El Ma'am

August is off to a great start.  With five days of teaching here under my belt, I can (hopefully) safely say that I'm going to enjoy teaching here and will definitely learn a lot.  I'm teaching at a school that is part of a consortium of schools here in Delhi, called Navyug, located in central Delhi on Mandir Marg.  In Hindi, mandir means 'temple' and marg means 'street.'  The street is aptly named because there are two Hindu temples on it. One, called Lakshmi Narayan, is very large and is located across the street from my school; the other is called Kali Bari, and is smaller but apparently quite popular.  To get to school, I walk out to the main road and flag down an auto rickshaw to take me to the metro station.

[The task of getting an auto to take me at a reasonable price first thing in the morning is easier said than done. Two out of the four days I have been at work, it has been pouring rain.  The first time it rained I got lucky, but the second time I stood and waited in the downpour for 25 minutes before running up to a high school student who managed to nab a free auto and pleading with him to drop me off at the metro.  The first day of school was the first day of the major power outage, which affected my daily life in that the metro was shuttered and closed when we showed up.  I took an auto for 100 rupees (on the meter!) and ended up being one of the first teachers to arrive, as everyone else was also stuck because of the metro.]

I then travel nine stops from Haus Khaz metro station to Rajiv Chowk, in Connaught Place, the main metro hub in central Delhi.  I switch from the yellow line to the blue line, travel one stop and emerge at Ramakrishna Ashram Marg, an area that straddles the boundary between New Delhi and Old Delhi. The first thing you see when you get off the metro is dozens of bicycle rickshaws eagerly awaiting your arrival. I always feel conflicted about the cycle rickshaws, and have yet to take one, because the thought of paying someone so little to do such a strenuous, backbreaking job feels wrong to me.  On the other hand, I know these guys are lucky to have a job, and would jump over each other at the chance to accept my fare.  These quotidian dilemmas are a part of my life here, not least because of the striking dichotomy between those who have and those without.  In any case, because I am either running late or it is pouring rain, I take a second auto from the metro station to school, about a kilometer or two.

Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge,
adorns the entrance to the school

When I enter the school, it seems that every child in the building has to come up to me individually or in the pairs they often walk in, to say "Good morning, Ma'am."  The words 'sir' and 'ma'am' are possibly the most overused words in the average Indian's English vocabulary, and when this year is over, I can almost guarantee that it will be my least favorite word in the language.  To avoid confusion, I told the kids my name was El, which immediately transformed into ElMa'am (all one word).  There is such an air of formality within the school, from the way the kids greet you to the fact that they are conditioned never to enter a room without asking for permission, even if they just left to use the bathroom.  It completely throws me off to be constantly interrupted by kids wishing to enter their own classroom, when I have only been in the room a grand total of three minutes.

On the first day, I was met by Sudha, my coordinating teacher, an English teacher who looks about 30ish, who is very sweet and very quiet.  I went with her to her classes that day; each teacher generally teaches six out of eight periods a day.  Sudha was extremely helpful, making it clear to the kids that I was to be respected and regarded the same as herself or any other teacher.  Some of my fellow ETAs were not so lucky, given no time to observe and a schedule of back-to-back classes to teach by themselves on the first day.  The other teachers were very nice too, asking me about myself and patiently pronouncing their names several times until I could say it right.  The first teacher I met, other than Sudha, was Sushama ("Sooshma"), an English teacher whose father had been in the foreign service and had lived in Ireland and Trinidad as a child.  The day began with an assembly, which was signaled by a student beating a bass drum and each class lining up on the grass outside the school.  The children sang songs, presumably patriotic, and there was also a short prayer for which each student closed their eyes and placed their hands together.

The school is structured around three identical courtyards.
The hallways are all open balconies with green space in the center

