier. We then met Sunny’s friend Thomas and his wife who both live in Kochi (Thomas was the father of the bride who invited us to his house at the first wedding). The whole group then proceeded to the first mall in Kerala, the Oberon Mall. There, we were amused endlessly by the amount of people who had obviously never encountered an escalator before. Sunny and Gracie found them a little tricky at first, but thankfully they didn’t embarrass themselves like the man who fell flat on his face attempting to get off of it. We found the Indian equivalent to a Borders, and bought some classical Indian music along with several Malayalam movies and a selection of Hindi movies from the discount bin all of which are probably terrible. We had a hard time dragging Sunny out of the shops, as this was the first mall he’s ever been to. Plus, it was air conditioned, which would explain why there were a large number of people who look like they came to the mall just to sit around.

We ate dinner at a restaurant and then went to Thomas’s house, where we got a chance to look at the wedding album from the wedding we went to. We were both mortified to see that we were in a large number of pictures, though we were glad to see that we are a little tanner than when we first came here. Kara is at least, Mara is just frecklier than she’s ever been in her entire life. We also discovered that Thomas has a goat, which reinvigorated our desire to buy Sunny a goat. When we tentatively asked him, we were pleasantly surprised to hear that there would be nothing else in the world that would make him happier, as long as it was a girl goat so he could breed it. We had a long car ride home, but got a chance to stop by our favorite midnight coffee joint in Mallapally.

Monday we planned on working on papers all day, but received a call from KC telling us about a Hindu festival taking place in Kottayam that involved elephants. After picking Gracie up from her school in the afternoon, we made our way into Kottayam Town, which was exploding with people and elephants. It was hard making our way through the crowd to get good photo opportunities, but by grabbing our hands and literally shoving people out of the way, Sunny and Gracie were able to get us in the position to take some close ups of the elephants. They were not, however, able to prevent us from being groped the entire way through the crowd, which explained why there were so few other women there. One particularly bold older gentleman grabbed Mara on the butt in front of Kara. Mara let out a yelp of surprise, and when Sunny whipped his head around to see what the matter was, we had to pretend it was nothing so he wouldn’t beat someone up. Eventually, Sunny ran into a local politician he knew who was mixing buttermilk with well water in the middle of an alley, and who allowed us to sneak up on a nearby rooftop to watch the festivities. This included walking through the alley, sneaking through a gate, and wandering around behind the outdoor bathroom of a private residence before climbing up the stairs in an unfinished building and crossing a small plank bridge on to the appropriate roof. From there we had a much better view of the craziness happening below, which by that point included about 20 giant rings of fire hoisted above the heads of the crowd. As the night wore on, the crowd became wilder, if possible, and we were able to witness a number of drunkards being beat by the police with bamboo sticks. Apparently police brutality is not an issue here. We were going to stay for the fireworks, but as rain looked imminent we decided to leave a little early. While making our way back through the crowd we were once again accosted by drunk older men who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, although we eventually wised to their strategies and were able to thwart a few of their attempts. It started to pour as we walked through a vegetable market in search of grapes, and we got soaked even in the few seconds it took to get to the shelter of a shop. Fortunately Podimon picked us up and spared us from having to walk home. We stopped for dinner in Mallappally and in the restaurant, the theme song from Titanic played for 20 straight minutes while we waited for our food. It was so ridiculous that it made an appropriate end to the day.

Tuesday was the last day of school for the students in the MMM school and although they were busy taking final exams, we stopped in at the beginning and end of the day to say good bye to the students. It was sad to say goodbye, but it cheered us up a little to hear them say “hasta luego” instead of the customary “tata.” After lunch we went to visit Sunny in his shop and have him arrange a rickshaw to take us into Ranni. On the way, we were horrified to watch the scooter in front of our rickshaw slowly lose control and crash into a rock wall, pinning down the driver and his daughter. Both riders escaped with minor scrapes and bruises, and the girl seemed more embarrassed that her underwear had shown when she fell. They were both well enough to wave to the white girls in the rickshaw.

Little Adventures:

-“RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY!”- a fruit vendor in the middle of Kottayam

-Everyone in India thinks that Michelle Obama is pregnant.

-On the way to Kochi, we saw a huge truck tipped over in the middle of the road. While at first we were worried it was an explosive gas of some sort, we were semi-relieved to find out that it was just tar that was covering every inch of the road and median.

Mara and Kara and the Holi Days

2009-03-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

Monday we woke up with the intention of going to MMM school, but were confused to see that none of the school buses had gone out and the school yard was oddly silent. This confused us, as the night before the TV reported that the public holiday that was supposed to be on Monday had been moved to Tuesday (apparently television has powers like that over here). So, we had yet another unexpected free day. We took a long walk, where we ran into Presanthe who was waiting outside a house for a client. He was rather confused as to what we were doing out, telling us that early morning was when sane people ‘exercised.’ The afternoon brought darkening skies and distant rumblings of thunder, but we were hesitant to believe that it was going to really rain after almost two months of zero precipitation. However, Mother Nature wasn’t fooling around this time, and the area got hit hard with a huge storm. Towards the end of it we went for a walk on a new route, which gave us a whole new set of residents to confuse. We saw some interesting sites, including a not so young boy running around stark naked. We also spotted Sunny walking around with an umbrella, which amused us greatly for some reason.

The next day was the real holiday (but for some reason MMM still had school… someone needs to explain to them how a holiday works) so we went into Kottayam to meet with our professors, who prefer to meet with us not on working days as to keep the interruptions to a minimum. This lesson session brought only a short lesson with Dr. Manni, as he packed us off to a friend’s house who has given lectures on Islam for previous groups. He is also the head coach for the Mahatma Gandhi men’s football team, so was very happy to meet some fellow footballers. However, this may have been a drawback, as he was much more interested in talking about soccer tactics than he was about Islam. He settled on using analogies about football to teach us about his religion. Not only did this lesson turn out to be more about sports than beliefs, we received a broad overview on sex education as well. While we are glad that he was so frank with us, we’re not sure that every rule in the Qur’an is to better an individuals sex life, as he implied on numerous occasions.

We went back to Santa Maria on Wednesday, as we had told them that we would attend their Food Fest day. All of the kids were very excited to get the cooking underway, but we were a little hesitant about the numerous knives that they pulled out of their backpacks, pockets, and various other areas of their persons. We were even less excited to see several boys sword fighting with their knives as a teacher looked calmly on. Once we were sure that we were in no danger of receiving flesh wounds from any of the students, we helped seventh standard cut vegetables for the pizza. We weren’t totally out of the clear for hazards to our health, as the makeshift kitchen turned out to be the chemistry lab which was in need of a good cleaning. Cutting the onions turned out to be an adventure, as every single kid had tears streaming down their cheeks and Mara had to go stand at the other end of the room to recover, although Kara remained unaffected and dry-eyed. After all of the cooking was done, we got to go around and sample all of the class’s food. Our favorite was the chocolate shakes; the kids preferred to stick to more western foods, as Kerala food is ‘too hard to make.’ Second standard didn’t get this message however, and made ridiculously hot chutney to eat with some kappa (tapioca). It has been the spiciest thing we’ve ate here so far, including the various mango pickles that we’ve sampled.

After lunch, we were fortunate enough to participate in a Holi celebration. Holi is a Hindu festival that occurs more in the north of India but Santa Maria still decided to celebrate. It involves throwing brightly colored powders and water at each other and smearing it into each other’s face, hair, and clothes. We were instantly targeted by all of the kids, and soon were unrecognizable. We made sure to give it right back however, although Mara wasn’t able to get revenge at our friend Alex after he threw a handful of green glitter into her mouth. We looked absolutely ridiculous. On our way home, we asked Dr. Oomen to stop at Sunny’s shop so we could show him our change in skin color. Sunny couldn’t stop laughing long enough to put together a coherent sentence. We did our best to scrub off all of the color when we got home, although Mara had some stubborn purple spots on her eyebrows that hung around for a few days. When Gracie came home, she informed us that all of Theodical was talking about our bizarre appearance. Don’t people have anything better to talk about? That night while watching TV, we got to see Sunny on the news announcing the details of the Bishop’s jubilee celebration. And Sunny says he’s not important….

