Pictures

These guys served us lunch every monday through friday for the last eleven weeks

On our bus to pushkar. The cricket that flew into my face is missing.

Pushkar lake

All covered at the sikh temple

Clothes and cows

Climbing up huge hill outside of pushkar

Epic cloud

So many monkeys

It was exhausting

But the view was so worth it

And the amazing clouds continued

Gorgeous sunset

I woke up early before sunrise.

Here comes the sun doo doo doo doo 

The bag of mystery. We each bought each other a mystery outfit. I will see it tomorrow.

I think a camel and cow mated?

Back in Jaipur taking the rickshaw back from volunteering

(Sorry for the sideways) pretty flowers in the yard at the house

Taru Chayya Nagar (our street) at sunset. Standing on Tonk Road

Did I really just say that?

In fact I think they did. I might need Menna to verify it, but yesterday I'm pretty sure that in sequential order I said I think "I'm going to miss India". Menna, Verena, and I were sitting on a hill close by the monkey temple in Jaipur over looking the whole city. It was cool to look down and recognize places that I've been- where I've eaten, shopped, got lost, explored, buildings and hills I've climbed and so on. Though there is still so much more to see in Jaipur (not to mention India) I have made Jaipur my temporary summer home. The roads to and from my house are particularly familiar and I can navigate the rickshaw drivers when needed to arrive safely at my house using hand gestures and feeble attempts at Hindi vocabulary.

I had an amazing weekend. I left Saturday evening for Pushkar with 5 other intern girls. We spent the next two days shopping in awesome markets and climbing this huge hill at sunset with one of the most stellar views I have ever seen in India. Their company and the awesome sights and great food truly made it a weekend to remember- I dare say the best couple days that I have had in India. Right now I don't have access to my computer but I hope to upload more pictures from the trip soon. I think they are the best way to communicate my travels better than anything else.

This week I am all finished with HEDCON. So now I'm doing a bit of volunteering at a local school that integrates mentally disabled children with the rest of children into one school. Mostly I just draw elephants for the kids to color and help them practice their numbers and english alphabet. It's not exactly what I expected I would do coming to Prayas but I am enjoying it nonetheless. I will volunteer a couple more mornings this week, have at least one day off for the muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, pack my things and return. Though it will be mostly sweet, the goodbyes, especially to Menna and the green green hills surrounding this crazy city will be somewhat bitter. At the moment I'm doing my last load of hand laundry (huge fist pump for the return of laundry machines in a few days), writing a few postcards, and maybe a nap before the girls return and we go out for a night on the town.

Pictures coming soon!

From Garbage to Well Done

I'm sorry to say it like this but..."It's garbage"

This is the first round of feedback I got on the introduction to the report I submitted to my boss yesterday. Though his critiques were not all on things I wrote, they were on things that I had read and approved. It is probably the most harsh feedback I have ever received. However I determined that I was not going to finish my 10ish weeks of internship with that sort of critique and so I worked hard all the workday ong following "it's garbage" to make the report into something readable. I sent the revised document back to my boss who came over this evening before he left to tell me "well done". That simple well done and firm handshake afterwards might be one of the most important compliments that I have received.

In a way I feel this way about India. 5 weeks ago I felt like I was wasting my time here and I was feeling both incredibly critical of myself as well as upset at AIESEC, my internship and Jaipur/India in general for making everything so difficult. However especially in the last few weeks after a great trip with Menna in Jaisalmer and more substantial work at HEDCON I feel much better about my time. I also visited a couple special needs school through Prayas, the NGO that works with special needs children that I have mentioned before. It was great to see a well functioning NGO and I will be going back next week several times to play with the kids (I drew suns for them to fill and made paper airplanes, only after realizing that I was folding up their artwork that supposed to be on display, woops! but the kids loved it :)

Now I'm about to head with 5 other interns to the relaxing town of Pushkar for several days of relaxing fun, and more climbing hills to see the sunrise and sunset. I can head into my week of my own time and fun time feeling like I have done a job well done. Maybe/definitely not what I had expected but well done nonetheless.