There are aspects of the school that remind me very much of the school I attended while living in Israel as a child.  The long periods of time during which kids are left completely to their own devices, the school layout and its use of outdoor space, the sometimes harsh manner with which teachers deal with children, the kids' sense of freedom and cockiness that accompanies a lot of independence from an early age.  While I have not personally witnessed it at my school, some of my fellow ETAs describe some harrowing incidents of teachers physically punishing students, smacking them across the face or on their hands.  The kids are very physical with each other, both affectionately and aggressively.  The other day a boy slapped another boy's face so hard, I thought the sound was loud enough to reverberate in the room.  Another aspect of the classroom dynamic that is very difficult for me to adjust to is the use of peer monitors.  Every class has one or two students who are designated "monitors" and are placed in charge of the students in lieu of teachers.  They take it upon themselves, as it seems they are expected to, to discipline other students, yelling at them and hitting them at times. From my perspective, these monitors are often extremely disruptive to what I'm trying to do, in that they feel rules don't apply to them.  They are often the ones out of their seats and walking around the classroom during lessons, which encourages other students to do the same and leads quickly to chaos.  They are good kids, but many of these monitors seem to enjoy their power too much.  It seems at times that teachers and authority figures pit kids against each other, encouraging them to tell on each other for the most trivial transgressions and rewarding some at the expense of others.  The truth is that as frustrating as it can be to maintain order in the classroom, after working at Clear View, the naughty kids, the ones that demand more attention due to inappropriate or disruptive behavior, are generally my favorites.

The kids are so enthralled by my presence--they swarm around me when I walk down the halls to the point that I feel like I am being followed by a camera-less paparazzi.  It's a little awkward when other teachers witness this, as the kids can't get enough of me just because I am a novelty.  At least once a day, I will be walking towards the staff room for a free period and a pair or group of kids will take my hand and coerce me into teaching their class during their (otherwise unsupervised) free period. I can't go anywhere without kids coming up to me asking, "When will you be in our class, Ma'am?" But what really drives me nuts is the CONSTANT hum of chatter throughout the lesson or activity--there is such a different understanding of respect and attention here that I really think is a cultural difference.  In their extraordinary eagerness to learn every single fact about me, they bombard me with questions: What food do you like?  What are your hobbies? What singer do you like?  Who is your favorite Bollywood hero?  What is your father's and mother's names?  Do you have brothers or sisters? What dancers do you like? What do you think of India? What Indian food do you like? What's your favorite color?  When is your birthday? How many ounces did you weigh when you were born? OK I've never gotten that last one, but the others are questions I have by now answered a million and a half times.  It's not that I mind answering the questions, but when I allot time for questions, there is little patience for waiting for me to call on them.  The second a kid finishes asking his or her question, ten other students stand up with hands raised, saying "Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am." I try to tell them that they don't have to say my name, that I will call on them, that I want to hear from them but can't when everyone talks at once, but the thrilling possibility of two seconds of my attention right then is overpowering.  It's hard to get mad at them for being so enthusiastic, but it's absolutely maddening and I find myself yelling all day just to be heard over the echoing din.  When I do call a kid out, whether for smacking their desk neighbor or for being intractably chatty, I am often met with the most adorable body language that ever was, and it's so hard not to smile or laugh while reprimanding a student.  Just as nodding your head means 'yes' in the States, when children are sorry they grab their earlobes and shake their heads, saying "mafkijiye, mafkijiye" (forgive me, forgive me). The sight of contrite boys grabbing their ears is enough to make my heart melt, and my frustration turns into wanting to give them a hug.  

Here's one bulletin board I can't imagine
seeing in an American school!

I have pretty much given up hope of learning even a majority of the students' names.   My schedule is such that I see each class in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades twice a week, and each 9th and 10th grade class once a week.  Each grade has three classes of 30-40 students. According to my calculations, this means that I will be teaching 525 students, multiplying five grades by three classes by 35 students.  525! The kids laugh their little heads off as I struggle to pronounce their names correctly, whether I say it completely wrong or just put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Some names are ridiculously common and I usually have at least one if not three or four in each class.  Some common boys' names are: Akash, Amit, Manish, Gaurav, Anubhav, Yash, Karthik, Hrithik (pronounced "Ritik"), and Jatin.  Some common girls names are: Simran, Anjali, Khushboo, Kritika, Siksha (I always want to say shiksa), and Maansi. Even if I didn't have so many students for so little time, the names are so unfamiliar to me that it's taking me forever to learn even a few of them.  Also, did I mention how many more boys there are than girls?  It's crazy.  It's striking to note the difference in temperament between the sixth grade girls, who are outgoing and are often the first to respond, and the 10th grade girls who generally keep their personalities quiet and speak when spoken to.  Our instructor who teaches out English Language Teaching classes at USIEF tells me this is not a coincidence, that the transition period from age 10 to 15 is when girls start to really respond to the expectations placed on them by much of Indian society. The girls are beautiful, with thick black braids down their backs and arms ornately decorated with henna, following the recent holiday.  Though shy in the formal classroom setting, as soon as the bell rings they circle around me with questions and things they want to share with me.