On Thursday we were fortunate enough to receive an invitation to visit and observe the methods of the Sri Atmanda School. Or, lack of methods, as the mindset of the school is to do whatever the kids want to do. There was a million white people there (apparently the area has a moderate French community) who looked weird to us. We can’t decide if it’s because we haven’t seen a white person in so long or if they really did just look funny. While it was nice to see another school, and as surprised as we were to see that kids actually do learn something, we were disappointed to learn that ‘we shouldn’t ask about the tuition, as it’s not even comparable ramble ramble dodging the question ramble.’ We’re glad to see that education is based off of how much money you have in a country where money is sometimes scarce.

Little Adventures:
We managed to turn our walk into a long loop, and upon reaching Theodical swung by Sunny’s shop to say hello. There he informed us that Kara had ‘one big package’ at the post office. When we inquired how big, Sunny replied, “I think one lorry come…” Kara may have fallen for it. (For those of you who don’t know what a lorry is, it’s a truck).
It didn’t really hit us until this week how much Sunny has been lying to us. He likes to say he is an ‘ordinary man,’ but he’s not. He knows everyone in Theodical and everyone knows him, and he’s also in charge of a million different things. We like to tell him how important and popular he is and watch him try to deny it.
“You came here as white girls, but you aren’t leaving that way.” – A Santa Maria student after the Holi celebration.”
“That man… small elephant.” –Gracie, on the rather large contestant on Star Singer.

Mara and Kara and the Big Big Hot

2009-03-17T02:01:00.001-07:00

We apologize for the delay in posting this update. We are trying to get back on schedule and hope to post much more often in the remaining three weeks of our stay.

Saturday we received a surprise visit from Sunny’s cousin sister, who was just passing through the area for a bit. Sunny told us, in the spirit of hospitality, to “put the sugar in water” for her, referring to the Tang we picked up in Ranni last week. Sunny seriously enjoys Tang but has to drink it on the sly as Gracie is convinced it contributes to his allergies. We prepared a large lunch for ourselves and the cousin sister, but had to eat rather hurriedly as we were expecting Rebecca from the Santa Maria school. We were to be honored guests at a special meeting of her Rotary Club. The meeting consisted of around 15-20 women aged anywhere from their twenties to their seventies. They were all very curious as to what we were doing in India. After standing up and giving a short speech about our experiences thus far we were requested to sing a song (of course) which didn’t go as bad as some of our previous attempts have been. When we reached the subject of major cultural differences, we were delighted to learn that it isn’t just school children that giggle when we talk about boys touching girls as the subject had a similar effect on the middle aged ladies in the back row. The ride home was spent teaching They Might Be Giants songs to the three little girls who had decided to ride home with us.

That night we helped Sunny cut beef with his toes before he left on a mission to convince a number of high ranking political officials to attend the function for Bishop Makarios’ 1st Death Anniversary. While he was gone we helped Gracie complete a few household chores, including ironing Sunny’s dhotis. Gracie said “Sunny is small baby” because he always loses buttons off his shirts and doesn’t know how to iron his own dhotis. Mara spent a good amount of time running the iron over every inch of a 3 yard-long dhoti before Gracie taught her the trick of folding it up then ironing just the top layer. Sunny returned with the news that the Opposition Party leader would indeed be in attendance at the function but his excitement sobered as he encountered our full assault about his dhoti ironing ineptitudes. We slept outside on the porch that night because of the intense heat.

The next morning we had to get up early to go to Bishop Makarios 1st death anniversary service at the Eastern Orthodox headquarters; however we were woken up slightly earlier than necessary by our driver who masquerades as the paper deliverer when he threw the paper on to the porch and hit Mara in the face. The service itself was pleasant even though it was fully in Malayalam and the only words we were able to consistently catch were ‘bishop’ and ‘Makarios.’ We had the opportunity of making up for our incorrect greeting with the head bishop as he is always present for those services and blesses everyone as they leave the church, which involves individuals leaning down to touch their heads to his gold cross. Mara may not have been spot on as she misjudged the distance and brought her head down more forcefully to the cross than necessary, but at least it wasn’t a handshake. Upon exiting the church, each person was handed a banana and a fried Indian sweet, however the guys handing out bananas got a little too excited by our presence. They were pulling the bananas out of the reach of old women to give them to us instead and eventually forced us to take way more bananas than we knew what to do with. We made the mistake of telling Sunny we wanted coffee and before we knew what was happening, we were being lead into the priest’s mess hall for a full breakfast. Sunny let us know that at the service he had seen his best friend from the fertilizer business who he hadn’t talked to in 15 years. So of course, after leaving the church we spent some time driving around different neighborhoods in search of Sunny’s BFF. We finally located his house and he and Sunny shared a blissful reunion.

After lessons we attended St. Dionysius’ 75th Death Anniversary Jubilee, where there were a number of very important individuals including the Head Bishop (that guy gets around), several members of parliament, the Australian Archbishop of the Armenian Church, and the Opposition Party Leader. Also, as everyone had to go up and greet the Head Bishop before they spoke, we were able to see a variety of ways that is deemed appropriate to greet His Popeness. Kara was delighted to see one man grab the bishop’s hand and raise it to his forehead; it appears she didn’t mortify herself as much as she thought she did. After the speeches, there was a music program that consisted of traditional Indian music. We both loved it, and are now on the lookout for a music store where we can purchase cd’s, though we’d also be happy if we could get our hands on a sitar…

Monday at the school was spent teaching a large amount of Spanish and French to the kids. At first the teachers were a bit skeptical (after all, what are people going to do here with those two languages?) but we knew we had them convinced when they sat in the back of class and learned along with the kids. We also found out that Roshin, one of our favorite 9th standard boys, had his appendix out the previous Thursday, so we went to visit him after school. Upon returning home, we discovered that our well was so low that the pump couldn’t draw any more water up to the house, which according to Sunny has never happened before. It has been ten times hotter than it has ever needed to be here. A few weeks ago we reported that if it got any hotter we would melt; however, that comment was drastically premature. The average here has been 38 degrees (that’s Celsius), though we have it from a source back in the States that that temperature feels like 110 degrees… Fahrenheit. Sometimes we wish we would’ve picked a location with a milder climate. It also probably would have been a good idea to have looked at the Kerala weather before we left America.

Tuesday was a continuation of foreign language lessons. We now walk around the school with ‘hola’ and ‘hasta luego’ shouted at us. We returned home to a surprise; there was a large truck parked in the driveway with two huge water tanks emptying directly into the well. It costs Rs. 500 for 3000 liters of transported well water. Unfortunately, when the water in the well fell below a usable level, the pump became broken. Even with the additional water, we had to rely on a bucket and pulley to draw it out of the well because the taps don’t work. Regardless, it is nice to be able to brush our teeth and shower again.

Wednesday the hospital was a little more insane than usual. Jobi the nurse was still in a disturbingly good mood, the German nun was wearing a completely different color robe and habit, and oh, there was an enormous hole in the wall. We think that they are intending to increase the size of the ward but no one was able to tell us for sure. Later in the afternoon a two-man work crew came in and smeared cement over some of the crumbling bricks. From what we have seen about methods of construction over here, we are really glad that Kerala isn’t on a fault line. Sunny and Gracie told us Wednesday night that they are cancelling on us for the Bangalore trip because the water shortage forced Sherma’s hostel to close and she is coming home early. We tentatively decided to go without them, but Sunny remains worried that we will be cheated too much in his absence.

