Past Week or so + Vacation!

Sorry I haven’t posted but I have not had the time or desire to write so this will be a short one. On Sunday August 10^th we had the inbound orientation for all the inbound students in my District. My District is the city and Suburbs of Mumbai which covers not a huge chunck of land but it contains many people. There are 14 students in Mumbai and area, 5 from Germany, 4 from Brazil, 2 from Belgium, 1 from France, 1 from America and me from Canada. So as you may be aware the Indian people do not have a sense for time they arrive late for everything but at least they do not expect you to be on time. This is relevant because of how I was the person exhibiting the so called Indian “Stretchable” Time on the day of the orientation. The orientation started at 8:30 and was in North Mumbai, my counselor was to drive me and another German there and at 9:00 we left my counselors house starting the ½ hour journey ½ an hour after the program started. Luckily the first 45 minutes were breakfast so we only missed the food and some conversing. When I say house I mean apartment. Basically everyone except the very rich live in apartments or housing societies with 3 to 6 apartment buildings on one lot with a courtyard and stuff. So if you can imagine a Calgary’s downtown, shrink the height a little then spread it across the whole city that is what Mumbai is like. As I said the very rich may choose to live in Bungalows for example Bollywood film star Shah Ruhk Khan is bigger than big in India he lives in a huge Bungalow that looks like the white house but then again he has enough money to own his own cricket team (as I’ve heard). Mumbai is a very rich city, it is the financial capital of India and it’s port handles 40% of the Countries trade. But then again it is the most contradictory place that I have seen, you see squalid slums and standing next to the most unbelievable house fit for a king. Two of the top eight richest people in the world live in Mumbai and 2 more are Indians living abroad but with residences in India. The 5^th richest man in the world is actually building a billion dollar, 27 floor tower as a home for him and his family on the 10^th most expensive road in the world which is located in Mumbai. I think you get the point of the wealth in Mumbai, which also contains the biggest slum in Asia for sure and some say the biggest in the world: Dharavi. So with all these tall residential and office buildings everywhere you can get lost very easily, Jens (German exchange) and I learned that the hard way. We went for a walk at a break in school to try and find a falafel place Jens had seen before and ended up seeing a Ghandi statue so we went to take pictures. Then we wanted to go back to college and we started walking on the road we thought was the right one. We knew what the Tata (Tata is a huge company over here that does everything cars, trucks, mobile phones, satellite TV, and more) building looked like from our college so we just thought we would go to where the college should be in relation to what the Tata building looks like. Big mistake, the Tata building looks the same from all sides so we went to the complete other side of the building and were wandering around for a good hour before we asked anyone. We were heading in the complete wrong direction but refused to ask anyone for so long because 1) we are “locals” now, 2) we are guys and 3) You have to get lost sometimes to really see the city. Needless to say we missed a couple lectures in college. Ok what was I talking about again, oh ya the orientation, did I get off topic or what. The orientation lasted most of Sunday “8:30”- 6:30pm and contained boring but essential information on the exchange. The Rotex is pretty sweet each student is assigned a buddy to show you around town and they are planning some sweet things, like mountain trekking. Also they told us about the trips we will be taking. We get three trips 2 weeks to North India incl. Taj Mahal, 2 weeks to South India and 10 days to the Himalayas. These trips are spread out in the year: December, then February, then April. They sound amazing, and not very costly. There was also some other speakers and the District Chairman spoke too so that was nice. Most of the students seem very nice.

OK I just have to get this one thing off my chest, Indian people do this really weird head bobble thing that I do not know the meaning of but I have started doing it too. It is like if you were to hit a bobble head doll on the side of the head, so to do it you don’t shake your head you keep looking forward but shift your head (if you had a wall clock in front of you) from 1 to 11 or from 2 to 10 fairly quickly. I asked what it meant in my first night questions and they did not have an answer they said even they don’t know, other people I have asked say it means “ok ok.” Nonetheless it is pretty automatic for everyone like saying “eh” for a Canadian.

As the title suggests I also went on a vacation this weekend. It was Independence day in India so it was a long weekend. I was told a couple weeks ago that the family minus Abhishek would be going on a vacation. I didn’t know what to expect but had a great time. The vacation would be up to Khanvel Resort in the State Gujarat. I looked it up on the internet and it looked nice. We got there and it was nice but what I thought was OK we’re going to a resort; I get to talk with another “foreigner.” I was mistaken the resort was pure Veg and I was the only foreigner there. The food was actually very good for vegetarian food but I thought it was a little different than the crazy amount of meat at most resorts. Here they ask if you want regular veg or Jain veg at other resorts they ask if you want meat on your meat. Jain is a religion that is small but a powerful force in India they are very strict vegetarians and want everything to live. If you are a Jain you can not eat potatoes, onions, garlic, as they grow in the ground and the cultivation may kill small bugs in the ground. Very strict Jains even walk around with gauze covering their mouth to avoid the inhalation of very small insects and if they see an insect on the sidewalk they will sweep it to the side with a little broom they carry. At the resort there was a swimming pool, table tennis, billiards, disco, tv, etc. So the games were fun we played cards too, with some of Anil’s friends who were also at the resort. One other different thing was most resorts in India have separate rooms for drivers many people in India hire drivers to take them around. So the Anil’s friends had a driver to drive them to the resort and I didn’t even know he was staying there until he got in the car to drive them home. There was a dance on Friday night at the disco and I took part but most of the Indian people know all the moves to the dances as they were in Bollywood films and I don’t know anything. I mostly just do my own stuff and home no one is watching. The road on the way there and the way back was a highway but in monsoon season all the roads absolutely suck so I was unable to sleep the whole way and if I tried I would smash my head up against the window every minute, it hurt so I stopped trying. We actually lost a hubcap on the car because we hit a bump. Also we hit a traffic jam to we waited a bit then crossed the median and started driving down the wrong side of the road for about a minute to get around it. Many cars were doing this and we were basically to the side of the other road so don’t worry too much mom. The roads in India kinda suck because it rains every year for like 3 months and that ruins the roads. The corruption in India doesn’t help as the company who fixes the roads after the monsoon season purposely doesn’t do a good job so they can make more money next year doing the same job.

The Indian people are very superstitious and I do have a point to back this up now. When we were on vacation the moon was in partial eclipse and instead of going out and taking pictures like in Canada, everyone stays inside because apparently there is radiation from the eclipse that makes the earth impure. There are warnings on the TV’s telling people to stay inside. My family also has something they do every eclipse and it goes like this: you must stay inside the whole eclipse, you can not eat during the eclipse, you must shower directly after the eclipse is over even if it is 4am, you then sprinkle water from the river Ganges (which is Holy) around your house, you then can not eat till you give something black to a poor person then you buy fresh food. My host mother’s mother phoned us on vacation to warn Neeta about the eclipse.

Just something that is a little different.

I am going to RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) all this weekend to somewhere an hour north of Mumbai. I don’t know what it entails but I know I am foreign so I have to go. I must catch a bus at 6am on Friday that is going to suck.

I think that is it for now, I got on a roll so it isn't that short.

The picture is of all the inbound students at the orientation.

Please leave comments about anything, you know I love them.

I miss you all.

-Allen