As with any teaching job, sometimes I want to give myself a concussion just to avoid having to teach one more class. But most of the time I really like it, and all of the time I am learning, learning, learning.  I wonder if there is any job in the world where you learn more than you do as a teacher.  And really, the more I travel, the more I recognize that at some point, kids are kids.  They love a good laugh and want your attention and need people they respect to tell them they're okay. I have tons more to say about my teaching experience so far, but for now I will leave you with this lovely experience that my roommate Hannah had the other day.  Her class was completely out of control, kids screaming, paper airplanes flying, the works.  She tried and failed several times to settle them down, or even just get their attention, but after 20 minutes of complete and utter mayhem, she resigned herself to standing in the front of the room and covering her ears. Suddenly, a glimmer of hope: a senior teacher was in the hall and saw her standing amidst the chaos.  She came in, approached Hannah, and said, "So...do you have any brothers or sisters?" Because what better time to make small talk than in the middle of a classroom full of hyperactive noisy kids.  Am I right?

Rishikesh: The Adventure Journey

Last week, as we lamented the end of our freedom before our teaching positions begin, we made a group decision to hit the road.  Even though we've been here a month, we have not left Delhi at all, and being in the city all the time was really getting to us.  The smog, the horn honking, the dust, the crowd, the heat--we needed to get away.  There's a really awesome French guy named Thibault in our Hindi class who is our age and has been in India for two years; he has been EVERYWHERE and knows a ton about this country and recommended going to Rishikesh.  The train was all booked so we got bus tickets, reserving four "sleeper" tickets overnight for the way there, and regular seats on the way back.  At 10PM on Friday we got off the metro at Kashmere Gate, a typical bus station area (read: sketchy and gross), asked for directions and found the random street corner where the bus was waiting.  When we stepped on the bus and saw what "sleeper" meant, we asked to make sure it was real.  While I had been expecting seats like on Argentine long distance buses that lean all the way back, these sleepers consisted of what would have been the overhead luggage storage, just enlarged to fit people.  In addition, each compartment was for two people; that's two people lying down in the width of two bus seats.  We got cozy, managed to sleep a little, and arose when the bus stopped at 5AM in the middle of a field in what we were told was Haridwar.  While we had toyed with the idea of staying in Haridwar instead of continuing to Rishikesh, Hannah made an executive decision upon getting off the bus in a random field to keep going to Rishikesh.  One hundred rupees and a 500 meter auto ride later, we got out at the "bus station" which consisted of a giant parking lot that smelled mostly of urinals full of buses that looked like they would have been antiques in 1983.  Almost immediately I was approached by a boy of about 10 begging--he asked for money and when I said no, he pointed to the chai walla so I went over and bought him a chai and some bread, which he eagerly dipped in the chai and ate hungrily.  When he reached to take the chai from me, I noticed that three of the fingers on his right hand were missing above the middle knuckle.  I keep remembering the image of his maimed hand, thinking about him drinking his chai in the bus station and wondering what the rest of his day was like.
In any case, after standing around for about 15 minutes listening to guys yell out place names and destinations and not coming any closer to finding a bus to Rishikesh, Patricia found a jeep driver looking for passengers.  For 100 rupees each, we got in the jeep for the hour ride to Rishikesh.  After about 10 minutes, the car stopped for more passengers. The four of us were already squished in the seat, three men plus the driver were in front, and four guys got in the back, a space intended for two men at a push.  When a fifth man still needed to get in, he tried to get in on my side and sit on my lap!  I freaked out and Hannah started yelling at the driver "Bilkul nehin!" (Absolutely not!). He went around the back and rode the entire way with his feet in the vehicle and his head and torso sticking out the open back door.  We arrived in Rishikesh and spent an hour searching in vain for an alleged guest house that Thibault had recommended we stay in, partly because we were somewhere completely different from where we thought we were.  We walked past dozens of cows, tens of holy men, and more animal crap than you would need to fertilize the state of Kansas.  Exhausted and cranky, we gave up the search, had breakfast and took an auto to one of the hostels listed in the guidebook, which, of course, was full. Not to be deterred, we checked in to another hotel right up the road (way cheaper than the first and super quiet!), where we promptly collapsed and slept for two hours.
At around 11:00 we left the hotel and wound our way through the bazaar and across the footbridge, trying to find the hiking trail ending in a waterfall.  Again we took a jeep to the trail and soon found ourselves completely surrounded in lush greenery, breathing clean, humid air and feeling so grateful to be out of Delhi.  When we got to the waterfall we took off our pants and immediately jumped in.  I still think that water was magical or something because the euphoria and relief I felt under that waterfall was indescribable.  It was such a release of stress, so nice to cool off and be in nature.  With no hope of drying off in the humidity, we dressed and walked down the mountain, returning to the town by jeep.
After we had lunch, we ambled through the main streets from one footbridge to another, had some chai, and enjoyed being able to walk, take our time, and not have to be anywhere else. When we reached the second bridge, Tangi and Patricia wanted to sit and relax in a coffee shop and Hannah and I kept walking, going to the ghat, dipping our feet in the river, buying candles for pooja (prayer) and releasing them in bowls made of leaves and filled with marigolds and rose petals. We wandered through the ashrams, with their well-kept gardens and mantras written in sanskrit along the benches and walls.  At one ashram we stumbled upon some kind of prayer service, a room full of people singing.  As the sun started to sink, I remembered that the guide book had mentioned a sunset ceremony at one of the ashrams on the river.  Hannah and I went and sat by the ghat, where Patricia and Tangi met us, and we listened for an hour to beautiful music sung by young men and boys of the ashram, dressed in loose saffron-colored robes and playing Indian hand drums.  We watched the river rise and the sun set, and at the end of the service people placed their pooja candles in the river and we watched the float along the current.
Afterwards we were exhausted from such a long day and wanted to grab a small dinner before returning to the hotel and passing out.  We went to a well-known restaurant that had a menu with a little bit of everything, and I had the following interaction with a waiter:
Me: I'll have a grilled cheese sandwich.
Waiter: We have no cheese.  But you can order a grilled vegetable sandwich!
Me: What comes on that?
Waiter: It is bread and grilled vegetables.
Me: OK, but what kind of vegetables?
Waiter: Tomatoes, capsicum, carrot...
Me: OK I will have that, then.
What came out parading as my sandwich was white sandwich bread filled with warm shredded cabbage and carrots--like cole slaw sans mayo, or what would normally fill a vegetable spring roll.  I reluctantly bit into it, and found, to my dismay, a layer of cheese!  I was so sad/mad at being robbed of my grilled cheese, to be replaced by warm cole slaw between bread! When I asked the waiter about it, he bobbled his head and said "yes, but it is only a little bit of cheese. (!!!!)
We took an auto home, and, after I killed a few spiders for Hannah's peace of mind, went to sleep.
We returned to Haridwar the next morning, spent a frantic half hour trying desperately to find the random street corner where the bus was parked, and were fortuitously approached by a bus agent who took our tickets and pointed us in the right direction.  I slept a little on the journey home, but mostly watched the countryside change from lush forest to fields of mango and sugar cane, and eventually to the concrete jungle that is the megacity of Delhi.  It was the perfect way to spend our last weekend before starting our work here.  To see photos, please click this album link.