On Thursday morning both of our professors called and cancelled lessons, so we had an unexpected but greatly appreciated free day. We sat around doing homework most of the day but went to the school for a few periods when we knew the older students had free time. Kara taught some excitable 9th standard students how to play Frogger and we both played a little soccer with the 7th standard boys.

On Friday we were all ready to go to the hospital but as 9:00 came and went it became clear that our driver was not going to show up. So we met Sunny at his shop and after he persuaded his neighbor to climb on top of some buildings to steal Congress Party flags for us, he helped us catch the bus into Thiruvalla. The construction was still under way on the hospital wall, but that didn’t stop medical procedures from happening in the waiting room. It is probably the only place in the world where cement is mixed and chemo is administered in the same room. On our way from the hospital to the bus station, we saw our old friends Linoj and Swapna. Linoj is still bothered that Kara never receives his phone calls, but otherwise they seem to be alright.

Saturday after our lessons we had Presanthe drive us around to a variety of stores. We went to the DC bookstore, but accidentally went in the door for the Malayalam books and had to be directed to the English side. After driving around and asking directions of a few totally clueless pedestrians we arrived at FabIndia where things were a little overpriced and there were half a dozen bored employees hovering silently over us. When we made it out of there we went to the supermarket to pick up some more Tang. We were distracted by a couple of friendly Bible college students who made us all but promise to visit their campus. The whole process took a while and we bought a Pepsi for Presanthe for all his trouble. This may not have been a good idea, however, because he steered the car with his knees in order to drink it.

On Sunday our lessons were pushed back so we were able to attend church with Sunny and Gracie. While we couldn’t understand anything that was going on, we were extremely proud to find we could sing along with the hymns by reading the Malayalam script. We did get lost every once in a while, but there was always someone nearby willing to get us on the right page. We stopped at home before leaving for our lessons and it took us a minute to register that the unfamiliar person in the yard was none other than Sherma, home from nursing school. She was as confused as we were. As we were in a rush, we only had time for a hurried “Oh, you must be Sherma!” before we frantically grabbed our bags and hopped back into the car.

After lessons, we had an invitation from Sharon to visit the Eastern Orthodox Seminary, where he is a student. As exams started the next day, we felt slightly bad at distracting him from his study time, however he assured us that he hadn’t even been studying when we arrived (we made sure to not mention that little detail when Sunny and Gracie asked us when we returned home if Sharon was prepared for exams). Sharon gave us a very detailed tour of the grounds, and we even got to see the room where Bishop Makarios stayed when he was a priest. The seminary has kept it in the exact same condition as it was when he stayed there.
Technically, guests are only allowed to look in through the door, but as Mara needed a better angle for a picture, Sharon snuck us in after a furtive look around to see if anyone was watching. We got to meet several of Sharon’s classmates, and were even pleasantly surprised to meet one student from Chicago (we promised him to find him on Facebook). It’s always a shock to hear an American accent other than from each other. We were invited for evening prayers as well, but as it was getting late we declined, saying we’d come back another day.

Little Adventures:

-Dr. Thomas may have been sent a package of anthrax. We’re not sure if he misspoke or we misheard, or if he was actually sent a package of anthrax.

- When we arrived, every day after school a group of guys would come and play soccer in the school yard. It used to be four or five guys. They caught us watching them from the porch, and since then the number has grown to 10-15 with more arriving every day. They are now dressing suspiciously more fashionable, if you ignore the middle aged men who pull up their dhotis to play.

Mara and Kara and His Holy Grace

2009-03-01T22:35:00.000-08:00

To Catch Up:

Monday at the school we made friends with a teacher who was blown away that we had learned so much Malayalam. Imagine that, learning Malayalam in a state that speaks only Malayalam. Revolutionary. During a free period we showed her and few other teachers pictures from the trip to Munnar and some other random photos of daily life on our cameras. We found ourselves at a loss to explain the pictures of the meat shop. It is hard to put into words this and other major differences between Indian and American life.

Tuesday night we tried to attend the Maramon Convention, the largest gathering of Christians in Asia, but were kept out because due to safety issues, they don’t allow women into the convention past 6:30 in the evening. Sunny tried to sneak us in and even pleaded with some priests, but to no avail. We were slightly disappointed that there is such a problem with harassment crimes…at a Religious convention.

Thursday took us to the Santa Maria school again. Actually Professor Oomen took us there, which we weren’t too happy about, seeing as Professor Oomen is a terrible driver and there was a full gas cylinder rolling around unhindered in the boot of the car that threatened to squish Kara on more than one occasion. It was sports day at the Santa Maria school, which again meant no one needed to go to class. We had an “interactive session” at the beginning of the day, which involved upper classmen asking us questions and us trying to answer them. At first they were a little shy (turns out we scare children of ALL age groups) but once they started talking we couldn’t get them to stop. They wanted to know everything about us; our siblings, boyfriends, our favorite WWF wrestlers…. We also got a chance to play basketball with some of the kids. We were surprised to see that they knew most of the rules, and that some of them were actually pretty good at it. There was one giant from ninth standard who no one could guard, as he just reached over everyone and laid the ball in the net. Kara may have got a finger on his eyeball once, but that’s the closest she got to a blocked shot with that kid. She also resents kids telling her how to play basketball. It’s a good thing she’s not competitive or anything.

After lunch, we spent our time watching the upperclassmen do events including the 100, 200, shot-put, long jump, and javelin. Simultaneously, we attempted to ward off small children who were keeping us busy by requesting everything from drawings to our phone numbers. (Moms and Dads, if you receive a phone call in the middle of the night from a small child, HANG UP IMMEDIATELY). We made friends with some girls who requested that we return in traditional Kerala garb, namely saris, with our hair down and necklaces on. All the students tried to feed us the pure glucose powder that teachers understandably allow only on sports days. Kara declined, Mara most definitely did not.

On Friday we took a day trip on a house boat with KC Cherian, his wife, and his daughter-in-law Ana. We left early in the morning but didn’t end up on the boat until the afternoon. The time in between was spent eating breakfast and looking at the wedding album of a couple who apparently had invited blow-up dinosaurs to their reception. The reason for the delay in setting sail was the passing of the CPI[M] People’s March. Basically it’s a bunch of communists marching from one end of Kerala to the other; and for some reason, they were holding up traffic… on the river. The actual house boat trip was very relaxing; we also made an excellent purchase of some Jodhpur pants. They might be the most comfortable things in the world, and simultaneously the ugliest.

Saturday was easily one of the most bizarre days we’ve had here in India so far. We were scheduled to be at a wedding at 11, but had to make a quick detour at the headquarters for the Eastern Orthodox Church to visit Bishop Makarios’ grave, and Sunny had several important meetings because he’s so popular. During the course of one of these meetings, we found ourselves being led through very ornate, obviously private rooms, and then found ourselves being presented to a very old man on a couch. It was apparent that this was a very important man; as Sunny and Gracie were practically shaking with excitement as they approached him and leaned down to greet him. However, due to our location directly behind them, we were left totally in the dark as to the method of their greeting. We were able to deduce it was something with his hand and their faces (Kara was able to; Mara missed the boat completely on this one). When Kara went to greet him, she ventured a guess and brushed his hand across her forehead. As the general area was correct, no one caught her mistake. Mara then proceeded to go up and shake the man’s hand (to be fair, at least hers was an established mode of greeting). At this point, a priest standing a little to the side tactfully suggested to Mara that she should do the customary greeting of kissing his hand. Ah, so close. Mara finds comfort in the fact that she actually got to repair her mistake; Kara lives in quiet shame. Upon exiting, we learned that this was the head Cathlicate of the Eastern Orthodox Church… for the entire world. Yup, that’s right, this man is the pope to 300 million people, the largest Christian group second only to Catholics… and we totally botched it. Sunny and Gracie view this as entertaining enough to cancel out their disappointment at forgetting to document the event by taking a photo.