Do not turn away

In the Bible God speaks through the prophet Isaiah to tell the Israelites,

“Is not this the kind of fasting I [God] have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?  Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"Isaiah 58:6-7

The most heartbreaking thing about India is the children. Hardly two days go by without a child under the age of seven begging from us. It feels so heartless to act like they aren't there and keep walking, or when they beg while stopped in traffic to continue to staring forward and not look at them. Most of the time I try to at least look into their faces and say 'no' but it doesn't change anything. When I first arrived in India this wasn't the case? I had been so warned to ignore and not give money that I wouldn't even look into their faces (surprisingly easy to do when they are below your waist). I remember the first moment I looked down to the three faces around my faces. Dirty clothes and faces that ranged from gleeful, cunning, sad, despairing and hardened. They are barefoot, naked, children holding children, when some of the saddest eyes that I have ever seen. What can I do? How do I help without hurting?

Yesterday when our rickshaw was stopped a young beautiful girl came by the rickshaw and tried to sell Menna some balloons, but when Menna didn't buy them the girl pinched her really hard and then walked away. I've been hit, pulled and mobbed by groups of up to 8 children all demanding pooki (food) or money. There's one particular boy at the bus stop on our way to work who continues to touch his hands to my bare dirty feet and then touching them to his stomach and then his face. I can be told over and over that most of these children are working for crime lords, and that giving them money in the long term only hurts them. I want to pick up them up in my arms and run with them all the way back to the United States. I want to pick them up and twirl them around in my arms until they giggle in delight. I want to split an ice cream cone with them and take them to see and smell the ocean. I want to send them to a good school where they can take pride in their lives and learn about what life can be like outside of the slums. Instead I shake my head no and walk on hoping that they'll leave soon.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27. Is it the world's 'pollution' that says I should turn from these children and not give them anything? Is it the world's wisdom that I should just donate to an NGO that helps children but turn from them on the street? What beauty comes from this pain? Does God love the beggar child in India as much as the privileged white girl at an elite university (me)? Where is the sense in this pain? Is there any purpose to this? What can I possibly do? Anything? What can you do?

But man these times are hard

(I'm going to try to pull an analogy that may or may not work.) Recently I've been listening a lot to a song by the Script called The First Time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEBN2dVNUY&ob=av2e. The song is relatively melancholy but eventually redemptive about a relationship that is going through difficult financial and emotional struggles. The analogy: we're just going to pretend that I'm in some form of relationship with India, or maybe I should say Jaipur. The premise of the song is even amidst difficult the couple enjoys drinking cheap bottles of wine and staying up all night, and in these simple and joyous moments it's as if they are meeting for the first time.  The title of this post comes from they lyrics "we're trying to make it work but man these times are hard". I've struggled, lost, and gained in the fight to not only make India work but have it be a good experience. I wrote a blog earlier on about appreciating the small things here. This has continued. At least once very day there is something that makes me smile (even when I'm close to tears) weather Indian music blasting on loud speakers to celebrate the Lord Krishna holiday, making funny faces with Menna, the sweet smile of a young girl when she waves at us when we come to the neighborhood market or sun rays breaking through the monsoon clouds.

Last night was awesome. A friend of mine from Northwestern, Nicole, came to Jaipur to see me for the evening into the next morning on her way back to Delhi. We had an awesome time catching up about all sorts of things. It was wonderful to have a piece of home here in India, but not in a way that made me homesick, but just made me enjoy my time here all the more.

Market by our house

More pictures of beautiful sunsets

NICOLE!!!!!!!! <3

Thankfulness

I was reading a friend of mine's blog from this summer and was inspired to write my own short blog about things that I am thankful for. I'm going to do it picture style.

Menna. A dear friend. The kindest, funniest, awesomest, and wonderful friend I could have ever hoped to make in India. Our adventures and time of laughter in India will always remain in my memory the best part of this trip.

Our clean and safe house, with a kind family (and awesome rooftop)

The Amer Fort and the hills surrounding it. They are why I chose to come to Jaipur, and I have loved the five trips I have taken to come to this beautiful and peaceful place outside the city.

I saw this cloud yesterday after I got out of a very scary situation. Though I was family safe I still felt unsettled, but it's beauty calmed me and gave me hope.

Adapation: I visited this crazy nice mall with Menna and went speechless by it's fanciness. I experienced more culture shock entering this place than at any other point in India- when we returned to the dirty busy streets I felt right at home. It showed just how much I've adapted to this city.

Lays Classic Salted chips. Masala free. I hardly ever eat them in the US but here they taste like home. I've had several times traveling where these and chocolate chip cookies were my dinner.