Do I Know You?

If anyone was worried that I wasn't independent enough, I think a year in India will assuage all fears once and for all.  There's something about being a foreigner in a place where everyone immediately recognizes you as such that gives you a sense of isolation from the larger world, but closeness with those with whom you can empathize, namely other foreigners.  Today as Tangi and I were walking to school, an auntie, a colloquialism for an older woman, came running up to us.  "Are you foreigners?!" she exclaimed.  It was hard not to respond with "No, of course not, we were born and raised in Delhi, can't you tell by our perfect Hindi and oddly colored faces?" I said yes and she asked excitedly where we were from, at which point I said we were in a rush to get to class and didn't have time to talk.  This compares nicely with the experience Hannah and I had, when I accidentally dialed a wrong number while trying to reach the person in charge of helping us get Internet.  I realized quickly that I had reached a wrong number, said so, and hung up.  Two minutes later, the person called back!  Hannah answered, and, speaking in Hindi, explained politely that we had reached them by accident and had not intended to call them in the first place. The woman started trying to have a conversation with Hannah, asking her name and where she was from.  The conversation went something like this, and please keep in mind that this was over the course of several phone calls, because Hannah kept hanging up and the woman called back two or three times:
Lady: Where are you from?
Hannah: America
Lady: What do you do?
Hannah: Why are you asking this? I don't know you.
Lady: Can we be friends?
Hannah: NO, we can't be friends.
Lady: Why not??
Hannah: BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW YOU!
Lady: So you can't be friends with someone if you don't know them?
Hannah: NO. Please stop calling me, this is very expensive!!!
Lady: Please tell me your name.
Hannah: I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU MY NAME PLEASE STOP CALLING ME
Lady: Fine then don't tell me your name, bitch!
Hannah: There's no need to curse! Please stop calling me!
Only in India will someone you dial by accident take it personally that you don't want to be their friend.  Part of the reason I am so looking forward to starting to teach is that I feel that not having personal relationships with people from here is making me feel even more isolated in this bubble we've created within our little ETA community of six.  Because of our limited current ability to communicate with people here, both in a spoken and cultural sense, I often find myself unable to convey basic ideas, from the desired width of the pants at the tailor's to asking for coffee with milk but no sugar.