Due to this little fiasco, we arrived at the wedding a little on the late side… an hour late, to be exact. As soon as we arrived, the bride’s mother literally dragged us up directly behind the bride and groom, which was in the direct line of all the cameras. The bride and groom must have spent the whole ceremony wondering what was going on behind them that was more interesting than the actual wedding ceremony. When the ceremony was over, we made a quick escape out a side door to recuperate. However, the bride and groom’s parents found us and arranged for a whole new set of wedding photos to be taken so we could be included. The general public thought this was a great opportunity for them as well to take pictures, so behind the actual photographers there was a swarm of relatives with their camera phones. We have recently found out that the priest was sorely disappointed that he didn’t get a photo with us as well, and has since requested of the bride’s mother that she bring us back to the church for a picture, or he will come to our house. We are taking this as a serous threat, and are taking action to head off any approaching house calls. Things didn’t quiet down after this either. Because of a lack of seating and our late arrival for the reception, there wasn’t a place for the four of us to sit down and eat. Never mind that, the catering staff set up an entirely separate table just for us off to the side of everything else. Our every need was attended to by a host of incredibly hot waiters, so this made up for the wedding videographer coming over and videotaping us eating food. Westerners eating with their hands are obviously something of a novelty here. We can just hear the happy couple twenty years from now… “Oh look, here are our vows, and here are those Americans trying to eat with their hands! How cute!”

On our way home, we stopped by Gracie’s favorite textile shop. The clerks have been asking Gracie about us ever since we made our first stop there a month ago, so they were very happy to see us. So happy, that one even ran out and brought us back Pepsi’s. This is now our favorite shop in all of India. Another plus-Mara is gathering Indian boyfriends left and right. In addition to the Tamil Nadu boyfriend and the boy who casually proposed to her in Kovalam, a flirty employee at the textile shop requested she stay and sell clothes with him. He and the other clerks are very good at tricking us into buying things; we went in looking for shawls and left with blankets, churidars, and a few shirts. Just doing our part in stimulating the economy.

On Sunday we went to Kottayam for our lessons as usual. This time however, we were accompanied not only by Jose but also our neighbor Presanthe who drives his own cab. Jose’s car is in the shop so he hired another driver for us and rode along to make sure everything went okay. On our way home, Jose needed to make a grape stop, so he hopped out of the car in the middle of a fruit market and told us to stay there and he’d be right back. As soon as Jose was out of sight, Presanthe slid over into the driver’s seat, started the car up, and drove away. At this point, we began a serious discussion about whether or not we were being kidnapped. We arrived at the conclusion that even if we weren’t, we would make easy victims for kidnappers, as we just sat there and waited to see what would happen. It turned out to be rather anti-climactic. Presanthe just needed to drop something of for Sharon at Gracie’s family house, and Jose knew about the detour before he left. At least, this is what we hope it was, it could have still been a trial run for the actual abduction. Either way, Jose and Presanthe bought us ice cream on the way home for being such good sports for whatever it was that was happening.

On Monday, we ducked out of all our responsibilities and had our first total free day since January and our third free day total. We went for a walk and met our neighbor Thomas, who is responsible for all of the drunken rambling and yelling we hear at night. It was nice to finally put a face to the voice. That night we talked about our Big Problem and tried to convince Sunny and Gracie to come with us to Bangalore, their hesitancy another symptom of the Big Problem.

Tuesday we were in the school again. Mara had to coerce 7th standard into singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Kara, as they usually don’t sing for a birthday unless there is a candy reward involved and we had forgotten the candy. The day went pretty smoothly which means we actually taught a few of the younger classes instead of merely trying to control them. 1st standard learned a few sentences about the sun and 2nd standard had a brief lesson about insects. Our absolutely favorite 2nd standard student, Ashwin told both of us “Beautiful churidar. Beautiful body also.” We aren’t sure what to think about this but are both sure that he will grow up to be a total ladies’ man. After school, we purchased train tickets to Bangalore and had Sunny arrange for us to take a rickshaw into the nearby town Ranni for one of our first excursions completely unsupervised. We bought original Pepsi, Tang and some cookies for Kara’s birthday. Upon returning we helped in the birthday dinner preparations. This included helping Sunny cut beef on a knife he held between his toes (pictures forthcoming), and frying up cauliflower and basmati rice. Kara was surprised to receive two gifts; an Indian style steel plate and cup, and a cake. Indian tradition requires that the first bites of cake should be fed to one another for good luck and we delighted in holding true to this custom. Kara considers this night absolutely perfect in every way.

We were back at the hospital on Friday. We got Malayalam lessons from the German nun and a particularly good spirited Jobi, who was dancing and even singing the snake boat song for us. The doctor who is always very concerned about our meals was similarly invested in the outcome of the India-New Zealand cricket match. He taught Kara the rules of the game (Mara was unable to make it past the information that the sticks are called cricket wickets) in between shouts toward the TV. It was a bad day for the India cricket team, so there was a lot to yell at.

Little adventures:

We found out Sunny is allergic to fertilizer. This is a shame, as he owns a fertilizer shop.

Sunny set a wasp’s nest on fire.

The man in Josco’s Jewelry requested us to sing a song. We are wondering if “Can you sing us a song?” is one of those phrases in English that everyone in India is required to know.

Mara: “I spend far too much time naked in India.”

Sunny tried unsuccessfully to put on a seatbelt on the way to the wedding. After trying to put the waist part around his neck, Kara leaned forward and helped him figure it out while Gracie and Mara rolled around the backseat laughing. "Rolled around" is actually pretty literal here, as there are no seatbelts in the back and our driver is kind of crazy.

Mara and Kara and the Tamil Boyfriends

2009-02-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Dr. Thomas finally granted us an audience last Sunday and we were able to have our first real lesson with him. Monday was a very agreeable day at school; we love our schedule for that day. We think sixth standard might be slightly obsessed with us, but they’re still a lot of fun. We have a standing appointment every Monday during eighth period to play soccer with them, and we haven’t missed one yet. Also, we may have discovered why so many teachers have been absent and why the kids sometimes act like they are absolutely insane. The actual principal has been in America for three months visiting his daughter, and he finally came back on Monday. We were amazed how, when under his supervision, the kids nicely filed out of morning assembly instead of running around like chickens with their heads cut off (oh that reminds us of the chicken park… good times) and how quiet it actually is in class. Though the quietness could be attributed to it being mid-terms and everyone is trying to do some last minute studying.
Wednesday we went to Santa Maria Public School again. We toured the school and stopped at each classroom to be serenaded by the children and we may have contributed a song or two of our own, much to Kara’s distaste. Then we taught a workshop on how to make roses and sunflowers out of homemade playdough. We were surprised to notice major differences between this public school and the MMM public school. But apparently in India ‘public’ means ‘private,’ and ‘state’ means ‘public.’ We found out later that the students at the MMM school pay considerably lower tuition than the Santa Maria kids, whose tuition is most likely spent on an overabundance of craft supplies.

On Thursday we went to Kottayam for lessons with the professors. At some point during the morning, Mara discovered that her shirt was inside out and rashly decided that the ideal place and time for a quick change was in the corner of Dr. Thomas’ office while we were waiting for him to return. Luckily, this situation did not end nearly as bad as it could have. Later, on our way home, Jose pulled the car over and jumped out to get us a small lunch from a roadside stand. He then proceeded to throw the trash out the window when he thought we weren’t looking. Friday in the hospital was spent counting down the minutes until we would be leaving for Munnar.