The wind. During the monsoon it almost blows constantly. The wind can not be seen but it can be felt. It sculpts everything it touches either immediately over long periods of time.  Amidst my doubt, the wind against my face reminds me of God. Even as a I question His goodness through all these questions, the wind He created whispers against my skin reminding me that even if I can't see Him, He is here.

These beautiful flowers have been in bloom since my first day I landed in Jaipur. Through the first couple weeks of hot summer and now the rains of the monsoon they decorate almost every street and mountain with their beauty. 

Sun glasses and funny faces. Menna and I have a whole series of these but they are so fun and make us laugh even when we're getting stressed out or overwhelmed.

So many of my family and friends have been incredibly supportive in this time but I wanted  to give special thanks to my oldest brother, Aaron. His consistent love and support, from the very first day I considered India, to a fabulous pep talk the night before I left and his encouragement amidst the trials and triumphs of my time here have meant more than any thank you note could ever describe. He has modeled what it means to sacrifice your time for those you love, to think with a brilliant mind and fight for a heart of integrity; how to prance like a dinosaur and accept disappointment with grace and fortitude. I love you bro.

Incredible

In the first few weeks of my forays into India I had a lot of time to burn. As a Northwestern student who normally has all my time packed on a very colorfully delineated calendar it was odd to sit at work for several hours with no concrete assignment, to wait for an AIESECer to come by 'sometime' for 24 hours, or just to be looking at an empty afternoon that I had to fill up with my own time. A lot of this free time, especially my time at work, provided me a lot of time to process my experiences and to write them on my blog. The fact that I am having a hard time finding space to write on here is actually a good sign. At the moment it's just before 10am and I'm at work but I wanted to take a few moments to write before heading into the day.

My trip to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer was incredible. It would take too much time to describe in great detail, but if you're interested I've posted an album on facebook called the Blue and Gold Cities that photo documents much of my trip. We left late on Wednesday arriving early Thursday morning in Jodhpur. Jodhpur seemed to be even more dirty than any other city I have been so far and so I was relieved when we took the jeep out of the city to GRAVIS (an NGO closely associated with HEDCON) center in a rural area around an hour drive away. It was so great to no longer be in any city and see lots of bushes, sand, trees, small lakes and huge sky. Our boss didn't really have any plans for us at the center so Menna and I basically just slept but ended up having an incredible 2 hours playing with the local children an a huge sand dune outside of the center. I learned how to sled on a sand dune by filling up a plastic chips bag with sand and then sitting on it and ride it down the slopes. At first only a couple children came by but within an hour there were probably over 20 children. After 'sledding' and taking lots of pictures I organized a game of 'sharks and minnows' and had a boy translate the rules who could speak English and the local dialect. The next day we went on a field visit to several mining villages and were encouraged to see that the interventions in these villages by GRAVIS and HEDCON actually were empowering villagers to improve their life situations and advocate for their (especially laborer's) rights. For example GRAVIS helped to build a school that was originally completely funded by them, but now is 50% funded by the village and will hopefully be 100% by them in the future. Afterwards with our field visits completed we left the GRAVIS center in Jodhpur to go to Singhvi's Haveli in the old city. The old city was incredibly dirty and smelly (though all the blue buildings are cool) but our Haveli was really nice and we enjoyed watching the sunset from the roof and watching a beautiful sunset.

The next morning after exploring the Merangarh Fort (very impressive but highly structured but I liked exploring down the broken down, Indiana Jones style fort, above Bundi more) we took a 6 hour bus from Jodphur to Jaisalmer. The bus was crazy, and commenced by seeing a car compltely in flames along the side of the road, in the middle of the trip the bus filled so tightly with people they were practically (and literally at one point) sitting on Menna's lap (who was in the outside seat). We got to Jaisalmer where a man from the Hotel was there to pick us up from the bus stop. And there our adventures in Jaisalmer began- my best time in India so far. But that will have to wait until tomorrow as I'm now leaving work. Off to KFC to accompany Menna for Iftar.

Back in Jaipur

After a week of travel and field visits Menna and I are once again back in Jaipur. We had an incredible time and I have a million pictures to post. Just a little over 2 weeks left!

!!!