On a different note, I am fortunate enough to be coming into this experience straight from a year of working and living at home, which allowed me to save money with which to travel while in India and hopefully after as well.  My roommates, however, are coming straight out of college and are trying to live as economically as possible so they will be able to do the traveling they want to do while in Asia.  It is a combination of these factors that led me to spend the morning cutting hair--first Patricia's and then Hannah's.  Of course there are a million and a half salons near where we live, but wanting to be thrifty and a fear of ending up with a mullet led my roommates to prefer my limited scissor skills to those of a barber.  I have cut hair several times before, both in college and when I was living in Israel after high school.  However, the last time I cut someone's hair was my roommate in college, who said she wanted short hair and then behaved passive-aggressively towards me for three days before finally admitting that she hated the haircut and ruined her life.  Or something like that.  Anyway, my roommates had expressed wanting to get haircuts and not wanting accidental mullets, and I said that I had cut hair before and could probably give them a trim.  This was a few weeks ago.  This past weekend Patricia asked if I would cut her hair.  I put on a long dress over my pajamas, googled hair cutting as a quick refresher, placed a plastic chair outside on our little balcony, and started to snip.  It did occur to me about halfway through the cut, when Patricia looked in the mirror for the first time, that it was a terrible mistake to try this and may possibly result in Roommate Rumble Part II, but alas I was already in deep and couldn't quit at that point!  Though the bangs came out a little shorter than intended, the rest of the cut came out very even and I was relieved beyond words that I had not ruined anyone's life.  I went on to cut Hannah's hair also, again not perfectly, but evenly and nicely enough that she could still look me in the eye afterwards.  There's something about living here that forces me to trust and be trusted in new ways that I wouldn't have expected prior to my arrival.  My roommates and I are so interdependent in so many ways, much more so than I have ever been with people I've lived with, and we've already learned not to be shy about expressing concern for one another's safety.  When someone leaves the house alone, we always ask where she's going, just so we know, just in case.  In the US I would consider this very nosy to ask of a roommate all the time, but here we have a much higher consciousness about sticking together and being trusting.  I think there's also something about the fact that money is worth less here, that we can buy enough vegetables for four people for a week for less than $10, that an expensive auto ride is $2.00, that makes it less stressful to keep track of what we spend on communal items and household maintenance.  Throughout my life I have sought out opportunities to study, live and be in community with others, but this community is more intimate and interdependent than any I've lived in so far.  It's funny that our interests and whereabouts in the US are close enough to have possible crossed at some point previously, but we had to come here to be a community.

Delhi Belly

***WARNING: This post is not for the faint of stomach.  In attempting to describe my experience I have included details which may or may not induce nausea.  Read at your own discretion, but note that the grossness is over by the second paragraph.***

Alas, I have been jinxed by all my grateful affirmations for not getting sick.  Two nights ago, after falling asleep with some stomach pain, I awoke to a fierce rumbling in my tummy.  While trying to find relief, I wound up projectile vomiting all over the bathroom floor, in an extraordinary maneuver that Hannah calls the "Two-For-One Special."  Trying not to wake my poor roommate, I cleaned the floor, then lay down to rest and gain energy to brush my teeth again.  No sooner did I brush my teeth than round two of Vom-A-Thon 2012 began, landing fortunately in the appropriate receptacle this time.  When I woke up the next morning my stomach felt like someone was grabbing my guts from the inside.  As Saturday is a weekday here, I called out from school, along with my roommate, Hannah, who was having gastrointestinal issues of her own.  I got a little bit of sleep, having had such a rough night, and Hannah was feeling well enough to make me some plain pasta and bring me cold water when my bottle ran out.  I was so lucky to have someone there to help me out and commiserate about not ever wanting to eat Indian food again.  Even now, 24 hours later, the word "dosa" makes my stomach churn and groan.  How delicious at the time, but how nauseating the next day.