We left the house around 1:30 on Saturday morning. We knew it was going to be a good trip when our driver Kochiman put in Boney M’s Christmas album. We believe the exact moment of realization was during ‘Feliz Navidad.’ We stopped for refreshments and freaked out some innocent bystanders on the side of the road, because for some reason there’s a guy who brews coffee and tea over a fire at 3 in the morning, and that’s where everyone hangs out in the middle of the night.

We pulled over at some point and slept because Kochiman was tired. Oh wait, everyone slept besides Mara, who played Game-Boy and listened to Kochiman talk in his sleep. She wishes she could understand what he was saying, but unfortunately it was in Malayalam. After rising and continuing on our way, we stopped by a small rest stop for some more coffee and tea. Kara had the choice between ‘Indian style’ and ‘Western style’ bathrooms. While in the bathroom (the western style one), Mara chose to lie deceptively close to the edge of the cliff, and Sunny, Kochiman, and the owner of the stop all reacted rather strongly. Also, Gracie made Kara climb over a fence to steal cardamom. Gracie is proving to be a bad influence in certain areas.

We arrived in Munnar around eight. The first hotel we stopped at Sunny and Kochiman went in to check for a room. On coming out, Sunny informed us, “They have rooms available, but they saw you.” This is referring to the fact that Indian people charge white people double or triple the amount they would normally charge. Don’t they know we’re only poor college students? We hid on the floor of the car to avoid further problems, and managed to book a hotel for a reasonable price. HOWEVER, we remain fairly certain (despite reassurance from Sunny and Gracie) that Kochiman slept in the back of his car. We’re not exactly sure why this would have happened. Theories abound.
We went up to our room to change, and when we met back in the lobby both Sunny and Gracie were actually wearing pants. Will wonders never cease? Not to give the impression that they never have anything on their legs, but normally Sunny wears a dhoti, and Gracie a sari.
We went to breakfast where we desperately tried to eat as fast as everyone else in India does. We are also very jealous of the ability of Indians to drink the scalding hot water, tea and coffee that are served with every meal. Kochiman is especially adept at downing his in less than five seconds without a trace of discomfort or pain. We went to the tea museum next, which was really cool because we knew nothing about tea and now we know slightly more. We watched a thirty minute movie about the history of Munnar and its tea plantations, which opened with a disclaimer saying, “The scenes presented do not represent real situations or characters.” This movie also featured highlights from the Amelie soundtrack. Copyright lawsuit pending. Then, we toured the factory, where an employee took an unusually personal interest in us and walked us through each step of the CTC oxidization process. Our tour ended with a free cup of tea served in paper cups. It was all we could do to keep these paper cups off the ground once their purpose was served. Indeed, we were not able to stop Sunny from pitching his over the side of the nearest cliff. Epic Fail.

After lunch, we took a scenic drive through the mountains to a place called Echo Point. On the way, we got some shopping done at the multiple stalls that lined certain parts of the road. Upon reaching Echo Point, we were only able to enjoy the scenery for a few minutes before people realized there were two white girls there. Why, in a tourist area, are we still such a spectacle you ask? Because most of the other tourists are Indian. Many are from areas which don’t get a lot of tourism, and therefore, white people. One mom and her three daughters came up to take a picture with us, and then it was like trying to stop an avalanche. A group of teenage boys from Tamil Nadu (a poorer state to the east of Kerala) surrounded us to get pictures, which wouldn’t have been a problem if they had stuck to the normal ‘taking a picture with strangers’ protocol and left their hands at their sides instead of creeping them up our hips, our backs and into our hair. Even after we thought we had escaped by grabbing Gracie’s hand and running, they found us and one of the boys shoved a pair of earrings into Mara’s hand. A decidedly appropriate Valentine’s Day gift. Rain prevented us from going to see the “Tall Firs of Munnar.” That’s right, pine trees are a novelty here. Instead we drove around for a while and ended up at a CSI church where Mara almost stepped on the grave of a revered priest (to be perfectly fair, it was in the aisle of the church), and Kochiman almost got the car wedged between the church and a nearby building.

At dinner that night we sat at a table next to some French tourists who were eating delicately with forks and spoons and delighted in showing off our ability to eat with our fingers. We went to bed early that night and we amazed at the fleece blankets on the hotel bed. Kochiman and Sunny purchased fleece hats because they thought it was so cold. For us, however, it felt wonderful.

The next day we got up early and spied to see if Kochiman was in the car. We were unable to make a confirmation. After breakfast we took a scenic route to Thekkady. Mara discovered a hole in the armpit of her shirt and did an encore of her shirt change performance from Dr. Thomas’s office, only this time in between the rows of a tea plantation. Upon arriving in Thekkady, we discovered we couldn’t visit the Periyar Wildlife Reserve as there had been a boating accident the previous day. However, we got a lot of shopping done, purchasing cinnamon, coffee, cardamom, and cloves. In the evening we went to a Kathakali dance, which is the traditional form of dance in Kerala. It involves elaborate makeup and costumes, but very little props or words. It is danced to drums and a vocalist, and most of the gestures are with the hands and eyes. We entertained Sunny/Gracie/Kochiman by pretending to be the wild banshee characters from the dance afterwards. This was just messing up our hair, putting some of it into our mouths, and then screaming. Really, you’ll just have to see the pictures. After dinner, in which we got our hands on some chocolate ice cream, we headed for home. In the car, we listened to Boney M, Shakira, and a ‘Burn It Up’ hip hop mix. These CDs were repeated enough that Kochiman and even Gracie could sing along with Britney Spear’s “Gimme More.” Also, the later it got, the louder Kochiman liked the music. So, by the end of the night, we were singing at the top of our lungs “Whenever/Wherever/We’re meant to be together.” We ended up getting home around midnight, and we were very tired but agree that we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect weekend.

Little Adventures:
-When Mara was walking around barefoot in Munnar, Gracie told her to “put those shoes back on your ugly white legs.” Gracie now denies this exchange ever happened.
-On the way to Thekkady, we stopped to observe the picking of pepper, and ended up receiving a few handfuls, along with a flower for Kara’s hair and a few cuttings for Gracie. People were just really excited to see us, besides maybe the motorcycle man who just laughed at us the entire time.
-Sunny kept getting phone calls during the weekend, and to protect his house told everyone he was in Kottayam. For two days straight.
-Waiters in restaurants physically fought over who would get to serve us.
-Gracie and Sunny discussed the possibility of putting ads in the Malayalam Manorama to find us good husbands. We think that they are merely joking, but one can’t be sure.
-Kara was forced to leave her business in a restaurant bathroom. Not only would the toilet not flush, she discovered after the fact that half of it* was on the sink corner, so it really wasn’t her fault (*The toilet, not her business).
-“Miss, your flower is very nice. You are very nice also.” - A waiter to Kara.
-Kara: “If that guy doesn’t stop staring at me, I’m going to punch him in the face.”
Mara (hits Kara): “Hey, non-violence!” (We apparently aren’t learning a lot from Dr. Manni…)
-“Are we supposed to put leaves through our bodies?” –Mara
-At a stop on the way home from Munnar, an elderly man approached the car and asked Mara for a pen. Upon receiving this pen, he replied, “Thank you!” and turned to leave. Luckily Kochiman apprehended this pen thief and, in an exchange that we do not fully understand, Gracie gave the man her pen but Kochiman had to prove it worked by writing on something, and the actual presenting of the pen had to be done by Mara.

Mara and Kara and Their Favorite Quotes From India

2009-02-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Mara: “Are these classifieds?”
Abraham: “No, those are dead people.”
-Mara asking about pictures in the Malayalam Manorama.
“Jose’s car is 60 percent… old.” –Sunny
“This is Sivi. He is half mad.” –Sunny, as he was introducing Sivi to us.
“That washbasin is not much healthy for to carrying you.” –Linoj to Mara, sitting on the sink
“Kara, I try to call you but you never answer.” –Linoj
Sunny: “One boy, one girl, go for picnic or something, I dunno. Stay together, what is this end?”
Kara: “Are you asking if they have sex?”