I posted several weeks ago about meeting the director of an organization,  Jatinder from Prayas, that works with disabled children in Jaipur. I tried to call her cell number but couldn't seem to reach her and sent several emails to the organization but hadn't heard anything back. Two more options were left to me: either let this go or call the organization's number that was listed on their website. Clearly the second option is much better, but ever since I was little I have had an irrational fear of calling people/organizations that I don't know. Case in point: I had a book on hold at the public library and my mom practically had to force me to call them to check in on its status. So I just kept delaying hoping my emails would eventually come through. I wish I could say that I took the initiative to call Prayas but I didn't. Nevertheless it still worked out! Just 10 minutes I got a call from Jatinder on my cell phone. I'm used to getting spam calls from random Indian advertisements and men but I still picked it up out of habit and it was her! I'll be gone for most of this week and the next out in the desert but I offered to visit on the following weekend and volunteer for the last week that I'm here and she said that it would be great! I'm going to try to keep my hopes down, and wait until I visit in a couple weeks but right now I'm so excited!!!

Here's the link to their website if you want to check it out: http://www.prayasjaipur.org.in/

Becoming Nerdy

Microsoft for Mac 2011 finally installed. I thought my computer might melt.

I didn't come to India expecting to get nerdier. I thought that I would be going into the rural areas and interviewing villagers on their lives and working conditions in order to write reports that would influence government policy and action towards their desperate situations. This goal was noble, but that sentence is almost laughable now. My first week of my internship I researched fundraising for HEDCON and wrote a grant proposal that ended up being completely worthless because I found out 2 weeks later that HEDCON had applied for it two months before. The second week I travelled with Rachel, which was no problem because though I arrived on June 16 my work didn't think I was starting until July 1. Most of July was spent learning the nuances of facebook, organizing photos and writing this blog. In between I would get some sparse editing assignments or writing an introduction for a report. A high of this time was writing the concept note for the human rights newsletter. The last two weeks have been better as I have been working on writing a report for the conference that I attended around a week and half ago which I finally finished yesterday. I've now been assigned a huge spreadsheet of over 200 families in villages in the area surrounding Jodhpur and been told to analyze and write a report. This is largely over my head and I have little instruction, but I managed to find the results that the report is looking for and my oldest brother, Aaron, suggested that I should use Pivot Tables to organize and sort some of the data. So I downloaded a trial of Microsoft for Mac and am learning how to use excel. Today I even figured out how to use pivot tables which is saving me extraordinary amounts of time. I'm trying to keep my expectations low on the value of this report or that it'll be worth anything to my bosses but I'm learning a lot just by fiddling around with excel. I have concluded that I enjoy being a nerd.

Today, August 5th, is significant for three reasons. First off it is my Grandpa's birthday!!! I'm sad to say I don't remember exactly how old he is but I think he'll be somewhere around 84 or 85. He and my grandma live on a farm only 30 minutes from my house in Bellingham, WA and since my birthday is on the 6th we would often go over on the 5th and have a joint celebration. This will be only the second summer of my life that I can remember that I missed this tradition and it's pretty bittersweet. Nonetheless Happy Birthday Grandpa Chuck! The second reason today is important is that it marks exactly 4 weeks until I board a plane back to the United States. I will get to have about one week off from work because I'm finally going on a field visit to Jodhpur and then I'll travel with Mennat for another 4 days (which hopefully involve an overnight camel safari and desert stars). This means that I really only have 2 more weeks left of sitting down office work since I won't be working my last week here. I'm really getting excited for the next few weeks of the time I spend here. I will learn a lot more about excel, see the people and mines that I have read about for the last 7 weeks and travel into the desert. The third reason is that today marks the longest that I will have ever been away from my hometown of Bellingham. Last year the longest time was from Spring Break until I came home August 5th, but now it will end up being from Spring Break to September 6th totaling over 5 months. It would have been difficult as a senior (4th year for you non-American readers) in high school to imagine that I would spend 5 months away from my home and that over half that time in India. A country that has always fascinated and terrified me. This summer has been nothing like what I had expected and taught me more than I could have ever imagined.

Some sort of religious festival of free food everywhere. Not safe for us to eat but smelled delicious.

The trash disposal

Menna and I probably saw over 60 women in these bright colored saris walking down the street this morning on our way to the bus. For as much as I hate my picture being taken without being asked I thought this was too beautiful to pass up.

Menna and I posing with a blinged out truck on our walk back to work. The swastika on the front means good luck in India.