Hannah and I spent most of the day watching movies on her computer, whining to each other about belly pain and making each other laugh with funny stories and observations about our ridiculous situation.  I was fortunate enough to be able to Skype with a bunch of my Corrymeela family, as a bunch of my fellow long-term volunteers are having a mini-reunion in Northern Ireland.  It was so great to see their faces and hear about their lives; a reminder of the good things I am also missing by taking this great opportunity.  We all cracked up when my roommate Hannah, a Georgia native who went to NYU, heard the conversation and asked if Paul, the Center Director at Corrymeela, had "special needs," realizing a moment later that it was "just his accent."  (When he told me about meeting the Queen and watching her shake hands with Martin McGuinness, Hannah went, "of England?? No he did not!")  In the evening, I felt well enough to eat some eggs.  But to my chagrin, all the precious eggs in our refrigerator had been eaten!  Tangi had just started washing her hair, which those of you with her type hair will know is a two hour process, Patricia had just walked in the door and Hannah was a sickie like me.  But I was really hungry!  I put on clothes over my pajamas and ventured to the "supermarket" around the corner, praying I wouldn't suddenly puke all over the place.  When I got there I of course couldn't find anything I was looking for, had to have people help me find the most basic items, and then had to convince the guy at checkout to give me eggs in a carton and not loose in a plastic bag.*  I probably wasn't outside more than 15 or 20 minutes but I was totally exhausted, sweaty and too drained to be hungry any more.  I took a shower, made myself eggs, and, in typical fashion, called my mom.  Hearing her voice made me feel better, as a mother's voice is apt to do, and then Hannah and I resigned ourselves to watching Parks and Recreation until we fell asleep.  
I woke up this morning ravenously hungry, made myself more eggs (and potatoes!) and relished not feeling like I wanted to tear out my insides.  Yay!  I've taken it easy today, and am just so glad to have survived my first gastrointestinal shitshow (literally) relatively unscathed.

*Yes, this actually happened.

Photos!

Due to prolonged Internet access issues, it has taken me forever to upload these photos.  However, I have finally put them together in an online album, which you can view by clicking here.  You can only see the photos from that link, so if it for some reason doesn't work, let me know and I will email you.  The captions I wrote should show up to the right of the photos.  Enjoy! xox

Bev Koof Gora

I am so lucky to be spending this year with really great people who make me laugh.  During the past few weeks I have laughed harder and for longer than I have in a very long time.  Part of it has to do with the ridiculous nature of the situations we have found ourselves in during this period of adjustment, from the hours spent waiting and waiting and waiting for forms, decisions, copies, traffic and each other, to being dropped off on the side of the road at night by a rickshaw driver with engine trouble.  I honestly don't know what I would do if I was not with people who could laugh with me at the absurdities that I constantly encounter in my life here.

BS Collections: The Latest in Bullshit Fashion

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the other ETAs came down with a strain of tonsilitis that was not kidding around.  My roommates and I had him come to our apartment, where we forced him to rest, made him tea, and waited to see if he got better or worse.  When he woke up the next day, his throat was almost closed--he couldn't drink water and breathed with difficulty.  I immediately called the doctor overseeing the Fulbrighters in Delhi, whom we had met during orientation, who told us to come see her right away.  I asked her for directions on how to get to her hospital and she responded with: "It's near USIEF, the auto driver will know." Now, USIEF, the Fulbright program center, isn't tremendously far, but it takes a solid 45-60 minutes to get there, and it's faster and cheaper to take the metro there rather than an auto all the way.  Sean and I took an auto to the metro, rode in a car jam packed with what felt like half the male population of Delhi, emerged in Connaught Place (Central Delhi), and flagged down an auto.  The first auto walla asked for two hundred rupees, at which point Sean, even in his miserable state, laughed in the guy's face.  Auto wallas are notorious for overcharging anyone they think they can, especially foreigners. If the original price seems unreasonable, asking a few different drivers will give you a sense of just how unreasonable the offer is.  So when the next few auto wallas came up with similar offers of 150 and 100 rupees, we knew this hospital was not as near to USIEF as we had thought.  When the fourth or fifth auto driver said "Ah, yes, Malviya Nagar," Sean and I had a mutual conniption.  We called the doctor to ask if we, in fact, had just traveled an hour only to go somewhere 10 minutes from where we live.  "Yes," she said, when we asked. "In Malviya Nagar, close to USIEF."  Eighty rupees later, we emerged from our auto literally two kilometers from our house.  The doctor was very apologetic, sorry for the chukkars (circles) she made us do, thinking we were starting at USIEF. At that point all we could do was laugh.  You can't make this stuff up!