“Do not respond. This is more important.” –Sunny, when the phone rang in the middle of his back massage.
“As the American president Lincoln once said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” –Dr. Manni…
Gracie (about the maid): “She is speaking Tamil, no Malayalam. She is from Tamil Nadu.”
Kara: “So even if we learned how to speak Malayalam, we couldn’t talk to her?”
Gracie: “No. I was very disappointed.”
Mara: “So… how do you talk to her?”
Gracie: “…I dunno.”
Kara: “If I wanted to say ‘what is this in Malayalam,’ how would I say it?”
Jobi: (looks confused).
Kara: “Like, if I wanted to know, ‘what is this’?” (Points to box).
Jobi: “…This is… box.” Well THANKS Jobi. Glad to have you around.
Jose: (coming close to hitting birds with his car) “Heh Heh Heh dead bird”
Jose: (Then, seeing the horrified look on Mara’s face) “Oh”

Mara and Kara and the Search for the Duplicate Pepsi

2009-02-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

We have had an eventful past week… where to start…

Sunday we were invited to the monthly family meeting of the local chapter of the Y’s Men’s Club, of which Sunny is a proud member. The Y’s Men’s Club (not to be confused with Wise Men) operates something like the Lion’s Club, we think. As Sunny and Gracie are very emphatic that we are their children stand-ins for three months, we were asked to bless the company with a song, as all of the children who come to these meetings usually do some sort of song or dance routine. Originally we had planned to sing “America the Beautiful,” but we quickly realized that the thirty second song wasn’t going to cut it, seeing as all of the other kids had choreographed dance routines that lasted at least five minutes. After a panicked discussion between acts, we decided on “You Are My Sunshine.” However, as Kara was unaware that that song has actually verses, Mara took a hesitant solo on the verses and Kara joined in on the chorus. We hope we didn’t embarrass Sunny and Gracie too much. Afterwards, we ate a simple dinner of perotas and extra spicy chicken, and were invited to a variety of upcoming social events. More on this later.

The next few days at the school were hectic, to say the least. All the kids were preparing for Anniversary Day, and therefore were not in class. Ever. They were either “working on their dances” or playing soccer. Mara and Kara both got several chances to play with some of the boys. They initially questioned our ability as girls to play a sport, but we quickly proved to them we were quite able and tough. We both made the mistake of playing barefoot and sustained grievous injuries to our toes as there is no grass in India, just rocks. Liberal amounts of Neosporin were applied. We were put to work helping the children prepare various aspects of their skits for the big day. We helped the kindergarteners cut out foam letters and wrap them in gold paper for the “Welcome Dance.” We were also recruited to decode the lyrics of an English song that 4th standard was dancing to, entitled “The Butterfly Dance.” To the best of our knowledge, the lyrics are as follows: “Searching for a man/ All across Japan/ Just to find my summer summer rhyme/ Someone who is strong/ But still a little shy/ Come find me I need my summer rhyme/ (Chorus) Ayi Ayi Ayi/ I’m you’re little butterfly/ Wings that can move/ Make the colors in the sky.” There’s more, but we can’t believe what it actually says. Or rather, what we think it says.

After school we went into town to visit the post office and Sunny in his shop. We are trying to plan a trip to visit the glorious tea plantations of Munnar, and we had a few questions for him. We also were wondering where one can get a Pepsi in India (or “aerated water” as KC Cherian calls it). Here, Sunny sat us down and we had The Talk… about Duplicate Pepsi. (On a side note, Pepsi is all over India, but Coke? Practically non-existent. Coke, hello, you’re missing out on a big market over here, and when we say big market, we mean like a billion people). Apparently, there’s a big business here in collecting empty Pepsi bottles and sending them to a factory to be filled with Duplicate Pepsi. (“This is BIG crime!” says Sunny). Sunny assured us that even duplicate Pepsi would be offered at the shop across the street, but alas, it was not. Our quest for even the most duplicated Pepsi would have to continue.

Tuesday night we went to a Hindu convention in Kozhencherry. It is held on the dry bed of the river Pampa, the “Ganges of the South.” There are a variety of shops and food stalls set up, with a large pavilion set up at the end for worship. For a religious convention, this worship area was surprisingly bare of convention participates. Not that you needed to be in the pavilion to here what was going on; Indians seems to like their music and preaching deafeningly loud. Sunny and Gracie bought us sugar cane juice, which was amazing. We also had fried banana peppers and fried cauliflower, which are both much better than they sound. Sunny himself is partial to chili roasted peanuts. Walking through the crowd, especially in the thick parts, felt like being on parade. It’s easy to see the shock registering on the faces around us, they might as well be wearing a sign that says “What are two white girls doing at a Hindu convention?” We might have been mistaken for members of the Russian circus during the night. Don’t ask, we didn’t.

As a side note- Attention all American boys: We rather like the Indian custom of men of all ages holding hands and linking arms. We suggest you pick that up immediately. Show some affection boys.

Friday brought the day of the Big Anniversary Show. Since the program didn’t start until the afternoon, we lazed about all morning and had a long lunch with Gracie. She made us “smashed potatoes” which were amazing (our new craving is pizza). After lunch she helped us get into our uniform saris, which took a while. We then went down to the school to help the kids finish getting ready. We had been informed the day before that we were to also participate in the celebration (we suspect a certain Y’s Guy, C.P. Abrahams ratted us out, as he is also a member of the MMM school board). So when the event began, directly following the Bishop’s address and benediction we sang “If I Had A Hammer,” because there is nothing like a little Peter, Paul and Mary to make India more bizarre. To say the day progressed without a hitch would be more than a little optimistic, but the kids were excited to finally show off all their hard work (we are mostly excited to see how the school functions when it is not busy with dance rehearsals). The foam letters we made for the “Welcome Dance” turned out very nicely, even though at alternating points in the dance they either spelled “WELCOME” or “EMOCLEW.” Too bad ‘welcome’ isn’t a palindrome.

After this program, we traveled with Mr. KC Cherian to attend a rival Anniversary Day celebration put on by the Santa Maria school. This was one of the invitations we received at the Y’s Men’s Monthly Family Night. We can’t decide what moment best highlighted this event, the roller-skate Creation dance, the Compute-Box Head Dance (exactly what it sounds like, remarkably enough), or the snacks they served at intermission. We got home a little later than expected and were very tired all the next day.

Saturday we were again disappointed to hear that Dr. Thomas was unavailable. We suspect that he might hate us. Or fear us. On our way home, we stopped at a store to buy a broom (Gracie claims our purchase is not actually a broom because it is only to be used outdoors, and she requested an indoor broom) and we stumbled on what we suspect to be not Duplicate, but original Pepsi. Quest completed.

Returning home only long enough to eat lunch, we set off for the Konni Elephant Shed (apparently the only place in India where elephants are trained). Upon arrival, we found that ripping off foreigners can indeed be made official as long as there is a note on the price board that says “Double for Foreigners.” Nevertheless, we paid up and got to enter the compound and ride the elephants. The biggest surprise was finding that elephants are coated with course wiry hair. Who knew? So we rode around on the elephants behind a rather touchy-feely Mahout. It was fabulous. Gracie and Sunny refused to ride the elephant (so did the driver Jose, to our dismay) but they enjoyed petting and feeding them. Feeding consists of placing a sticky ball of rice and oats the size of a small child’s head directly into the throats of the elephants that stand, mouths open, waiting at the door of the Elephant Kitchen. This only cost us a few extra rupees into the pockets of the mahouts. We have now concluded that elephants are some of the best things ever and would bring one home if they wouldn’t put us just a little over the airlines’ luggage weight requirements.

On the way home from the elephant shed, we were delighted to make a few stops. The first was at the house of Sunny’s brother. His brother was not there but his mom was. She is the cutest 90-year old woman we have seen in India. While there, we were also able to frighten yet another small child to near tears. The second stop was at a chicken park, which unfortunately is not a place for chickens to run around and play. While Mara was excited when the friendly and bloody chicken butcher man let her hold one of the birds, Kara was more interested in the actually eradication (which, when done by the apprentice chicken butcher boy, was not a clean job). It was, at the very least, an interesting photo opportunity.

Little Adventures

-A priest pretended to punch Mara in the face.

-We saw a scarecrow that consisted of the wings of a crow tied together and hung from the ceiling. Because apparently crows are intelligent enough to comprehend this warning.

-Drunkards at the Hindi convention tried desperately to feed us peanuts.

-We learned all about the “wows” that made Gandhi so “lowing.” In India, the letter V makes only occasional appearances in the pronunciation of words. Dr. Manni is a classic example of this.

-When we adamantly refused to throw our trash on the ground, like everyone else does, Sunny let us know “Take it to the house, or take it back to America.” Kara jumped out of the car and picked up the trash that had already been thrown out the window. Well done Kara.

And with that, we conclude the report of our first month in India. Try as we might, we cannot fully convey our true experiences and how much fun we are having through words alone. You’d just have to be here.

Mara and Kara and Immediate Action

2009-01-31T07:54:00.000-08:00

It's been extremely hot here. We really miss the snow. It seems to be in the middle of a heat wave right now. At least, we're hoping it's a heat wave rather than a general trend that will go on until April. If it gets much hotter than this we're going to melt. It finally rained on Tuesday; actually, it poured. There isn't much rain normally during the dry season. Sunny and Gracie say that it will only rain a couple of times. We went and washed our clothes in the rain and also pseudo-showered. Mara stood underneath a pipe draining water off of the roof and drank some of it, but as she's been drinking the water anyways here and consuming salmonella-recalled peanut butter crackers, we figure that's the least of her worries. She also frequently forgets that she has a daily malaria pill to take.

We both got a little sick at different points of the week. Kara had a fever on Sunday, and then Mara didn't feel well on Thursday. It's actually very interesting how much we confuse people when we feel sick. Sunny, Gracie, and all the nuns at the hospital couldn't seem to get what "I don't feel good" means. What do people say when they're sick here? Obviously not whatever we have been telling them. Kara told Sunny she had a fever (he understood the word fever at least), and then she went and laid down on the porch before dinner. Sunny assumed the worst, and screamed "What happened?!" It took a while to convince him that no one was dying. Also, Kara cannot explain to anyone what the word "achy" means when referring to the super-hypersensitive feeling your skin gets that makes you restless. Mara doesn’t get either, but her elbow aches. She also woke up the other morning with her eyebrow hurting. "I got punched in the face when I was sleeping!" she explains. We hope it is this rather than a symptom of a bizarre disease. Mara does at least; Kara hopes she catches whatever Mara has.

We went to our first Indian wedding on Monday. It was held in a very famous church that also serves as the final resting place of St. Gregorious, and a few other random people. No one at the wedding seemed especially concerned with watching the ceremony, and instead there was a constant stream of people walking in and out of the sanctuary to go pray at the bed of St. Gregorious, held in an enormous glass case. (We have no idea either). We both wore our saris. We were worried that they were too fancy, but then realized if anything we were underdressed, as the rest of the women had 100% silk saris, and a million pieces of gold jewelry. Gracie says the reason why white people don't where jewelry is because we're so pale and it looks bad on us. We have other theories. Needless to say, two white girls at an Indian wedding are going to get stared at, and we were not disappointed. We weren't yet to the point of mortification until the wedding photographer noticed us, and then got a lot of candid shots. Of us. We continued from there to the reception. The catering staff saw that we were white and brought us silverware which we proudly ignored. We're getting very adept at consuming with our hands. The dinner was spent with Sunny's constant urging to "eat fast" and with us trying to control the amount of food put onto our plates. The bride and groom walked in during the meal. The bride had a humongous gold necklace. Gracie says that she'll never have occasion to where it again, but doesn’t pass it onto her children. She just now has a three pound gold necklace to worry about. The bride and groom don't eat at the reception, the majority of the time is spent waiting for everyone else to get done eating, and then they take pictures with the guests. We were forcefully included in these pictures despite our best protests. Ah well, that's something to show your grandkids in forty years. "Hey look kids, we had to white girls at our wedding!" We also got invited to Kochin to stay with the bride's father. So that will be an adventure.

Tuesday we went back to the school and were to unveil to the fifth standard our epic play, "King Midas and the Golden Touch" which they will perform on Friday for Annual Day. Don't be fooled, this is not a masterpiece, but more a three minute version of everything we could remember about King Midas. They seem to be excited about it, despite the gaping plot holes and lack of speaking roles. We haven't worked out yet how to turn people to gold onstage. Good thing that kids have great imaginations and the general public doesn’t understand spoken English.

Wednesday we went to the hospital. Our visit was highlighted by meeting an anesthesiologist who informed Kara that because her blood type is a+, she has a higher risk of getting ovarian and stomach cancer. For those of you who worked at the nature center with her this summer, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. He also "SCOFFED" when we told him that we both played football. Girls don't play sports apparently. Silly us. Friday at the hospital brought a film crew from Shalom TV who were filming a documentary on the head priest of the ward. Our friend Linoj managed to convince us that they were actually there to film us because we're white and they go around looking for "peculiar things." The nurses did nothing to dispell this fear, as no one was explaining what was going on. The truth came out quickly however, and we were beyond relieved. We also began teaching people Spanish and French (what little we know). We also know how to count to ten in Arabic now, so that'll come in handy. Our friend Linoj actually shows a bit too much interest in our whereabouts, which we think with more to do with showing off his new American friends than it does anything else. Kara even got a chance to talk to one of his friends on the phone.

That night after dinner, we discovered the true reason for Gracie's constant back pain. While Kara was under the impression that she fell down the stairs, the real story is that she fell off the roof feeding chickens. She landed on the chicken feed pail, and although it saved her life, it is now barely recognizable. We know this because they kept it, and showed it to us. She broke two vertebrate in the fall. While this is obviously a very serious subject, we were unable to keep a straight face when Sunny explained his part of the story: "I here BIG NOISE outside. Sharon, cries. Sharma, cries. Me... IMMEDIATE ACTION!" The memory of his retelling the story is something we will hold near to our hearts for many years to come. Gracie is alright today but has to take medication for her back pain and also calcium pills. This incident explains the severe lack of chickens around the house. Sunny: "Chickens, THROW OUT."

Other little adventures:
-a man tied a rope around his feet and then climbed to the top of the coconut trees to get us a coconut.

-the same man also harvests the family pepper by climbing a "ladder," which is really just a bamboo pole with stubs on the side that he leans up against the tree.

-Kara ate a chicken heart. And very much wishes she hadn't.

-The spiders that used to occasionally occur in our house our now permanent fixtures. We've given up trying to name them. One ran across Mara's hand when she disturbed it's slumber in the book case. Bleck.

-there's a very odd THING on the side of our door. It appears to be small bug like things making a long brown tube. Although we are disgusted, we are even more curious and have decided to let it stay.

We are having an awesome time here. Hope everyone is doing great back home!
-Mara and Kara

Mara and Kara and the Holy Roller

2009-01-23T05:40:00.000-08:00

We would like to apologize for taking so long to update this blog. We finally got hooked up to the internet, but it is dial up and therefore painfully slow. We will try to update this at least once a week in the future.