Copyright, schmopyright! Hannah rolls with it.

Tonight my roommates and I went to dinner in a lovely (read: gentrified) neighborhood near ours called Hauz Khas.  After walking around for a bit, we decided on a rooftop restaurant overlooking a lake, which served a variety of Western and Indian food.  We ordered drinks, realizing that the "cocktail" list did not include alcoholic drinks (duh?) and looked at the menu.  We had left the house late so it was already around 8:45 when we got to the restaurant, and we were very hungry. Our drinks arrived.  Ten minutes passed.  Twenty minutes passed.  Finally we flagged down a waiter and asked if we could order.  He looked at us like we had three heads, bringing over another waiter to figure out what we were requesting.  "Food!" Tangi said.  "We would like to eat food at this restaurant!"  The waiter took our order and didn't write it down, at which point we somehow knew that Patricia, the first to order, was more than likely to be forgotten.  My biryani made it to the table within about twenty minutes, and was delicious, followed by Tangi's and Hannah's orders about 15 minutes later.  Sure enough, Patricia's food was nowhere to be found. The following conversation then occurred:
Patricia: Do you have my order?  Is my food coming?
Waiter: No. No, it is not.
When he walked away, the four of us died laughing, and fortunately there was plenty of biryani to feed poor Patricia.  

Then there was the time Sean and I went grocery shopping at the supermarket near our house and both realized upon checkout that we didn't have enough money to pay for everything!  We laughed and laughed, doubled over and teary, though I am sure the employees were less amused by the bev koof goras, stupid foreigners.  I am also starting to miss the days when the only phrase I could say in Hindi was Menduk mai mera dil tordiya, or "a frog broke my heart."  Or the time when, instead of saying mat chuo, "don't touch me," I said mat chuha: "Don't, mouse!"  Behold, the joys and trials of foreign exchange.

Everyone deserves a Stripe Tease now and then!

This place is a madhouse sometimes, and you can either get annoyed and be angry, which is of course sometimes unavoidable and appropriate, or you can take it for what it is and laugh like crazy. Welcome to India! Here's hoping I can keep laughing.

I'm Fine, People

Just a quick post to say that there was a huge earthquake in northern India but that it was way north of Delhi, in Kashmir, northern Rajasthan and parts of Pakistan.  No casualties have been reported so far, but didn't want anyone thinking I might not be OK.  I'm OK! My fellow ETAs, however, have not been as chipper.  Sean came down with a really terrible case of tonsilitis, but I went with him to the doctor and yesterday we locked him in our apartment (literally) so he was forced to rest.  He took my bed and I slept in Tangi's room, and this morning when was feeling better and went home I washed the sheets with boiling water.  (Seriously.  I boiled water and poured it into the washing machine).  He is much much MUCH better today, thank goodness.  One of my roommates has pinkeye, while the other started taking antibiotics for a sore throat.  Apparently the onset of the monsoon causes a lot of people to get sick, as well as a lot of bugs to come out which can lead to some nasty ailments. (Dengue, anyone?)  Tangi and I are holding strong, though, I wear bug spray religiously like it's going out of style and seem to have been spared for now.  Yay!  Mangoes are still delicious and we had an awesome watermelon the other day.  My Hindi classes are going well, though we are in class four hours a day and are moving so quickly, so as to learn as much as possible, that it's very difficult to keep track of everything we're learning.  Patricia made an amazing curry tonight for which I cut 62378476264827 onions as finely as I could, as we don't have a food processor.  But even the onions didn't make me cry!  Will write a longer post soon, just wanted to alleviate any potential undue panic.  I leave you with this picture of a street cow.