We are now in Ayroor staying with our host family Sunny and Gracie, and they are the best host family that we could ask for. Gracie makes us lots of good food. We like the chapattis and perotas, and Mara enjoys the freshly squeezed pineapple juice every morning. Sunny is always looking out for us. He also split open some coconuts with a machete for us and showed us how to drink the coconut milk out of a straw. They took us shopping Monday evening to get churidars and saris. We will get a chance to wear our saris to a wedding of a family friend next week (we will be sure to take lots of pictures).

The first thing we noticed about India is the interesting wildlife. The first night in Ayroor Mara found a spider in the book shelf that was the size of her hand, and promptly named it Big Daddy. After Big Daddy met its demise through our broom-wielding driver Kochiman, we found Big Daddy Number Two on our dinning room table feasting on plantains. It was bigger and hairier than its deceased predecessor; we believe it to be a different species. Big Daddy Number Two lived in Kara’s bathroom for a few days and has since vanished. Needless to say, we are constantly on the lookout for it’s inevitable return. Also, Alfred Hitchcock must have taken his inspiration for his story “The Birds” from the crows here. They are large, loud and aggressive. We have developed a fear of being murdered by birds… birdered. Mara slept on the coach one night after a cockroach disappeared into the folds of her bed. As far as plant life goes, our host family utilizes the coconut, jack fruit, black pepper, curry, chili, papaya, and plantains that all grow around the house.

We were fortunate enough to participate in a procession organized by our host family’s church for it’s 97th anniversary. The procession included, but was not limited to:
-half naked tribal drummers with choreographed dance moves
-a rag tag band consisting of clarinets, pipes, flutes, some brass, and several bass drums.
-a jeep, affectionately dubbed “The Holy Roller” by Mara, tricked out with Christmas lights (the multi-colored blinking kind), photos of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and St. Ignacious, several speakers blaring out all of your favorite Eastern Orthodox hits, and a generator.
-a string of lights powered by the Holy Roller’s generator. Not only were these lights the long fluorescent tube kind usually reserved for use above ceiling tiles, each one was supported by a man carrying it upright tied onto a stick/pole, and were strung together with electrical wiring. We were further impressed to witness a mid-procession light bulb change without the light holder missing a beat.
As we marched along side the drummers, we held candles that went out frequently and when lit melted hot wax onto our hands and clothes. We passed many driveways decorated with a shrine to Jesus or the Holy Mary. At each of these driveways a priest would bless the family around the shrine using an enormous gold cross. Oh, and there were fireworks.

We began the school program on Monday and it has turned out to be an absolutely insane situation. We spend a lot of time with the kindergarteners which is nice because the teacher lets us get involved, but doesn’t completely strand us with the students (who don’t actually know English) like some of the other teachers seem to think is appropriate. That is, when we even see the teachers. Where are the teachers? Most of the classes we go to have a “free period” or “physical training,” both of which are code for “no teacher.” So it ends up being us in a room full of screaming 2nd standards who steal our purses, or us with 8th standards who try to teach us bad Malayalam words. And no matter what, wherever we go in the school a crowd of screaming children surround us calling “Miss, Miss” and asking us curious questions like “what is your mobile number?” or “what is you grandmother’s name?”

Our practicum at the Pushpigari Hospital is different but no less bizarre. On our first day, we were kidnapped by a lonely nun who took us out to lunch and then to her convent. The day ended with a different nun forcing male nurses to teach us Malayalam while she laughed at us. Today, we attempted to interact with several of the patients who also laughed at our Malayalam attempts. And it turns out the nun who laughed at us is actually very nice. She can also do a fantastic German accent in her broken Malayalam/English. Each day at the hospital ends with us taking a walk to the bus station (we are supervised by a reluctant nurse each time) and put on a bus to make the hour long journey home. But this is no ordinary bus ride. Remember playing sardines as a kid? Take that game, multiply it by ten and hurl it down hilly roads at high rates of speed. Kara was forced to lean out the window for part of the ride today.

The bus rides are almost as entertaining as when we travel in a cab with our personal driver Kochiman. He drives just as crazy as everyone else on the road but he does it 3 times faster. We asked him if there were any driving laws and he said “they’re more suggestions.”

Let’s see… what kind of other zany little adventures have we had?
-Both of us shower by using a cup to draw water from a bucket and pouring it over our heads. Oh, and there is no hot water. Actually, there is rarely water in the taps at all. Flushing the toilet is a game of chance.
-Sunny and Gracie have three dogs, one of which sounds like a cow or dinosaur and frequently escapes to come dig in our garbage.
-Kara almost fainted when she learned of an upcoming carbon sequestration project to take place in the general area.
-We found out that the peanut butter crackers that sustained us the first few days here are being recalled due to a salmonella outbreak. Whoops!
That’s all for now; hope everyone is enjoying the Michigan weather! –Mara and Kara

Days at the beach

2009-01-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

Namaste!

We have spent the last few days enjoying ourselves at the beach and getting used to the heat. A lot of the time we have been hiding out in the hotel doing crossword puzzles, reading and trying to stay out of the Indian sun. But when it cools off a little, we venture outdoors. The beach outside our hotel is nice and private, but just down the road there is a more populated and touristy area. The people there are very friendly. We have met a few people who are eager to talk to us about anything including American politics, football, movie stars. Everyone we meet seems very well informed and welcoming. Most also really love to take pictures of us, or even with us. Some times it feels like being in a zoo!
Today we watched men catching fish by dropping the nets from boats then climbing ashore to pull them in. The boats they use are made of hand carved wood and take ten men to paddle them. The fish they caught were not nearly as impressive. We went for a swim in the ocean, which was very fun except for the extremely salty water and a few jellyfish that kept hanging around. Afterwards, we went to the tourist beach and climbed up on some big rocks to watch the sun set over the ocean. It was a perfect day, and also a perfect send off. We leave tomorrow morning to travel to our host family's house and meet the staff at the school where we will be working. We hope our experiences there are as nice as they were here.
We will try to post some pictures soon, preferably when there is a more reliable internet source.

Beyond Exhaustion

2009-01-09T15:02:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the International Airport in Dubai! We have one more flight into Trivandrum where we will be very glad to get to the hotel to sleep and shower.
Our first flight into London borderlined miserable and was only salvaged by an Alan Rickman movie shown towards the end of the 10 hour trip. Neither of us were able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
The second flight from London into Dubai was the exact opposite! We were given hot towels (that we didn't know what to do with), personal tv sets (that we didn't know how to operate), and a very complete dinner (that we couldn't identify). Kara recalls a seaweed noodle something with shrimp.
So now we are in the enourmous Dubai airport waiting for our last plane to begin boarding. We hope that this flight is comparable to the second one, but either way we are just excited to step out into the 90 degree weather.

Mara and Kara

32 Days Out!

2008-12-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

Flights confirmed. We fly out January 8 from Detroit and should arrive in Trivandrum, India on the 10th. Mara has the window seat, but we might switch. We get to stay in a fantastic, glamorous resort for a few days in order to get acclimated. Not really. The condition of the hotel is unknown, but we do know for sure that it is right next to the ocean, so it can't be so bad, right?

The plan is this: once we get to the village of Ayroor we will be splitting our time between the local school, a nearby hospital, and classes at the Mahatma Gandhi University. We also hope to spend many a weekend exploring the sights of the province of Kerala. At the top of the list are our mutual desires to ride an elephant and visit a tea plantation.

Another objective is to visit Mumbai and Kashmir...just kidding. We promise not to stray near any possible terrorist activity. We completely understand anyone who expresses jealousy over these tenative arrangements in a potentially unstable, third-world country.

Feel free to check back later for updates, but we are guessing things won't get interesting until after the 8th!